A secret of Ásgeir Trausti

Among a group of Icelandic artists, who recently have been touring a lot, we can find Ásgeir Trausti – a young star of local music scene. He’s only 20 but his activity on Icelandic music market has met with success thanks to a debut album Dýrð í dauðaþögn, which was out in August. It’s enough to look at the last Icelandic Music Awards – Ásgeir won in four categories. Now he spreads wings and together with his band tries to conquer hearts of listeners in Europe, US and Canada.

A classical guitar appeared in life of Ásgeir Trausti Einarsson when he was only 7. Although he didn‘t see himself as a musician performing classical music, his imagination whispered him that one day he‘ll go on stage with electric guitar like his idol Kurt Cobain. Ásgeir comes from a small town of Laugarbakki, which has a population of about 45 people. However it’s like a little dot on a map of Northwest Iceland and there’s a distance of 200 kilometers to Reykjavík, Laugarbakki is still the best place for Ásgeir to compose far away from a loud city. There he teaches children how to play drums, guitar and piano twice a week. His fascination with music started also there thanks to inspiring surrounding. In fact, Ásgeir Trausti has luck because all his family has had very positive impact on him – lyrics on the album were written by his father Einar Georg Einarsson, his brother Þorsteinn Einarsson is a guitarist in one of few Icelandic reggae bands – Hjálmar and his mother played organ in local church so that’s how she showed little Ásgeir a charm of piano. In Laugarbakki was formed the first band, which he was a part of, and it caused his juggling with different instruments. One day Ásgeir just got to the point where he noticed that he’s more interested in drums than a drummer of his band so change of function in the group was something quite obvious. When one instrument was no longer needed, Ásgeir Trausti settled down to another without any fear of new challenges. This way he learnt to play piano and bass without any lessons. But still his favourite instrument has been a guitar and recently he finished classical guitar lessons after 12 years. His collection contains 12 of mentioned instruments altogether – amongst others things eight classical and two electric guitars.