Björk & Hamrahlíð Choir announce live album recorded at Harpa Concert Hall

Björk & Hamrahlíð Choir will release Björk Orkestral with the Hamrahlíð Choir, a live recording of her 2021 concert with the Icelandic choir, on November 27. The set is out on LP, CD, Blu-ray, and DVD, and is available to pre-order now.

The concert was recorded on October 24, 2021, at Reykjavík’s Harpa Concert Hall. It was one of four Orkestral shows Björk staged there that year, a run that swapped the elaborate staging of her recent tours for stripped-back arrangements. More than 100 Icelandic musicians played across the series, and proceeds went to Kvennaathvarfið, a women’s shelter in Reykjavík.

This night paired Björk with Iceland's Hamrahlíð Choir, conducted by founder Þorgerður Ingólfsdóttir, as they performed Medúlla, her 2004 album recorded almost entirely from the human voice, alongside songs originally written for other ensembles and instruments. Those include “Hidden Place” from Vespertine, “Cosmogony” from Biophilia, “Unravel” from Homogenic, and “New World” from Selmasongs.

Björk is a former member of the Hamrahlíð College Choir, the youth program Ingólfsdóttir founded in 1967. The choir sang on “Body Memory” from 2017’s Utopia, toured with her Cornucopia production starting at New York’s The Shed in 2019, and most recently contributed to Sorrowful Soil, part of her installation at the National Gallery of Iceland.

Björk said the extended rehearsals the pandemic allowed let her work out how to balance voices and electronics live, something she said usually comes easier in the studio. “for me it is a philosophical matter, how nature and technology can coexist amicably,” she wrote. She added that the shows let her “tweak older songs that i felt i hadn’t acquired experience yet how to perform live.”

“Pleasure Is All Mine” from Medúlla
“Hidden Place” from Vespertine
“Cosmogony” from Biophilia
“Sonnets / Unrealities XI” from Medúlla
“Unravel” from Homogenic
“Vertebræ by Vertebræ” from Volta
“Who Is It” from Medúlla
“Mouth’s Cradle” from Medúlla
“Where Is the Line”from Medúlla
“New World” from Selmasongs