Karlakór Reykjavíkur

Karlakór Reykjavíkur, a male-voice choir, was founded on 3 January 1926. The composer Sigurður Þórðarson brought it into being and conducted it until 1962, with one year's interruption. It first sang abroad in 1935, in Bergen, Oslo, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Copenhagen, with Stefán Íslandi as its soloist and Emil Thoroddsen accompanying. A crossing to America was arranged in full for 1939 and postponed by the war. It was made in 1946, with fifty-six concerts, and a second crossing in 1960 brought thirty-nine more. In 1979 the choir sang in China, the first from the West to do so after the Cultural Revolution, and it has now made twenty-three tours abroad. For many years it owned the rooms it worked in: Freyjugata 14 from 1962, Skógarhlíð 20 from 1998, where the hall was called Ýmir, and last a floor on Grensásvegur named Gerðhamrar after the birthplace of its founder. Since 2015 it has rehearsed in the parish hall of Háteigskirkja. It numbers about eighty singers. Friðrik S. Kristinsson is its choirmaster.