Björk, her band and a 24-piece choir will perform in the round amid an array of custom-built instruments in Richmond.
Björk’s upcoming "Biophilia" concerts at Richmond’s Craneway Pavilion are multimedia extravaganzas that find the 47-year-old singer performing in the round amid an arsenal of custom-built instruments, iPad apps, nature films and a 24-piece Icelandic choir. But that’s no reason to feel intimidated. "It’s like the closest to theater I will get," she promises. With Björk, an artist known for her eccentricities since her days fronting the Sugarcubes, that’s saying quite a lot.
Q : These concerts sound quite elaborate.
A : It’s kind of like if I would have written an opera, this is it. It isn’t a big, bombastic show. It’s more of a circular knockabout.
Q : I imagine the main problem with doing these intimate, in-the-round shows is that there are so many people in your band they take up half the venue.
A : It’s designed to be like that. With all the instruments we got made and the people, it almost feels like everyone’s onstage. It’s not so much about me being the pop star and everybody looking at me. It’s more like everybody having the same experience.
Q : That’s very democratic. Do you still have a bit of that teenage punk streak inside you ?
A : The antiestablishment thing has always been there. With this project, it’s been maybe the fact that it was the end of the CD era and I was hearing a lot of voices being quite pessimistic about the future of music. I thought, "This is a time you shouldn’t be moaning. You should think of something that should be good for the art." I always felt that it had to be from the ground up - the whole picture, not just turning up in a studio to press a record and go home.
Q : It’s not like you to linger on any one idea for a very long time. You started working on "Biophilia" in 2008. What made you stick with it ?
A : After so many years of touring, I was curious to merge better with each city, not just be in each city for a day. I wanted to crawl into a space and in between shows I could start writing other stuff. To be honest, at first I was going to do 10 cities in three years. Now I’m doing eight cities in two years. After California, we will do Japan, and that will be it. I have enough songs that I’m ready to see the next thing.
