Reykjavík Grapevine - 09.01.2015, Qupperneq 45

Dark Music Days (Myrkir Músíkdagar, in
Icelandic) has been running since 1980,
beginning as a biannual event. “When the
festival began,” says artistic
director Kjartan Ólafsson,
sitting in the Harpa cafe,
“there was nothing much
happening in Reykjavík
from the end of November,
right through till March.
It was just a very dark sea-
son—much darker then
than now. The lights of the
city have probably made a
difference. And maybe this
building too; Harpa is certainly a beacon
in the dark.”
Kjartan took the reigns of the festival
when he became the chairman of the Soci-
ety of Icelandic Composers in 1989. At the
time, the festival—like many others across
Europe—was suffering from dwindling at-
tendance. Kjartan decided to try a new ap-
proach.
Young contemporaries
“We started putting an emphasis on Ice-
landic music,” he explains, “because as
well as this gap in the cultural calendar,
there was also the need for a new platform
for contemporary and experimental mu-
sic. So, instead of me leading the festival as
a traditional artistic director, we decided to
try to perform as many interesting pieces
as we could. This is my way of directing—
to have it open, let it breathe freely, and
keep these simple rules in place.”
This had an immediate effect, gal-
vanising the city’s more ambitious young
composers and musicians to come out of
the woodwork and start contacting Dark
Music Days about presenting their work.
“Of course, when they
asked, we said yes,” says
Kjartan, “and so the festival
naturally started to feature
more new work and first
performances. As a result,
it’s more diverse now than
ever before. All that started
with the inclusion of young
people—both in the audi-
ence, and as composers and
performers. There were six
or seven concerts and for perhaps 500 peo-
ple. Today, we have over twenty concerts
and around 3,500 people coming along.”
With the country under deep snow
and deeper darkness, it seems to follow
that most of the audience at this time of
year would be local. But winter tourism is
on the rise, and the niche that Dark Music
Days is carving out is piquing the interest
of the outside world in its own right. “We
have an increasing number people from
both Europe and America coming along,”
says Kjartan, “including the artistic direc-
tors of other events. The festival has grown
a very strong identity over the years—it’s
around 70-80% Icelandic music, much of
which has not been performed before. So if
you come to this festival you can see some-
thing new, and specific to Iceland alone.
We don’t play contemporary music that’s
50 years old—the music at Dark Music
days represents the time we are living in
now.”
New School thinking
Kjartan is also uniquely positioned to see
upcoming talents via his work as a profes-
sor of composition at the Icelandic Acade-
my of the Arts, where he has taught for nine
years. “I’m seeing the same thing there,”
he says. “When the curriculum opens up
and becomes more flexible, the students
immediately start to find a more personal
pathway, and then transition towards the
festival. It’s an excellent platform to see
their work coming to life. The younger
ones get involved with the festival—they
join the society, and the board—they are
the ones that will take over, after all, when
we’re all in the old people’s home.”
Dark Music Days comes at a time of the
year when Reykjavík’s many cultural cre-
ators and organisers are hibernating, and
offers them a chance to emerge for a while.
“It’s a time for writing books and com-
posing, when you are sitting in a smaller
world, and reading, thinking, creating,”
says Kjartan. “People come out from that
bubble, and into the festival, for an inter-
esting and valuable conversation about
culture. So Dark Music Days has that qual-
ity of meeting and exchange too.”
And darkness itself has long been
a muse for artists, representing things
glimpsed or unknown. “Darkness holds
things on the edge of vision,” Kjartan fin-
ishes. “In the sagas, darkness held an excit-
ing hidden world. Perhaps that’s like music
itself—it can never tell you exactly what it
means, but it can give you an idea.”
"Darkness holds things
on the edge of vision. In
the sagas, the darkness
held a hidden, exciting
world. Perhaps that’s like
music itself—it can never
tell you exactly what it
means, but it can give
you a clue or an idea."
Travel the
world of music
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MUSIC
CONCERTS & NIGHTLIFE
A survival guide for the darkest months
Music For Dark Days
As Reykjavík society withdraws from the bleak northern
winter into a post-Christmas domestic bubble, the city’s
cultural calendar looks uncharacteristically bare. But fear
not, because for four days in January, there’s an event
housed in the warm and airy confines of Harpa, one that
uses the darkness to shine the spotlight on the intriguing
world of Iceland’s contemporary and experimental com-
posers.
Words John Rogers
Photo Nanna Dís
darkmusicdays.isThe festival runs January
29 - February 1
Dark Music Days