We came across this on photographer and PLANET contributor James Chiang’s blog for his Ideation & Presentation course at the Academy of Art. And as great fans of both Björk and Arvo Pärt, we just had to share with you this clip from the BBC program Modern Minimalists, in which the Icelandic chanteuse interviews the Estonian classical composer.
     A pioneering force within the mystical school of minimalism, the septuagenarian Pärt experienced a slight renaissance in the past decade with last year’s premiere of Symphony No. 4, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as with the inclusion of his work on the soundtracks to Fahrenheit 9/11 and There Will Be Blood. But his influence (and particularly his stark yet beautiful style, known as tintinnabulation) can also be felt on records by more mainstream, modern artists like Max Richter, Radiohead, and, indeed, Björk.
     Set to the lush and lamenting strings of Pärt’s 1977 composition, “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten”, Björk begins the interview by declaring that his oeuvre “in a very sensitive way has got the whole battle of this century inside him.” Speaking in her signature sprite-like patter and sporting intergalactic chignons, the singer-turned-temporary-journalist also suggests a somewhat strange dialectic shaping Pärt’s aesthetic — that of “Pinocchio and the little cricket,” in which a postlapsarian human capable of so much pain confronts and consorts with another being bursting with compassion and the will to comfort.