Team

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, the project’s Principal Investigator, is an Icelandic musicologist and holds a PhD in historical musicology from Harvard University. His primary area of interest is the history of Icelandic music from the Middle Ages to the present, and he is the author of several books on Icelandic music, including Jón Leifs and the Musical Invention of Iceland (Indiana University Press, 2019), which was listed as one of that year’s best books on music by Alex Ross of The New Yorker. His most recent book is Music at World’s End: Three Exiled Musicians from Nazi Germany and Austria and Their Contribution to Music in Iceland (SUNY Press, 2025). Its Icelandic version was nominated for the Icelandic Book Award in 2024.

Ingólfsson is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed articles, as well as 18 entries in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He has contributed to volumes such as Mirrors of Virtue (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2017), The Nature of Nordic Music (Routledge, 2019), and Sounds Icelandic (Equinox, 2019), which he co-edited. He is also the co-editor of The Songbook of Rev. Ólafur Jónsson, an edition of 51 songs and poems by an Icelandic priest in the early seventeenth century (Árni Magnússon Institute, 2024).

Praised as “a terrific lecturer” by American Record Guide, Ingólfsson has given lectures and pre-concert talks throughout the world, including at conferences in Europe, Asia, and the United States. He was a special guest speaker at the LA Philharmonic’s Reykjavík Festival in 2017, an Erasmus guest lecturer at the Vienna Conservatory of Music, and has held visiting fellowships at Oxford University, Harvard, and Yale.

Árni Heimir Ingólfsson is a three-time nominee for the Icelandic Book Award (academic/non-fiction). He is also a two-time winner of the Icelandic Music Award, for his CD recordings (with the Carmina Chamber Choir, which he founded) of music from Icelandic manuscripts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In January 2025, his recordings and research were featured in an hour-long episode of The Early Music Show on BBC Radio 3. As a pianist and harpsichordist, he has recorded several CDs and appeared in concert in Iceland, England, Germany, Italy, Canada, and the United States.

Research Assistants

Helgi Rafn Ingvarsson

Dr. Helgi Rafn Ingvarsson is an Icelandic composer with a doctorate in composition from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he was a Composition Fellow. In 2009–2024 he has written six essays and scholarly articles on music, which have been published in journals such as Þræðir, the journal of the Music Department of the Iceland University of the Arts. He has held many lectures and workshops about his compositions and research, for example in England, Ireland, Sweden, and Iceland. Helgi has composed works for the Caput Ensemble, the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, Chroma Ensemble (UK), the Kordía Choir, Jökla Ensemble, The Composer‘s Ensemble (UK), Concorde Ensemle, Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble, and many smaller ensembles, instrumentalists, and singers.

Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir

Tinna Þorsteinsdóttir, pianist, has been active in the field of contemporary music and has premiered multiple piano works written for her over the years, including six solo concertos. She has given numerous solo recitals and masterclasses in Europe, the United States and Asia with an emphasis on contemporary music. Tinna completed her Diploma degree at the Hochscule für Musik in Münster, Germany, with her final thesis on Icelandic piano concertos, and later a Graduate Diploma at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston in piano performance. She received the DV Cultural Award for music in 2013 and was the Municipal Artist of Garðabær in 2025.

Tui Hirv

Tui Hirv, born in Tallinn in 1984, is an Estonian singer and musicologist. She holds a BA in singing and MA in musicology from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. In Estonia, Hirv was much in demand in the scene of choir and contemporary music. She sang with Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and Vox Clamantis, both groups that shaped the sound attributed to Arvo Pärt’s music. In 2013 Hirv relocated to Iceland. While mostly involved in education, she has since collaborated with contemporary music ensembles, taught music history at Iceland University of the Arts, sat in the jury of Iceland Music Awards and archived the works of Atli Heimir Sveinsson, the local pioneer of modernism in music.