Home » Jazz Musicians » Ingi Bjarni Skúlason
Ingi Bjarni Skúlason
Ingi Bjarni Skúlason is an Icelandic pianist and composer who shapes his own poetics. He has released 7 albums with his music and toured both in Europe and Japan. He makes his own kind of folk music with the freedom of expressiveness, and space for both lyrical and free improvisation.
Over the years, Ingi Bjarni has performed his original music with a wide range of musicians across Iceland and Europe. He has appeared at numerous international jazz festivals, including Jazzahead (Bremen), Elbjazz (Hamburg), Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Vilnius Jazz Festival, Lillehammer Jazz Festival, Nordic Jazz Comets, and Reykjavík Jazz Festival. In addition to these, he has given concerts in Iceland, Japan, Sweden, Germany, the UK, Estonia, Latvia, the Faroe Islands, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
As a composer, Ingi Bjarni has released seven albums of his own music. Three of his albums have been nominated for the Icelandic Music Awards. In 2020, he was awarded as the most promising jazz artist in Iceland, and in 2024, he received the award for Jazz Composition of the Year. His work has received recognition and praise internationally and has been positively reviewed in a variety of media outlets.
Ingi Bjarni completed a Bachelor’s degree in Jazz Performance at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague (Koninklijk Conservatorium) in 2016. In the spring of 2018, he finished a specialized Master’s program in composition, Nordic Master: The Composing Musician, with semesters in Gothenburg, Copenhagen, and Oslo. The program emphasized artistic values and compositional craft, complementing his earlier focus on classical jazz piano performance. His teachers and mentors have included Misha Alperin, Anders Jormin, Helge Lien, Aaron Parks, Eyolf Dale, Eric Gieben, Agnar Már Magnússon, and Helge Sunde. In spring 2024, he completed a diploma in arts education at the Iceland University of the Arts.
In addition to his work as a performer and composer, Ingi Bjarni is active as a music educator, teaching piano and accompanying students, as well as giving talks on flow and musical creativity—most notably at the Iceland University of the Arts and the Academy of Music and Drama in Gothenburg. He has also created and hosted In Duo With, a concert series and YouTube program where he invited Icelandic musicians for conversations about improvisation and music-making, followed by duo performances.
Awards
• Award for Icelandic Music Prize as the most promising jazz artist (2020)
• Five nominations for Icelandic Music Awards for Tenging (2019)
• Ingi Bjarni Trio – nomination for Icelandic Music Awards as jazz performer of the year (2018)
• Märta, Sten och Stellan Hähnels minnesfond (2017)
• Nomination for Icelandic Music Prize as the most promising jazz artist (2014)
• Award for outstanding musicianship at Berklee Summer School in Umbria (2009)
• Most promising keyboard player at Músíktilraunir (2007)
Tags
Ingi Bjarni Skúlason: Hope
by Glenn Astarita
Ingi Bjarni Skúlason's seventh album, Hope, released on January 17, 2025, is a poignant exploration of grief and resilience, exquisitely woven into a Nordic jazz tapestry. This Icelandic pianist and composer, joined by truly estimable artists--Anders Jormin on double bass, Hilmar Jensson on guitar and Magnús Trygvason Eliassen on drums--crafts a soundscape that is both introspective and expansively beautiful. The quartet's synergy, finely honed at the Reykjavik Jazz Festival, shines across nine tracks, each a quiet meditation on loss and ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni Skúlason: Farfuglar
by Chris May
Appropriately enough for an album on NXN, a subsidiary of classical label Naxos, which only relatively recently diversified into jazz, the Icelandic pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason's Farfuglar spans both traditions. Is it classical? Is it jazz? Both? Neither? Check the YouTube below and decide for yourself. Whatever it may be, Skúlason's music is definitely cerebral, a quality which it shares, perhaps coincidentally, but probably not, with other releases on NXN. One thinks in particular of Norwegian saxophonist ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni: Lessons
by Friedrich Kunzmann
In the very brief liner notes accompanying this solo debut record, the Icelandic pianist-composer Ingi Bjarni Skúlason talks about the difficult challenge it proved, to record and produce his piano music all by himself. With regard to the timing of the recording, he admits he does not believe there is ever a “right time" for doing anything, “so why not do it now?." As many jazz releases have proved, Bjarni was not the only one to have this idea during ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni: Tenging
by Geno Thackara
Almost deliberately, Tenging doesn't make a terribly memorable impression at first. It is subtle enough not to stick in the listener's head and seems shorter than its respectable 42 minutes. This understated quintet recording is patient and quietly confident enough to exist in its own bubble. As it happens, that's exactly the point--Ingi Bjarni Skulason's approach here is about rejecting the world's fast-paced distractions in favor of intuition and mindfulness. The pieces were simply grown with no particular agenda, all ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni Skúlason: Tenging
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Icelandic composer and pianist Ingi Bjarni Skúlason lived in Gotheburg, Copenhagen and Oslo while studying his Masters degree in composition. It is in these European cities where he met and performed with the musicians heard on this record. Jakob Eri Myhre and Merje Kägu join on trumpet and guitar with Daniel Andersson and Tore Ljøkelsøy forming the rhythm section on bass and drums. The music on Tenging was conceived especially with them in mind, not necessarily the specific instrumentation, but ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni Trio: Fundur
by Mike Jurkovic
Hailing from Reykjavik, pianist and composer Ingi Bjarni fluidly melds the extreme landscapes of his native Iceland with an innate, resilient melodicism that shifts willfully within the body of his music like a slideshow of the wild Icelandic terrain. Translated roughly as 'finding/discovery' or 'to have found something' Fundur immediately captures the ear with the openly expressive language that Bjarni, double bassist Bárður Reinert Poulsen and drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen bring to the trio format.Telepathic in nature, tenor, ...
Continue ReadingIngi Bjarni Skúlason: Skarkali
by Budd Kopman
Prediction: pianist/composer Ingi Bjarni Skúlason and his music will eventually end up on ECM. This is not because he is from Iceland, but rather that he, even at his young age, has a fully developed, recognizable style. Skarkali, which literally means “loud noises," is a piano trio recording that is anything but noise, and is delicately intense (or intensely delicate) rather than loud. Supported by bassist Valdimar Olgeirsson and drummer Óskar Kjartansson, Skúlason's compositions unfold as dramatic stories, ...
Continue ReadingAdam Baruch (IL)
“very interesting piece of music, with a unique sound and unusual innovative approach to improvisation, which is almost impossible to find these days.”
Concerto Magazin (AT)
” A wonderful album that captures the North as it sounds when mixed with the various musical influences of this world.
Jazz Journal
“a suite of genre-bridging music of captivating poetic ambience, rooted in an overall subtlety of melodic figure and rhythmic interaction….A distinctive and rewarding album, which impresses more and more with each hearing.”
Primary Instrument
Piano
Willing to teach
Intermediate to advanced
Music
Ísfold
From: Uneven EquatorBy Ingi Bjarni Skúlason
Introduction
From: Fragile MagicBy Ingi Bjarni Skúlason
