news fréttir
merce cunningham 100
16 April 2019
sigur rós: ba ba ti ki di do / https://sigurros.com/get/baba/happy birthday merce cunningham who would have been 100 today. back in 2003, to commemorate the merce cunningham company’s 50th anniversary, ourselves and radiohead were lucky enough to be asked to each come up with 20 minutes of music for merce’s new piece split sides. we met the great man, who was lovely, and told that we had to compose blind. the same stricture would apply to costume, set design and indeed choreographer – for each of which there were to be two options – no one had a brief or knew what anyone else was doing. we went away and, probably because merce’s company danced barefoot, decided to destroy some ballet pointes, turning them into makeshift percussion instruments. we recorded merce’s voice talking about choreography, which we then chopped into the tight syllables of our eventual titles, “ba ba”, “ti ki”, “di do”, and also worked with little wooden music boxes where you could punch your own roll cards (although we choose to use the pre-punched cards and played them backwards, slowly). on opening night, oct 14, 2003 at the brooklyn academy of music, merce’s life-long friend and collaborator robert rauschenberg rolled a die: odds for radiohead, even for sigur rós, and so on for all the other elements. and thus was born a magical performance dictated exclusively by chance. split sides was probably never rendered in the same way twice, and we never really wrote any more music that had quite the same atmosphere or genesis again. it was also the only time any of us got to work with another 20th century titan, richard avedon, who photographed jónsi (only jónsi) with thom yorke and merce. wish we had a print of that now.
a take away show
14 March 2019
a trip across paris in a van. lost drumsticks. a cafe you’d never expect to visit before the age of 60. an hour of waiting, and then, voilà : a few notes on the harmonium, a grand piano, a heavenly voice. the take away show of sigur rós is already 10 years old but we just can’t get enough of it.
record store day 2019
28 February 2019
on april 13th record store day will be celebrated around the world – for this year’s event SIGUR RÓS will release two exclusive vinyl albums. 22° LUNAR HALO and VARIATIONS ON DARKNESS are soundtracks to separate modern dance collaborations, each building on sigur rós music, both new and existing, to create brand new works.
information
jónsi & alex somers: riceboy sleeps in paris
27 February 2019
jónsi & alex somers: riceboy sleeps with the london contemporary orchestra
saturday 6 jul 2019, days off festival, paris france.
tickets on sale 28 february 2019
information & tickets
event listings: facebook bandsintown songkick
jónsi & alex somers: riceboy sleeps with the london contemporary orchestra
30 January 2019
jónsi & alex somers: riceboy sleeps with the london contemporary orchestramonday 8 jul 2019, barbican hall, 7.30pm
to celebrate its 10th anniversary, we are proud to announce the european premiere of “riceboy sleeps” performed live by jónsi & alex somers with the london contemporary orchestra, conducted by robert ames, with orchestral arrangements by david handler. a collaboration between the sigur rós singer and american visual artist and composer somers, the album will be performed in its atmospheric ambient entirety for the first time anywhere. recorded at home in iceland while jónsi was on hiatus from sigur rós and finished off-grid in hawaii, the album was a sleeper hit, with the bbc saying “riceboy sleeps operates at a heady level of beauty”, the evening standard “…it’s up there with the best of sigur rós” and the observer “beautifully fragile music, not disposable but built to last”. and so it has proved; the album’s stature has only grown in recent years, with songs such as ‘happiness’ and ‘boy 1904’ enjoying runaway success across some of the world’s most listened to streaming playliststickets are on sale to barbican members on thursday 31 january, general sale on friday 1 february 2019
information & tickets
event listings: facebook bandsintown songkick
22 lunar halo
10 January 2019
(feb 28th update. this music will be made available as part of record store day 2019. details here)22° lunar halo // world premiere in taiwan from 13 to 28 april, 2019
this new dance piece by taiwanese choreographer and artistic director cheng tsung-lung from the cloud gate 2 – music by sigur rós and kjartan holm
in ancient folklore, a lunar halo is a sign foreboding changes, while scientifically it appears when the moonlight is refracted by 22 degrees through millions of ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. accompanied by the oneiric music in collaboration with sigur rós and kjartan holm, this new dance piece by taiwanese choreographer and artistic director cheng tsung-lung from the cloud gate 2 excavates our deepest fear toward ourselves as human beings through bodies of dancers morphing into concrete symbols of anxieties, struggles, desires and loneliness in the lunatic, ever-changing world of high-end technology, and eventually leads us to a slim hope of love and inner serenity.
varúð + its always sunny in philadelphia
10 November 2018
in the finale of season 13 of “it’s always sunny in philadelphia”, varúð was used as a soundtrack to a dance piece. enjoy.
people festival
8 July 2018
update: july 23rd. jónsi wont be performing at people festival. kjartan sveinsson and alex somers are still performing.
tickets are on sale now. details about the festival are below:
welcome people!
we’re putting on a weekend full of music together, inviting our friends from along the way. it’s about new material, collaborations, unique arrangements and dissolving borders.
160 artists performing across 8 stages and studios at the historic funkhaus in berlin on august 18th/19th.
all artists meet one week prior to rehearse and create new ideas and perform them for the first time with the audience.
people is a steadily growing group of artists, making and sharing their work. people is non-hierarchical. it is put together by the artists with full freedom. there’ll be no sponsors or brands. no artist fees. 100% of the ticket costs go towards the production.
f2 football
26 June 2018
how did tiny iceland – population 330,000 – become the smallest nation ever to make it to the world cup? we headed to the land of fire and ice to work out with the world’s fittest women, kicked around in ice caves, played football with sigur ros, and ate questionable “food” to find out what drives this viking nation. ” available with youtube premium – http://youtube.com/premium. to see if premium is available in your country, click here: https://goo.gl/A3HtfP
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inni included on “21 best concert films” list
5 June 2018
paste magazine has included “inni” as part of their “the 21 best concert films of all time”, you can read the full list on their site. you can get the film here.
while the concept of a concert film is simple, dating back to 1948’s concert magic featuring violinist yehudi menuhin, a great concert film requires inspiration from both director and performer, a collaboration that unifies the best qualities of filmmaking and music. like every cinematic genre, concert filmmaking has its greats: jonathan demme, d.a. pennebaker, martin scorsese—all of whom are represented in this list of the best concert films, alongside bands who kept control of the filmmaking process themselves.
live music is a give-and-take between musician and audience, and that can be a difficult thing to capture on film. the 20 films that follow manage to allow viewers feel like they’re part of the moment and communicate what we love about some of our favorite live performers, including several who are no longer with us. these films preserve their greatness for future generations.