Polar Gabríel Ólafs

• 1 Entrance 01:50
• 2 Whale Overture 04:13
• 3 The Waves 04:39
• 4 Túndra 02:24
• 5 The Winds 04:01
• 6 The Monolith 04:33
• 7 Whale Variation 02:36
• 8 Vortex 03:53
• 9 Ocean Sonata For Harp 01:59
• 10 Elegy 03:35
• 11 The True Meaning Of Forever 02:51
• 12 Coda 02:54
• Total Runtime 39:28

Info for Polar

Icelandic composer Gabríel Ólafs’ new album Polar is a work of speculative fiction in musical form. Polar provides the soundtrack to a frozen world. A world of towering mountain ranges, desolate tundra, forbidding oceans, and the monolithic remnants of a lost civilization.

Imagine a planet covered in ice, snow, and tundra, its mountains so vast they are visible from space. Then imagine traveling alone around its incredible landscape. You hear the haunting song of whales but find no human life. Apart from that are the traces of a mysterious lost civilization, which has left behind only frozen monolithic pyramids. This is the world of Polar.

Discovering the right palette of sounds to evoke Polar’s icy world was key. Ólafs knew the Reykjavík Orkestra, which he co-founded several years ago, and conductor Viktor Orri Árnason were the right musicians for the job.

“They are able to capture a very cold but still emotional, iconic Icelandic string sound, which I wanted,” says Ólafs. “No one does it better than them.” To this, he’s added the king of instruments: the organ. “It very much captures this futuristic but also very ancient sound, which I think is very Polar.”

Ólafs uses the distinctive element of Whalesong throughout the album, in part because of his childhood fascination with the water-loving mammal often seen on the frozen Icelandic shores. The young composer, however, did not want to sample actual whale calls, and instead used the sounds of various instruments, including the cello, lap steel, and pedal steel guitars.

For this record, Ólafs wanted to think beyond the music to create a unique multimedia experience. Polar was shaped by his love and respect for “beautiful, complex” video monoliths – the mysterious pyramids left by a lost civilization – that Ólafs had imagined.

“I wanted to make a classical piece from that, and I melded it with my interest in video games as an art form. These days video games have beautiful artwork and complex stories. Music is created for a specific zone within a game. It creates the mood and you’re encapsulated by a sound world.”

By exploring what would happen if that principle was applied to classical music, Ólafs discovered a sound that touched on the meditation, beauty, and sadness of life and death.

Gabríel Ólafs ear for melodic musical storytelling and holistic creative vision set him apart as a true visionary of postmodern classical music. Polar is one of Ólafs most ambitious projects to date, creating a fantastical world where the sky’s the limit and new horizons are sure to be found.

Gabríel Ólafs, piano
Reykjavík Orkestra
Viktor Orri Árnason, conductor

No biography found.

Booklet for Polar