Watch: Olafur Arnalds' Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit -- stripped-down sets, an intimate setting -- just a different space.

Using an Edison "Fireside" cylinder phonograph and his own Stratus music software, Olafur Arnalds' Tiny Desk (home) concert brings the past and the future into a heartfelt performance. Filmed in his tree-lined studio in Reykjavik, Iceland (the former studio of Sigur Ros), Olafur and his string quartet perform three songs from my personal No. 1 album of 2020, some kind of peace. The pensive set opens with an older tune, "Happiness Does Not Wait," with Olafur Arnalds seated at a short upright piano known as a Danish 'pianette.'

The delicate performance is the perfect window into this Icelandic composer's profound and passionate music. The Edison wax cylinder that we hear on "Woven Song" is a traditional Amazonian healing song sung by the late shaman Herlinda Agustin Fernandez.

Look closely at the piano toward the back of the studio during the tune "Spiral," and you'll see a piano playing seemingly without a performer. That piano is reacting to Olafur Arnald's real-time performance using algorithms he and his coder friend, Halldor Eldjarn, developed. He used it extensively when he came and performed his Tiny Desk concert at NPR in 2018. Olafur Arnalds is a gentle subversive of 21st century music, and I'm so grateful to be able to present his enchanting sounds.

SET LIST

• "Happiness Does Not Wait"
• "Woven Song"
• "Spiral"
• "We Contain Multitudes"

MUSICIANS

• Olafur Arnalds: piano
• Geirtrueur Asa Guejonsdottir: violin
• Sigrun Hareardottir: violin
• Karl James Pestka: violin
• Unnur Jonsdottir: cello

CREDITS

• Audio: Olafur Arnalds, Hafsteinn Trainsson
• Video: Blair Alexander

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Bob Boilen
• Video Producer: Morgan Noelle Smith
• Audio Mastering: Josh Rogosin
• Associate Producer: Bobby Carter
• Tiny Production Team: Kara Frame, Maia Stern
• Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey
• Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann