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 鈥� stripped-down sets, an intimate setting 鈥� just a different space.
Using an Edison "Fireside" cylinder phonograph and his own Stratus music software, ' Tiny Desk (home) concert brings the past and the future into a heartfelt performance. Filmed in his tree-lined studio in Reykjav铆k, Iceland (the former studio of ), 脫lafur and his string quartet perform three songs from , some kind of peace. The pensive set opens with an older tune, "Happiness Does Not Wait," with 脫lafur 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 脫lafur Arnald's real-time performance using algorithms he and his coder friend, Halld贸r Eldj谩rn, developed. He used it extensively when he came and performed his in 2018. 脫lafur Arnalds is a gentle subversive of 21st century music, and I'm so grateful to be able to present his enchanting sounds.
SET LIST
MUSICIANS
CREDITS
TINY DESK TEAM
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