The partnership between saxophonist Óskar Guðjónsson and bassist and composer Skúli Sverrisson has run for more than two decades and produced one of the most intimate duos in contemporary Nordic jazz. It is a music of restraint: spacious, attentive to atmosphere, and built on listening rather than on virtuosity.

Their subject has stayed the same across three records — space, silence and closeness in playing together — and each album has approached it from a different angle. In a musical culture often driven by speed and display, they offer something else: a slow dialogue shaped by breath, resonance and silence.

Their two albums, After Silence and The Box Tree, each received the Icelandic Music Awards. The Box Tree, released on Mengi in 2013, is a thirty-four-minute record in ten parts — intimate, unhurried, and difficult to place in any category. All About Jazz called the duo’s music “decidedly original, and defies labelling.”

Óskar Guðjónsson has been a central voice in Icelandic jazz for thirty years. His playing is lyrical and understated, shaped as much by what he leaves out as by what he plays. He is a founding member of ADHD, the Icelandic quartet that has toured Europe and North America continuously since 2009, and he has received the Icelandic Music Awards thirteen times.

Skúli Sverrisson, born in Reykjavík in 1966 and long based in New York, is a composer and bassist whose work reaches far beyond jazz. He has worked with Laurie Anderson, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Bill Frisell, and his own records under the Sériá name are a reference point in Icelandic contemporary music. He produced Spíra for Ólöf Arnalds.

A third duo album was recorded in Skálholt church in September 2026, the room chosen for its natural reverberation. It is released on Mengi in 2027 — their first joint release in close to fifteen years.