Bjork talks "Cornucopia" in new interview
Bjork‘s “most elaborately staged concert to date,” “Cornucopia”, had its preview at Hudson Yard’s new multi-arts space, The Shed, on Monday night (5/6), and it makes its official debut on Thursday (5/9). Ahead of that, Bjork talked to the New York Times about the multi-night series, as well as 2015’s Vulnicura, not doing “traditional” tours anymore, being in love, and…baby albino giraffes?
“A baby albino giraffe” is how Bjork describes the sound of flutes, which are played by seven women, Bjork’s “utopian flute septet,” Viibra, in “Cornucopia.” “Like, they’re kind of furry and they’re kind of clean” she say, “but they’re not as clean as you think, because they’re actually giraffes. If that makes any sense.”
“The whole show is a lot about females supporting each other,” Bjork told New York Times; she calls it “digital theater, or a sci-fi pop concert,” and says it’s all based around her 2017 album Utopia. “It’s like a fairy tale, I guess,” she says, “or like very purposely ecstatic, and kind of caustic.”
“Vulnicura,” she told New York Times, “for me was basically really, really sad. Just, like, winter in Iceland, rocks on the ground, no plants — you know, the melody was literally lying on the floor. It didn’t ever make big leaps.” Utopia is exactly the opposite, and on discussing its music with collaborator Arca, Bjork says, “we wanted the synths to sound like flutes and the flutes to sound like birds and the birds to sound like synths. Nothing holding it down.” Its lyrics, meanwhile, “are about proposing to come up with a more compassionate way to interact with nature. Hopefully to start from a female point of view will help.”
Bjork says she abandoned the “traditional” tour cycle after Biophilia “because I just didn’t believe it anymore. Also, I had a family.” “If I want to pretend I’m a matriarch I might as well, you know, walk the walk,” she continued. “I’m lucky because I was from the generation that I could actually buy myself a house, because I sold CDs in the ’90s. I got a couple of houses and a cabin in the mountains. I’m O.K. But I probably haven’t made a penny in the last, I don’t know, 20 years. It just all goes back into my work — and I like it that way.”
Read the full interview here.
