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Review Sigur Rós At San Diego's Gorgeous Jacobs Music Center: Beauty, Distance, And An Expensive Question

San Diego’s beautifully renovated Jacobs Music Center was the star before the first note. The century-old hall - fresh off a $125 million transformation that tightened its acoustics, angled its sightlines, and trimmed capacity with a new choral terrace - played host on Sunday night to the opening North American date of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós’s orchestral tour. It was a sellout, and the room gleamed like a restored postcard from the 1900s, now finally tuned for what it was always meant to be: music first.

I found my seat beside local music legend Tim Pyles, of Casbah booking fame, who greeted me with a pop quiz: “Have you ever seen Sigur Rós?” No. “Do you listen to their music?” Also no. “What are you even doing here?” That last bit echoed in my head for two hours, and it wound up shadowing how the night felt.

The conceit of this tour is simple and, on paper, perfect: Sigur Rós’s gauzy, glacial catalog draped across a forty-something–piece orchestra under conductor Robert Ames. In practice, the band placed itself behind that orchestra - literally and, too often, figuratively. 

Jónsi’s bowed-guitar shimmer and porcelain falsetto surfaced in pale halos, but much of the time the group functioned as a textural underscore to the strings, as if we were watching a lavish film whose most devastating scene never quite arrived. It was exquisitely crafted and impeccably paced, but frequently it felt like a soundtrack to a death scene - think Gladiator’s last five minutes - more than a dialogue between band and orchestra.
The crowd radiated a hushed, near-religious reverence - Jacobs’s improved acoustics reward quiet with detail - yet human moments kept puncturing the glass: the guy in front of me in a Dennis Rodman tee repeatedly rubbing his scalp and taking heroic pulls from his drink; a man to my right literally dozing off on his date’s shoulder. 

When percussion finally appeared in parts of the set, it did so like a memory returning after a long winter, reminding that Sigur Rós once thundered as often as they glowed. The absence is historical as much as aesthetic: longtime drummer Orri Páll Dýrason left the band in 2018 after an allegation of sexual assault, and their recent recordings and this orchestral format lean into percussion-free landscapes. The result, at least tonight, was more requiem than revelation.

None of this is to say it wasn’t beautiful. “Blóðberg” unfurled like frost over water. Familiar themes from Takk… flickered and rose; even the skeptics around me exhaled at those first “Hoppípolla” piano notes. Jacobs Music Center did exactly what its renovation promised - transparency in the strings, warmth in Jónsi’s head voice, a clarity that rewarded stillness. If the orchestra overshadowed the band, it was also because the hall finally lets strings bloom the way they should.
But the math kept intruding. With some orchestra seats fetching over $500, it’s hard not to ask whether that kind of money might be better spent more directly on San Diego’s own cultural engine - an evening with our Symphony at this very home or down at The Rady Shell, where the balance between orchestra and guest frequently feels like a conversation instead of a veil. Tonight’s production was transporting, yes, and often moving, but its very perfection could turn remote, like snow admired through glass.

As the ovation faded and the house lights traced those refurbished Rococo flourishes, Pyles’s question came back: “What are you even doing here?” Maybe the honest answer is that I’m a Sigur Rós novice who hasn’t yet learned the rituals, who wants a little more storm with the stillness. Or maybe I just prefer my orchestras front and center when they’re the point. Either way, Jacobs Music Center proved itself a triumph; whether Sigur Rós let us all the way in felt, fittingly, like a beautiful mystery left unresolved.
Originally published on November 2, 2025.