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The team behind Iceland Airwaves has announced the return of streaming event Live from Reykjavïk in lieu of the brand’s flagship festival.
The festival was expected to take place in Iceland’s capital this November but was called off for a second consecutive year due to the pandemic.
Instead, organisers have announced the second edition of Live from Reykjavik which, this year, will be reduced from two days to one and will take place as a hybrid event.
Sixteen international and domestic acts including John Grant, Ásgeir, Laufey, GDRN and Daughters of Reykjavík will perform across four iconic Reykjavïk venues on Saturday 6 November.
Due to the current gathering and safety restrictions, fans can only purchase tickets to one venue
The venues – Iðnó, Gamla Bío, Gaukurinn and Frikirkjan – will host small live audiences but due to the current gathering and safety restrictions, fans can only purchase tickets to one location.
The global live stream, provided by NovaTV, will open at 20:00 GMT on the same day and remain open for 24 hours.
Tickets are available worldwide from Wednesday 20 October.
Iceland Airwaves will return to the capital from 2-5 November 2022.
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After a strict lockdown in March, and a huge effort to contain Covid with track-and-trace measures and widespread testing, it felt like Iceland and its live music scene was gearing up to return to normal for the second half of 2020.
Then the second wave hit, bringing in measures that rendered live shows next to impossible – strict curfews, distancing rules, and significant reductions on gatherings. While Iceland Airwaves, which was scheduled for 4 to 7 November, had been optimistic about going ahead in real life, we were forced to pivot quickly.
Thus, Live from Reykjavik was developed – a two-day virtual Iceland Airwaves. For this edition, the decision was to focus entirely on local talent and to use the moment to showcase Icelandic music to the world.
Given the situation this year, there was an unprecedented number of Icelandic acts “at home”. It was important for us to give this special edition a real Icelandic focus. The idea for the stream event was to combine some better-known names with some newer artists, or artists who had yet to enjoy significant exposure outside of Iceland. We’re spoilt for choice in Iceland; the musical talent in this country and the creative output is oversized in comparison to its population.
Iceland Airwaves has, for many years, worked to balance gender in its programming. Reaching the pledge in 2018 (and having worked to this brief before Keychange’s inception) meant that it felt entirely natural to bring the same approach to the digital space.
When it came to finding gender parity in the stream, it felt like an easy choice for us. The remit for Iceland Airwaves has always been talent first, not meeting quotas. We choose who we believe to be the best talent out there, and we believe as a festival there’s more than enough talent across the gender spectrum for us to make balanced choices.
Nanna from Of Monsters and Men and Emilíana Torrini have been some of Iceland’s biggest success stories. For bands working hard to break through internationally, we had so much strong and diverse talent to choose from: the dark synthwave of all-female trio Kælan Mikla, the jazz-nflected cool soul of GDRN, longtime Airwaves rockers Mammút, the sucker-punch delivery of rapper Cell7, and Bríet, who’s currently Iceland’s most popular radio artist.
The response from viewers to the performances and how they were captured was phenomenal
Many of these artists are award-winning performers at home, and leaders in their respective genres and on top of their game, so it’s no surprise that many of them are part of the Keychange programme.
The four core team members were also split evenly, gender wise. Over 50% of the team leaders from our stakeholders and sponsors were female. While the production and film crew was predominantly male, the chief producer/director on the film side was female.
As with any other year of our festival, gender equality is part of our identity and the Keychange gender pledge is an important marker of success for us. I would encourage all music organisations to get involved and to keep monitoring representation, so we’re all, as an industry, working towards wider progress and sustainability together – whatever your genre, sector or location.
For Live from Reykjavik, it was was important to select performers who had honed their live shows and that were willing to embark on this adventure with us, stepping up to the challenge of performing with no audience and being filmed in such an intimate way.
The artists were filmed in some of the venues and spaces we normally use for Iceland Airwaves, such as Gamla Bío, Iðnó and the Reykjavík Art Museum. We also went further afield with Bæjarbíó in Hafnarfjörður, and to a couple of recording studios. We had around 90,000 viewers, including around 12,000 from outside of Iceland.
As a boutique festival, Iceland Airwaves typically enjoys 4,000–5,000 international visitors per year, so we were very happy with this as a first step into streaming/broadcast. The response from viewers to the performances and how they were captured was phenomenal – we’ve learned so much from the event.
We know that while not everyone can attend Iceland Airwaves each year, many people are keen to stay in touch with the festival and the Icelandic music scene, and giving some people the option to view online creates more opportunities and excitement for all.
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The team behind Iceland Airwaves has announced a two-day streaming festival, Live from Reykjavík, taking place on 13–14 November.
The brand’s flagship festival was due to take place in Iceland’s capital this November but was postponed until next year due to the pandemic.
Instead, the festival will assemble some of the country’s most established artists including Of Monsters and Men, Ólafur Arnalds, Ásgeir, Daði Freyr and Júníus Meyvant, for performances in iconic Airwaves venues such as Iðnó, Gamla Bío and Art Museum Reykjavík.
“We wanted to find a way to shine a spotlight on the vast talent of the music scene here in Iceland, as well as support the larger industry and show some innovation,” says festival director Ísleifur Þórhallsson.
“To have all these artists in Iceland at the same time is a ‘lighting strikes once’ moment and we wanted to seize it”
“To have all these artists in Iceland at the same time is a ‘lighting strikes once’ moment, and we wanted to seize it with both hands.”
Performances will be broadcast domestically on TV, radio and online; streamed in the UK and Europe from 19:30 pm GMT, and then across optimised time zones on Nov 13 and 14.
Tickets range from £15 for a standalone show to £30 for a one-day pass and £40 for a two-day pass.
Iceland Airwaves has moved to 3–6 November 2021.
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