Björk’s Show Of Plenty

Cornucopia is a wild ride through sound, vision and all things Björk

Some artists push boundaries. Others dissolve them entirely.

For Björk Guðmundsdóttir, a concert is never just a concert, an album is never just an album. Her latest tour? Elaborated to such detail and complexity (think more than 400-kilo organ pipes only), is likely already part of music history. Björk celebrates the end of the Cornucopia tour and almost a decade of her life, with an art book and now a full-on concert film.

As the credits roll and the screening room of Smárabíó won’t stop applauding, Björk stands up to wave shyly and sits down again. No big speeches, no red carpet. She’s done it and now she’ll do something else.

Photographer: Viðar Logi; Set Designer: Andrew Lim Clarkson; Makeup Artist: Daniel Sallstrom; Hair Stylist: Ali Pirzadeh; Manicure: Texto Dallas; Styling: Edda Guðmundsdóttir

Cornucopia, the film, is the grand finale of the artist’s 45-city tour, captured in a single night in Lisbon. It’s the realisation of her vision to “take 21st-century VR into a 19th-century theatre.” A wildly ambitious, multi-sensory environmental statement, part-concert, part-theatre, it’s a mind-melting visual feast.

So, when my interview with Björk gets cancelled due to scheduling conflicts, I’m naturally bummed. But then I think — even Björk needs a team. I call up two of her closest collaborators: James Merry and Bergur Þórisson.

Full throttle

“Weirdly enough, Cornucopia pretty much stuck to its original intention. Often, that’s not the case but it really kind of did,” says James, Björk’s Co-Creative Director of Visuals, through a screen from his snowed-in cabin in the outskirts of Reykjavík. “I think by the end of the tour, that was one thing I was really proud of. When I was watching it four years into the tour, I was often thinking, ‘Oh, wow, we actually managed to make what Björk was wanting to make at the start.’”

“The amazing thing about working with Björk is that she has ideas that many people would say are crazy or impossible, but she is always right.”

After her 2015 Vulnicura album in VR, followed by a VR exhibition, what Björk wanted was to make something more accessible and “to take it out of the headset and into a much more kind of physical space where people could actually sit in a very traditional theatre space, but have this feeling that you’re surrounded by mad digital visuals,” James explains. “We did actually keep to that initial concept.”

Born from Björk’s album Utopia and growing to embrace her next, Fossora, the tour lasted five years and involved a massive amount of technical preparation: bespoke instruments, a 360-degree sound system, layers of translucent screens that opened and shut, a reverb chamber and, at one point, a 50-piece choir. As I attend the Icelandic premiere I can’t shake the thought that the stage of Cornucopia reminds me of a living organism, with the lower part of the it looking like fungi-shaped platforms — definitely Björk’s idea — the screens blooming with impeccable projections, each intricately thought through for every single song. Everything feels tactile, alive.

For the film, directed by Ísold Uggadóttir, the team aimed to translate the concert’s immersive, multidimensional experience to the screen. The stage’s elaborate design help to ease this transition naturally, James explains, “Every night we were going through all the photos from each show to put online for the fans and it became really apparent to me, at least, that all you have to do is point a camera at the stage, and it just looks amazing because you have all this crazy visual content. Often it looks like you’ve spent three weeks doing CGI on the photo, but it’s just how the stage looked,” he says.

Visual chaos

James was involved in shaping Cornucopia’s visuals from the very beginning, ensuring they aligned with Björk’s vision all the way through to the final tour date. “My role was to be the eyes on all the visuals that were being projected,” he explains. While the initial bulk of the visuals came from digital artist Tobias Gremmler, James helped adapt and expand them as the show evolved — especially when Björk began incorporating songs from Fossora. He curated existing content, like music videos, reworking them to fit the show’s setup.

Photo by James Merry

After the Lisbon show was filmed, he spent hours in the editing suite alongside Björk, fine-tuning every detail with the director and editor to bring the final vision to life. And, of course, James, best known for crafting Björk’s iconic masks, continued that work for Cornucopia. “At the start of the tour, I was making masks for Björk to wear, but then also an individual mask for each of the flute players, and then I was also making masks for the choir. There ended up being more masks than I’ve ever made before,” James recalls. “I was often running around like my hair was on fire — fitting masks on Björk, then onto the flute players, then running into the next room and doing the choir, and then running out into the audience to watch the visuals.”

Despite the frantic pace, he enjoys working across different elements, knowing the end result will be worth it. “The visuals and the music were so well integrated,” he says. “A strength of Björk that I think most people have caught onto by now, is that she really puts a lot of thought and emotion into marrying the two.”

Chasing the vision

Bergur Þórisson, recording and mixing engineer, and Björk’s musical director, agrees that Cornucopia exists somewhere between “theatre, opera and concert.”

Bergur Þórisson on stage of Cornucopia

His day-to-day role revolves around bringing Björk’s musical vision to life. For Bergur, the inception of Cornucopia began during the making of the Utopia album, when Björk asked him to find 12 female flute players in Iceland — a request that initially gave him cold chills. The final decision was to take seven of them on tour, but Björk had one more challenge in mind. “She asked, ‘Do you think they would be up for learning all the music by heart and dancing while playing?’ I was like, ‘Oh, geez, these are flute players that have studied in university to play in orchestras,” Bergur laughs. “But they were all super for it.” And that’s how Cornucopia added what is now known as the world’s first-ever choreographed flute section.

The flute septet worked with ​​choreographer Margrét Bjarnadóttir to learn how to dance, using the restrictions of their movements, dressed in glowing outfits and with masks courtesy of James into a powerful synchronised flower-like dance. For Bergur, the feat that was bringing Cornucopia to life was only starting.

For the premiere of Cornucopia at The Shed in New York, Björk flew in 50 members of the legendary Hamrahlíð Choir a month ahead of the show for rehearsals. Since it was the middle of the school semester, some choir members had to take exams at the embassy in the dead of night, while others chose to drop out of the semester to be part of the project, Bergur recalls. Later, for the European leg of the tour, the choir was shrunk to 24 members. In places like Mexico, Japan and Australia, Björk sought to collaborate with local choirs, and Bergur’s task was to work alongside them, often navigating cultural and language barriers.

“I used to be in the Hamrahlíð choir myself for many years, and I know most of the people there, including the conductor, Þorgerður. My father was in the choir, and Björk herself was in the choir,” Bergur says, when I ask about working with an interpreter in Japan. “We’re really familiar with their methods and how Icelandic people experience music and think about music, and then going to places like Mexico or Japan, it was just so completely different the way they interpret rhythm — how they think about it compared to us,” he says.

On top of all that, Bergur plays keyboards, trombone, bass clarinet, magnetic harp and electronics on stage in Cornucopia.

Circle flute? Bring it on

The mad visuals of Cornucopia are complemented by a treasure chest of bespoke instruments. From massive seven-metre organ pipes custom-made by Iceland’s only organ builder Björgvin Tómasson coming down from the ceiling to a circle flute played by four musicians while Björk is standing literally inside of it, and a space-shuttle looking reverb chamber that amplifies Björk’s voice in an almost otherworldly way.

“The circle flute is amazing. Originally, it’s an art piece, which just happens to be a musical instrument,” says Bergur. “We were just looking for ideas, and I think one of the flute players pointed this out to us [they’re involved in the exhibition premiere], and Björk loved it, and so we decided to borrow it from the artists and use it. There was also the segulharpa — a magnetic harp created by Úlfur Hansson. “It’s a quiet instrument, and in a setting like this, where you’re playing for 15,000 people or so, everything is just so loud. It gets a little bit tricky,” Bergur admits.

Cornucopia’s percussionist, Manu Delago, also navigates a number of quirky-looking instruments. Take, for example, the aluphone, made of hand-moulded aluminium bells, or the water drums that, according to Bergur, were a nightmare for the stage crew — thanks to splashing water near cords and equipment. “It’s not manufactured drums, it’s literally dried pumpkins cut in half and floating on the water, and he’s just playing them,” Bergur says.

“It’s an art piece, which just happens to be a musical instrument.”

The reverb chamber — built specifically for the show — is Björk’s personal sound cocoon where she retreats mid-show to sing with an eerie, cathedral-like resonance. Bergur explains, “It’s sort of the idea that she would go into a chapel, where you almost just want to start singing because the reverberation is so beautiful,” he says. Though many doubted it could be done, with the help of a Danish acoustics design company, Björk’s team once again proved that everything is possible. In Björk’s words, “this reverb chamber revealed an aesthetic inspired by sound.”

New audio frontier

Cornucopia’s immersive experience extends beyond previously unheard-of instruments. “I think I’m correct in saying it was the first touring concert show with 360-degree sound,” Bergur speaks of the all-encompassing sonic experience. Björk has worked with d&b audiotechnik to build a 360-degree soundscape.

“We went to the island where the lighthouse is at Grótta, and rented a small house there for a few days. We set up a small 360-degree sound system in there, and were working on the show,” shares Bergur. “It’s a great way to work, because the tide comes in, and then you’re stuck on the island for like, eight hours or so, and then you have to work.”

Photo by Santiago Felipe / Design: M/M (Paris)

The sound isn’t blasted at the audience from a single direction but sculpted in 360 degrees, wrapping listeners in a meticulously designed acoustic world. The same approach applies to the film, mixed in Dolby Atmos, “which is sort of the same idea for the cinema,” he explains. The result is a layered, hyper-textural soundscape where even Björk stomping her foot inside the reverb chamber sounds intentional.

All in for art

Björk’s artistic integrity and fierce commitment to quality — whether it’s a simple promo shot or a sprawling world tour — is a rare sight in today’s music industry. While she surrounds herself with top talent, I’m curious: has anyone ever tried talking Björk out of mounting a tour of unprecedented complexity, or at least scaling down the production?

Bergur says that while management and finance teams may have questioned continuing a tour that wasn’t making money — the creative team never did. “The amazing thing about working with Björk is that she has ideas that many people would say are crazy or impossible, but she is always right,” he says smiling. “They may be really hard to achieve, but I think a lot of us who have been working with her for a long time now, we all know that it really is worth going for her creative approach and just taking it all the way. Of course, occasionally we all get the feeling that we’re about to do something that’s maybe not possible, but that’s also the magic when you create a live show, which is nothing people have ever seen before.”

“[For Björk], it’s not about money at all, it’s only about making beautiful art.”

“from puppet to puppet,

from the injury of a heart wound into a fully-healed state

i hope you enjoy

warmth

björk”

Watch Cornucopia at Bíó Paradís in May or online via Apple TV+