DUSTIN O’HALLORAN UNVEILS NEW ALBUM SILFUR

June 11, 2021—Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning U.S. composer and pianist Dustin O’Halloran shares his new album Silfur today via Deutsche Grammophon; stream/share HERE. Also out this afternoon at 1pm ET is a video for standout track “Constellation No. 2,” featuring cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir and shot by Anna Maggý at the Steinasafn Auðuns stone collection in Djúpivogur, near Iceland’s eastern fjords; watch/share HERE.

Silfur explores the shifting perspective of music through time and place with reimaginings of thirteen earlier works, alongside two new compositions: “Constellation No. 2” and “Opus 56.” “There was a feeling of travelling back in time to my past while experiencing the music in new ways in the present,” says O’Halloran. “It’s very special that we can capture time in this way. And I think that’s almost what music is: it’s capturing time.”

“‘Constellation No. 2’ closes an album that’s a journey through my past, and it’s also the newest composition,” O’Halloran observes. “I’ve worked a lot with Gyða in the past and it’s always a pleasure to collaborate with her. This piece was co-written with her in Berlin, the city I called home for ten years, and it is in a way a farewell to those beautiful times. It was the end of a period and also a new beginning. I wanted to find something that could feel universal and open.”

O’Halloran, who divides his time between Reykjavík and Los Angeles, recorded Silfur in Iceland in collaboration with American composer and multi-instrumentalist Bryan Senti, Icelandic cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir and the Siggi String Quartet. Unable to return to California because of the lockdown, he spent the imposed time of isolation in a state of introspection and stillness, writing new material and revisiting works from four solo albums and refining them with a renewed sense of self. He recorded the album with Berlin-based sound engineer Francesco Donadello and Icelandic musician Bergur Þórisson.

Raised between Hawaii and Los Angeles, O’Halloran began to teach himself piano at seven years old. His early solo albums, two volumes of Piano Solos (2004, 2006), were followed by Vorleben in 2010 and Lumiere in 2011. Over the past decade, O’Halloran’s acclaimed ambient music collaboration with Adam Wiltzie, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, has delivered four albums, two soundtracks and Atomos, the latter for Wayne McGregor’s dance company. O’Halloran has reached new audiences and gained worldwide acclaim for his music for film and television.