Ólafur Arnalds

Mosfellsbær

Ólafur Arnalds was born in Mosfellsbær, Iceland, on 3 November 1986. Arnalds is a family name rather than a patronymic, and the singer-songwriter Ólöf Arnalds is his cousin. It was his grandmother who introduced him to Chopin. As a teenager he played drums in hardcore and metal bands, among them Fighting Shit and Celestine.

In 2004, when his band supported Heaven Shall Burn in Iceland, he handed them a demo, and ended up writing the intro and outros for their album Antigone. He later described these as his first classical pieces. He dropped out of a university course in classical composition after a year, and told The Quietus in 2010 that he did not really come from a classical background.

Erased Tapes

Erased Tapes signed him in 2007 and released Eulogy for Evolution that October, an album whose tracks carry numbers instead of titles. The Variations of Static EP (2008) was his first work with electronics, and the same year he toured with Sigur Rós. In April 2009 came Found Songs: one song a day for seven days, each given away within 24 hours. That October he scored Wayne McGregor's ballet Dyad 1909 and formed Kiasmos, a minimal techno duo with Janus Rasmussen of Bloodgroup. ...And They Have Escaped the Weight of Darkness followed in April 2010, along with an Asian tour that included a sold-out run in China.

Living Room Songs

From 3 October 2011 he went back to the seven-day format, this time on camera. Each day he recorded and filmed a new piece live in the living room of his Reykjavík apartment with string-playing friends, and put it out free as a video and an MP3. His own site calls it his second seven-day project and the first with live video. The second day's piece was Near Light, which added electronics, with synths played by his mother and sister.

The week was collected in December 2011 as Living Room Songs, with a film of the sessions on the special edition. Tiny Mix Tapes placed it alongside Sigur Rós, Library Tapes and Jóhann Jóhannsson. An official video for Near Light by Lam Ho Tak followed in February 2012, and the song became a regular part of his concerts for more than a decade.

Winter and Broadchurch

In 2012 he scored Another Happy Day, made the Stare EP with Nils Frahm, and entered a partnership with Mercury Classics. Allt varð hljótt, from Found Songs, was used in The Hunger Games. For Now I Am Winter (February 2013) was his first album with vocals, sung by Arnór Dan of Agent Fresco, and his first with a full orchestra, arranged by Nico Muhly. Paste's Ryan Reed wrote that he could make boredom sound beautiful.

His score for the ITV drama Broadchurch won the BAFTA TV Craft Award for Best Original Music in 2014. The first Kiasmos album came out that year, and in 2015 he recorded The Chopin Project with the pianist Alice Sara Ott and Collaborative Works with Frahm. Island Songs (2016) moved the weekly idea outdoors: seven places in seven weeks, filmed by Baldvin Z.

Pianos that play themselves

re:member (Mercury KX, August 2018) was the first album built on STRATUS, a system of self-playing pianos he developed with Halldór Eldjárn and later released as a Spitfire Audio instrument. At an NPR Tiny Desk concert that July he joked that he had put all his money into making his pianos go bleep-bloop. some kind of peace followed in November 2020, with Bonobo, Josin and JFDR as guests. His main title for Defending Jacob was nominated for an Emmy in 2020, and Loom, with Bonobo, and The Bottom Line were both nominated at the 64th Grammys.

He co-founded the label Alda Music with Sölvi Blöndal of Quarashi in 2016 and launched OPIA Community in Berlin in 2023. Kiasmos released II in 2024, and in 2025 he issued A Dawning, made with the late Irish artist Eoin French, known as Talos. He married the singer Sandrayati in 2022, and since late 2025 has hosted Ultimate Calm on BBC Radio 3 Unwind.