After the second solo album by singer/guitarist Jónsi, Shiver, released in October 2020, the Icelanders now deliver a piece that has been almost twenty years in the making, a live performance of Odin's Raven Magic, an oratorio that has attained cult status, first performed in 2002 at London's Barbican Centre by Sigur Rós, MAO pioneer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson aka HÖH, the singer of rimur (traditional Icelandic poems) Steindór Andersen, accompanied by the Schola Cantorum in Reykjavik and the London Sinfonietta.
Sigur Rós - Stendur æva w/ Steindór Andersen, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson & María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
Sigur RósAlmost two decades later, Sigur Ros offers a veritable all-star game of Icelandic music, with the version recorded on 28 and 29 September 2004 in Paris at La Grande Halle de la Villette in the company of the Orchestre des Lauréats du Conservatoire national de Paris and the Schola Cantorum in Reykjavik, with arrangements by Kjartan Sveinsson (Sigur Rós's pianist from 1998 to 2013) and Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, from the Reykjavik indie pop group Amiina, as well as the stone marimba built specially for the occasion by Páll Guðmundsson.
Sigur Rós - Dvergmál with Steindór Andersen, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson & María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir
Sigur RósAll this help was certainly needed for this audiovisual show based on a 500-year-old Icelandic poem that tells of the banquet of the gods in Valhalla, held as signs appear announcing the end of the world. An hour of grandiose music on a legendary theme with a new object of worship for Sigur Rós followers.
