Ólafur Arnalds: Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.

Bob Boilen | March 4, 2021
Using an Edison "Fireside" cylinder phonograph and his own Stratus music software, Ólafur Arnalds' Tiny Desk (home) concert brings the past and the future into a heartfelt performance. Filmed in his tree-lined studio in Reykjavík, Iceland (the former studio of Sigur Rós), Ólafur and his string quartet perform three songs from my personal No. 1 album of 2020, some kind of peace. The pensive set opens with an older tune, "Happiness Does Not Wait," with Ólafur Arnalds seated at a short upright piano known as a Danish 'pianette.'

The delicate performance is the perfect window into this Icelandic composer's profound and passionate music. The Edison wax cylinder that we hear on "Woven Song" is a traditional Amazonian healing song sung by the late shaman Herlinda Agustin Fernandez.
Look closely at the piano toward the back of the studio during the tune "Spiral," and you'll see a piano playing seemingly without a performer. That piano is reacting to Ólafur Arnald's real-time performance using algorithms he and his coder friend, Halldór Eldjárn, developed. He used it extensively when he came and performed his Tiny Desk concert at NPR in 2018. Ólafur Arnalds is a gentle subversive of 21st century music, and I'm so grateful to be able to present his enchanting sounds.

SET LIST
"Happiness Does Not Wait"
"Woven Song"
"Spiral"
"We Contain Multitudes"

MUSICIANS
Ólafur Arnalds: piano
Geirþrúður Ása Guðjónsdóttir: violin
Sigrún Harðardóttir: violin
Karl James Pestka: violin
Unnur Jónsdóttir: cello

CREDITS
Audio: Ólafur Arnalds, Hafsteinn Þráinsson
Video: Blair Alexander
Local Production: Árni Þór Árnason

TINY DESK TEAM
Producer: Bob Boilen
Video Producer: Morgan Noelle Smith
Audio Mastering: Josh Rogosin
Associate Producer: Bobby Carter
Tiny Production Team: Kara Frame, Maia Stern
Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

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