Silfur is inspired by the relationship between music and time. Award-winning pianist/composer Dustin O’Halloran undertook an exciting musical journey into the past and recorded a delightful selection of his early piano solo pieces, some of which are also provided with new soulful string arrangements, in special places in Iceland with which he is close feels connected. For example in the old wooden Fríkirkjan Church in Reykjavík. Here he played his first Icelandic concert with Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hauschka when he visited the country for the first time. This closes the circle of time. He also adds two completely new compositions to his unmistakable, emotional piano pieces of timeless atmospheric beauty.

“As a composer,” says O’Halloran, “we keep track of time: that’s what music makes. But time is fluid; it does not preserve music. It is experienced anew and changes. I experience time in a different way: I connect with my younger self, but now – in the present – and through this I bring something into the music.” The title of the album – Silfur – is chosen after the Icelandic Silfurberg crystal – translated as Silberfels. Its unique property is to refract light twice – objects appear doubled. “It does with the light exactly what I feel at the time. It splits it into two parts, but at the same moment: the present and the past,” he notes.

In terms of sound, O’Halloran became part of Silfur on his musical expedition of sound engineer and sound magician Francesco Donadello (Ludovico Einaudi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Nils Frahm, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ólafur Arnalds) and Bergur Þórisson (manager of Du Björkar). Together they created a captivating album that brings Dustin O’Halloran’s atmospheric music to a level that can stand the test of time.

LP1

1. Opus 56
2. Opus 28 (feat. Siggi String Quartet)
3. Opus 44
4. Opus 18
5. Opus 17
6. Opus 55 (feat. Bryan Senti)
7. Opus 12
8. Fine

LP2

1. Opus 20
2. Opus 7
3. Opus 30
4. Opus 17 (String Quartet Version)*
5. Opus 21
6. Opus 37 (feat. Siggi String Quartet)
7. Constellation No. 2 (feat. Gyða Valtýsdóttir)