Ólafur Arnalds is an Icelandic musician who has been playing music since he was a child. He got into classical music because of his parents love for the genre, but sadly he was involved in a car accident later in his life that left his right hand unable to perform some of the intricate movements that are required to play the piano. Instead of letting this handicap get the best of him, he brainstormed and came up with a really inventive way to create the music that he heard in his head. He worked with a computer programer to create a software program called Stratus that controls self-playing, semi-generative pianos that accompany Olafur while he plays an electronic keyboard onstage, creating a cascade of complementary notes. It’s an incredible system that fuses the physicality of classical music with the ingenuity of electronic music. Olafur also composed the music for the hit British crime drama Broadchurch.
