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Ólafur Arnalds at the Royal Albert Hall

Continuing the music theme and fresh from GNUF, next stop the Royal Albert Hall! What a way to experience my first RAH event than with Ólafur Arnalds! 

Just going in to the building, there was an incredible atmosphere. Stopped off at the Berry Bros & Rudd bar en route to our seats. 

A short support set by composer/percussionist Manu Delago, who was very impressive. Initially I thought he was playing some variant of steel drums, but in fact it was an array of Hang, which are great! A really lush, warm sound.

Ólafur's mix of strings, piano with multimedia felt at home in the 'orchestral' setting of the Hall (nearly Proms season!), in particular given that the set was all instrumental pieces. It was interesting to see the sheer variety of people who all have being an Ólafur Arnalds fan in common.  I find that a lot of Ólafur's magic is in the silences and spaces in between notes, and a few times there were audience interruptions - but also, a lot of times when the whole hall was completely still and silent. The set was a mixture of new new songs (so new only re:member is currently available - streaming and YouTube), along with older and newer recorded material. All equally brilliant. A lot of the new technology on set involved algorithms matching the lighting setup with the songs. The atmosphere was both big and intimate, although a different intimacy from that of his 2013 Barbican show.



Even though it was all brilliant, one of the best of the best bits was the final encore -  Ólafur played Lag Fyrir Ömmu alone on stage with his band playing the string parts offstage almost as an echo. Just gorgeous.
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