Bjork is an internationally renowned artist hailing from Iceland who is famous for her unique music and artistic appearance. She initially started gaining fame as the vocalist for the Icelandic alternative rock band known as The Sugarcubes in the late 1980s. Subsequently, she ventured into a diverse solo career and has produced 9 studio albums that are a blend of electronic, trip-hop, jazz, classical, and experimental genres of music.
To the present, Bjork has embarked on numerous concert tours across different countries as she continues to share her innovative music with the global public. Her prominent live shows are full of energy, imagination, and fancy and choreographic movements. In this article, the author will outline Bjork’s previous and future concert tours.
Debut Solo Tour (1993-1994) After leaving The Sugarcubes, Bjork began her first solo tour in 1993 in support of her first solo studio album called Debut. The Debut tour took the group to Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Some of the memorable shows were live at the 1994 BRIT Awards and MTV Unplugged. This tour was crucial in presenting Bjork as an interesting new artist on her own and signaled her later experimental tours.
Post Tour (1995-1997) After the success of her second record, Post in 1995, Bjork embarked on the long eighteen-month world tour where she visited Europe, North America, Australia, Asia, and South America. The post-tour concerts featured the singer exploring electronic beats, strings, harps, and glass harmonicas. This tour was recorded on the live album called Live Box as well as the concert film Live at Shepherds Bush Empire which demonstrates the entire enthusiasm and creativity of Bjork’s concerts in the late 1990s.
Homogenic Tour (1997-1999) In promotion of her Homogenic album, Bjork performed a series of concerts across Europe and North America between 1997 and 1999. These concerts involved Bjork coming on stage with her face painted with geometrical patterns singing songs that mixed electronic beats and a string octet. The tour was described by critics as a success in capturing the elegance and sophistication of Homogenic in a performance setting.
Vespertine World Tour (2001-2002) The Vespertine released in 2001, was filled with quiet reflective chamber pop songs. For the Vespertine tour, which lasted 19 months, Bjork collaborated with contemporary ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor to perform a live show with dancers from the Royal Ballet backed up by digital video artistry.
Greatest Hits Tour (2003) As part of the promotion for the Greatest Hits compilation released in 2002, Bjork went on a brief tour where she played some of her songs backed by the City of London Sinfonia orchestra accompanied by David Arnold in conductor duties. This brief but memorable tour saw Bjork perform her songs accompanied by the full symphony orchestra in 9 select concerts in England and Paris.
Volta Tour (2007-2008) Volta, released in 2007, is Bjork’s loud, confrontational album. She took the raw feel of the studio album to audiences on a 2-year world tour. Ten backup dancers waltzing in unison in complex choreographed routines, the Volta tour concerts are sensational, multisensory performances that focus on political freedom and basic human vices.
Biophilia Tour (2011-2013) Never a conventional performer, Bjork, developed Biophilia as an educational live show that teaches children about music, nature, and science. She first performed this show at the Manchester International Festival before embarking on a 3-year world tour. Since incorporating each song into a specific natural element, the Biophilia concerts used unconventional musical instruments, VR technology, images, and performance art for an innovative concept in concerts.
Vulnicura Tour (2015-2016) Vulnicura is an album that Bjork released in 2015, which tells the raw and painful story of a woman who suffered a breakup. For the concert tour of the album, she worked with the director Andrew Thomas Huang to plan an intimate show inspired by the concept of healing. Standing in full-body masks while Bjork danced at the center, the band played from the nearby and slightly larger platforms that symbolically gave the impression of family bonds, all of this in a heart-rending live show.
Cornucopia Residency (2019-2022) The latest concert performance by Bjork is the grand opera-style show, Cornucopia which was conceived specifically for a performance at the New York Hall of Science and subsequently in the Shrine Auditorium of Los Angeles. Combining the showmanship of her previous tours with literary depth, Cornucopia weaves tracks that map humanity’s attitudes toward nature over seven discs through art-pop arrangements and an ambitious visual story. Featuring flutes, harp, strings, electronics, and a brilliant array of musicians, dancers, and handbell ringers, Cornucopia has been universally applauded as Bjork’s grandest stage show to date.
Future Tours To this day, more than 30 years after shocking the world with her provocative and vanguard concert shirts, Bjork does not stop her creative transformation. Fossora, her 10th studio album due in September, is powered by basslines fueled bypassed and beats that evoke the magic of the subterranean fungi. As for the tours, there are no dates scheduled at the moment, but when Bjork does come back to the stage, fans can expect a fungally-inspired audiovisual experience that is in a league of its own.
For more than 3 decades now, Bjork’s concert tours have been pushing the boundaries of what it is possible to achieve in a live performance. Combining aspects of musical performance, performance art, dance, fashion, and technology, she creates elaborate settings to fully immerse the audience in each album concept. As she plans the next phase of her career, audiences worldwide wait in anticipation of what crazy innovative and extraterrestrial concert performance Bjork might bring to life the next time she embarks on her journey to tour the world.
