Event info

Early bird festival pass kr. 7.500 - Please note there is a limited amount of tickets available!
Full festival pass price is kr. 9.000.

Cycle Music and Art Festival will take place for the first time this summer between 13 and 16 August in Kópavogur, Iceland. The festival will exhibit interdisciplinary works from pioneering artists in the fields of new music, performance art, visual arts, sound art and architecture with music as a central focus. The festival is intended to be an international platform for artists, composers, musicians and audience to engage in discourse, exchange ideas and to advance interdisciplinary art collaborations.

Accomplished contemporary artists will exhibit their work at the festival such as composer Simon Steen-Andersen, the winner of the Nordic Council Music Prize 2014, sound artist Christina Kubisch, performance artist and composer Jennifer Walshe, South Iceland Chamber Choir, Ensemble Adapter, sound and video artist Sigurdur Gudjónsson and the performance visual arts trio The Icelandic Love Corporation.

The festival programme comprises performances, art exhibitions, artkino, workshops and symposiums.

You can buy single tickets to the following shows

Opening concert for Cycle Music and Art Festival - Spiegeltunnel (Mirror Tunnel)
Skark Ensemble - Ólafur Elíasson - Páll Ragnar Pálsson
August 13th
Time: 8pm
Location:Parking Garage (lower Level), Hábraut 2, The Iceland Music Museum, Kópavogur
Composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson builds on Ólafur Elíasson’s mirror sculpture of the same title, which consists of three free standing round mirrors which form a tunnel. Depending on from where the audience looks into the tunnel, their perception of themselves and their surroundings changes. The music converses with the sculpture since musical objects mirror each other and move between the instrumentalists within the space. During the performance the members of Skark Ensemble will be spread around the space, inviting the audience to move around and to explore how their visual and auditory perception changes, as they move among the instrumentalists in and around the mirror tunnel.

The Total Mountain - Jennifer Walshe
August 13th
Time: 10pm
Location: Salurinn Music Hall, Kópavogur
The Total Mountain, a work for voice and film was a commission from SWR and premiered in 2014. Featuring in a programme of works which focus on the interstices of language, words and music, The Total Mountain, involves a film produced by the composer alongside live electronics, voices and instruments.

N.I.C.O. & Skark - Unknown
August 14th
Time: 10pm
Location: Kópavogshæli Asylum
An interesting collaboration between the NEW IDEAS CHAMBER ORCHESTRA and the SKARK QUARTET. A collaboration between two cultures - Lithuania and Iceland. The project took place at the Kintai Music Festival, Lithuania in July before it travels to Iceland.

Surrounded by Strangers - The South Icelandic Chamber Choir
August 15th
Time: 5pm
Location: Gerðarsafn - Kópavogur Art Museum
The South Iceland Chamber Choir comprises of both professional and amateur musicians from the south of Iceland. It was founded in 1997 by Hilmar Örn Agnarsson, who has been its conductor from the outset. The choir has a repertoire of both sacred and secular music from all periods, which it has performed widely. The choir has collaborated with and premiered works by many outstanding Icelandic composers, whose musical backgrounds and works range from pop and rock to classical and the choir has released four CDs. South Iceland Chamber Choir perform at Cycle Music and Art Festival as part of Moving Classics - European Network for New Music supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Ensemble Adapter
August 15th
Time: 8pm
Location: Salurinn Music Hall, Kópavogur
Ensemble Adapter is a German-Icelandic ensemble for contemporary music based in Berlin. The core of the group consists of a quartet with flute, clarinet, harp and percussion. Together with steady guest instrumentalists this core grows into chamber music settings with up to ten players. On international concert tours and in the studio Adapter plays world premieres and other selected works of the recent past. The ensemble also produces and co-produces larger interdisciplinary projects – and is interested in exploring and testing the limits of trans-medial approaches in various settings.

Pinquins - «36.000 Years Alongside Baubo»
August 15th
Time: 10pm
Location: Molinn Community Center, Hábraut 2, Kópavogur
The piece «36.000 years alongside Baubo» by composer Brice Catherin was composed for the percussion trio Pinquins as part of the Moving Classics Project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and will premier at the Cycle. The piece is written for three percussionists and twenty-one audience members. Members of the audience will be offered the exciting opportunity to actively participate in the composition of the piece. Every single performance will be a unique realization of a collaboration between composer, musicians and the audience.

For the world premiere of Brice Catherin’s piece «36.000 years alongside Baubo», the audience is welcome to suggests texts to be read by the players during the performance. Send your favourite poem, short story, excerpt from a novel etc to post@pinquins.no - and you might hear it as a part of Pinquins’s concert Saturday 15th of August.

For an exhaustive list of all artists and the programme please visit our homepage: cycle.is