Ólafur Arnalds Confirms Fall North American Tour, New Album 're:member' Out 8/24

BAFTA-winning Icelandic composer, musician and producer Ólafur Arnalds is set for a string of new North American tour dates beginning this November and continuing into 2019. See below for a complete list for dates. The tour is in support of his forthcoming record, re:member, out August 24 on Mercury KX.

Arnalds recently released the album's third single, "saman"- listen/share HERE. NPR Music's "All Songs Considered" premiered the album's title track, describing how Stratus "takes his performance on one piano and, in real-time, creates a performance on two other pianos, which he then reacts to. It leads him down musical paths he likely would never have explored."

The highly anticipated LP features Arnalds working with the groundbreaking new software Stratus, which transforms the piano into an almost entirely new instrument. The Stratus Pianos are two self-playing, semi-generative player pianos which are triggered by a central piano played by Arnalds; these new instruments and custom built software are the centerpiece of re:member. Created over a two-year period by composer and audio developer Halldór Eldjárn, the algorithms generated by Stratus were used to create the LP artwork. Arnalds describes the player pianos in a two-part video.

On the LP, Arnalds uses these methods to reinvigorate the compositional process. He explains, "This is my breaking-out-of-a-shell album. It's me taking the raw influences that I have from all these different musical genres and not filtering them. It explores the creative process and how one can manipulate that to get out of the circle of expectations and habit."

The new music on re:member uses not only Stratus pianos but also includes a string quartet, synthesizers, electronics, live drums and a string orchestra recorded at London's Air Studios. With his friend Halldór Eldjárn, Arnalds set about developing the Stratus system: software that sends instructions to two pianos "and the two become one and play together." Arnalds sets the values that the software feeds to the pianos - the rhythm, the tempo - and those are triggered by chords or notes he plays. What happened when Arnalds started making music using Stratus was a little unexpected and quickly became the focal point of his new compositions.

In the 15 years since he started writing music in his native Iceland, composing what he described as imaginary films saying "I was scoring the pictures in my head," Arnalds has become internationally celebrated for his blend of ambient, classical, electronic, pop and rock music. 2016's Island Songs and the improvised LPs Found Songs (2009) and Living Room Music (2011) all involved the daily release of new music over a seven-day period. 2013's For Now I Am Winter was heralded by Bob Boilen of NPR Music and included in his Top 20 Albums of that year. 2010's And They Have Escaped The Weight of Darkness was heralded by Pitchfork as "a success for the composer, and for listeners that don't balk at a little unabashed pageantry. Previous works include 2008's Variations in Static and his debut 2007's Eugology of Revolution. Arnalds has received critical acclaim for his extensive soundtrack work, including composing the score for ITV's "Broadchurch" for which he won a 2014 BAFTA for "Best Original Music."

ÓLAFUR ARNALDS TOUR

Nov 14	Lincoln Theatre	Washington DC
Nov 15	Union Theatre	Philadelphia, PA
Nov 17	Town Hall	New York, NY
Nov 18	Berklee Performance Center	Boston, MA
Jan 26	Moore Theater	Seattle, WA
Jan 28	Commodore Ballroom	Vancouver, BC
Jan 29	Revolution Hall	Portland, OR
Jan 31	Warfield Theatre	San Francisco, CA
Feb 1	Orpheum Theatre	Los Angeles, CA
Feb 2	Observatory North Park	San Diego, CA
Feb 4	Boulder Theater	Boulder, CO
Feb 7	Thalia Hall	Chicago, IL
Feb 8	Roy Thomson Hall	Toronto, ON

Photo credit: Benjamin Hardman

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