Hafdís Bjarnadóttir
A native of Reykjavík, Iceland, Hafdís Bjarnadóttir started playing electric guitar at the age of 12. She was soon performing in bands and writing her own music, with an initial focus on rock and folk. In 2002, she graduated in jazz guitar performance from the FÍH School of Music. Keen to develop her compositional voice, she earned a bachelor’s degree in contemporary composition from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2007 and a master’s degree from the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2009. She has a reputation for breaking down barriers between different genres of music, and received wide acclaim in 2015 for her "Sounds of Iceland", a journey through Iceland made up of a series of field recordings of the natural sounds of waterfalls, birds, lakes, the sea and geysers.