About Skálholt Summer Concert

Skálholt Summer Concerts is Iceland’s oldest summer music festival, founded in 1975 by harpsichordist Helga Ingólfsdóttir (1942-2009). During the first years of the festival, the focus was mostly on baroque music, but since 1978 new compositions have been premiered every year. At the moment the main emphasis of Skálholt Summer Concerts is on contemporary music and early music performed on period instruments. Both composers and performers are residents for a period of time for the festival events. The concerts are held in Skálholt Church which was built in the nineteen-sixties, at the oldest bishopric in Iceland dating from 1056.

The festival has access to convenient accommodation facilities for musicians, who in most cases stay there for a week at a time enjoying their work in good rehearsal rooms. Rehearsals also take place in the Church. Recently Skálholt Church received a generous donation from the legendary Dutch violinist Jaap Schröder who unfortunatley past away in 2020, namely his collection of scores and books on Music and other Art, thereby commencing the foundation of a Music Library in Skálholt. Jaap Shröder was a dear friend of The Skálholt Summer Concerts and performed there annually for many years.

At Skálholt Summer Concerts you can experience public concerts, artist talks, family concerts and services the first two weeks in July. Also, a big part of the musical compositions commissioned over the years for the festival have become standard repertoire and have been performed internationally.

Artistic directors and managers

Benedict Kristjansson

Benedikt Kristjánsson was born in 1987 in Húsavík.
He began singing studies at the age of 16 at the Reykjavík Singing School with Sibylle Köll.
and then Margréti Bóasdóttir. While studying, he sang in the Hamrahlíð High School Choir.
and the Hamrahlíða Choir under the direction of Þorgerður Ingólfsdóttir.
Benedikt completed his advanced degree from the Reykjavík School of Music in the spring of 2007, where he
Margrét Bóasdóttir was his teacher.
He then studied at the "Hanns Eisler" Conservatory in Berlin.
His main teacher there was Prof. Scot Weir. He graduated from there in 2015.
He has attended master classes with Peter Schreier, Christa Ludwig, Elly Ameling, Robert Holl, Andreas Schmidt, Thomas Quasthoff and Helmut Deutsch.

Benedikt won 1st prize at the International Bach Singing Competition in Greifswald in June 2011 and also the Audience Award. He won the Audience Award at the International Bach Competition in Leipzig in the summer of 2012, received a grant from the Jean Pierre Jaquillat Foundation,
and was chosen as the Brightest Hope in Classical and Contemporary Music
at the Icelandic Music Awards.
In 2016 he was chosen as Singer of the Year in Classical and Contemporary Music.
at the Icelandic Music Awards.
In 2019, he received the OPUS Klassik Award for "the most innovative concert of the year".
There he performed Bach's St. John Passion in an unusual production, accompanied by harpsichord and organ players, and percussionists.
That same year, his first solo album, "Drang in die Ferne", was released, and it combines songs by Franz Schubert and Icelandic folk songs sung without accompaniment.
The album received critical acclaim in Germany and Iceland, and was also nominated for album of the year at ICMA, OPUS Klassik and the 2020 Icelandic Music Awards. In 2020, he received his third award at the Icelandic Music Awards, as singer of the year in classical and contemporary music. That year, he also performed the "extraordinary" St. John Passion in an empty Thomaskirche in Leipzig at Bach's grave on Good Friday. The event was immensely popular and hundreds of thousands watched electronically around the world. The event was also streamed on MDR and ARTE Concert.

He is a frequent guest at prestigious music festivals, such as Bachfest Leipzig, Musikfest Stuttgart, Händelfestspiele Halle and Oude Muziek Festival Utrecht.

Angela Árnadóttir was born in Reykjavík in 1988. She studied at Austurbæjarskóli alongside the Icelandic School of Dance. After primary school she studied art at the Fjölbraut School in Breiðholt but continued to specialise in dance alongside her visual arts studies. Her main teachers at the Fjölbraut were: Halldóra Gísladóttir and Ingiberg Magnússon. She graduated from there in 2010. Alongside her secondary school studies, Angela took a degree from the Icelandic School of Dance in classical dance and went abroad to the Royal Danish Ballet School in Copenhagen.
Angela began her studies at the “Akademie für Malerei in Berlin” with Prof. Ute Wöllmann and also studied both German and German cultural history within the Department of Foreign Languages at the “Freie universität in Berlin”.
In 2019, Angela held group exhibitions of her paintings in Wiesbaden, Toulouse, Konstanz, Copenhagen, and Luxembourg.
In parallel with teaching at Grundaskóli, Angela completed a Master of Arts degree from the University of Iceland in art education.
Angela has set up "workshops" at art museums in Reykjavík, including the workshop "Geometric Halloween Halls" which was set up by the University to great acclaim at the Gerðarsafn in Kópavogur. And the workshop "Ode to Tomatoes" which also received great praise and was set up in the University's art house in Skipholt under the banner of the Reykjavík Children's Culture Festival.
In 2023, (between June 10th and July 30th) Angela will be holding a solo exhibition at Akranes Lighthouse.

Project Manager for the Summer Concerts' Children's Program

Angela Árnadóttir

Board

Elísabet Indra Ragnarsdóttir
Elín Gunnlaugsdóttir
Halldór Bjarki Arnarsson