We are honored and excited to be representing Iceland at the Nordic Church Music Symposium in 26-29.8.2021 in Helsinki, Finland. We will perform our own full length concert on Friday the 27th at 19:30 and participate in the grand mass on sunday!
Intimate moment at the pretty Hallgrímskirkja church in Saurbær, Hvalfjörður, Iceland.
We won’t make an attempt at translating the site name “Saurbær” (!), but it was home to 17th century poet and minister Hallgrímur Pétursson, who was famous for his beautiful Passion Hymns. A pleasure to perform at the site’s summer concert series and a warm (slightly tanned) crowd.
Relieved to be playing in front of a live crowd again after a 15 month concert hiatus, June 3rd at the Harpa Concert Hall.
It was truly wonderful to perform at the Harpa Concert Hall again after a long break from live performance due to Covid 19. We had a stage full of instruments and performed some of our new material that we have been working on during the pandemic, our variations and original compositions of traditional Icelandic material. What a crowd (albeit masked)!
UMBRA was commissioned to compose the official Christmas song of the National Public Radio in Iceland, a yearly tradition that began in 1987, where a new piece of christmas music by a prominent Icelandic composer/songwriter is premiered before the 12 o’clock news on Christmas Eve. The song is called “Himnablessun” (Heaven’s blessing) and the music is set to a poem by our good friend and writer Aðalsteinn Ásberg Sigurðsson. The song was recorded in Guðríðarkirkja by the National Radio’s Georg Magnússon.
Merry Christmas!
We collaborated with our good friends Línus Orri and Voces Thules to perform a collaborative version of an old Icelandic Yule song, Hátíð fer að höndum ein (A high time draws near).
It's a part of the IsFolk project of bringing forth Icelandic folk songs and showing the many beautiful aspects of our sometimes melancholic and sparse heritage. IsFolk is a newly founded association of artists and scholars in the field of folk music in Iceland.
Sound mixing by Stefán Örn Gunnlaugsson, video Editing by Guðmundur Atli Pétursson. Produced by IsFolk in 2020.