Star Live

Olafur Arnalds brought the Jue Festival to a close with a "glitchy" performance at Starlive, Beijing to a 500-plus crowd, all pindrop-silent in anticipation to hear what exactly an "Icelandic prodigy" sounds like. "This audience is so quiet. I like that," said Arnalds after his first piece. Even Chinese rock legend Cui Jian was spotted in the shadows stage left, and after refusing a couple of autographs, retreated to the balconied VIP section. But Cui wasn't the only thing that was tempermental that night. 15 minutes into the show, Arnalds' equipment began overheating. After numerous requests for an electric fan to cool off his setup, the PA finally began sputtering popping sounds, leaving the string quartet to push on through the harmonic waters without him. After the song, the house tried to get things sorted while Arnalds made an attempt at crowd talk. "Chinese people must like clean floors. The floors are really slippery here, as our violinist just found out when she almost broke her hand." The musicians ended up taking 10 extra minutes off stage. During the performance, whoever was handling the house lights also seemed in the dark as they often left violinists reading music without an overhead, and turning on rotating stage lights despite Aanalds request to keep them off, because they were "too distracting." But despite the stop and go, the concert was successful in meeting musical expectations for most (except for a City Weekend music critic/contributor had walked out halfway through the performance). Arnalds brought up a cross section of his three releases - songs included "3055", "Fok", a few from Found Songs, as well as some work off of his new album. there were a few surprises, when Arnalds and one of his violinists broke out a song born from an improvisation from the previous nights‘ performance in Tianjin.