A line wrapped around the side of McCarter Theatre as dusk settled over Princeton’s campus. The people waiting chatted eagerly, some with their phones open and others clutching printed pieces of paper.
Everyone, whether with a digital or physical copy, had tickets in hand to see Laufey, a renowned Icelandic musician. Laufey was the top jazz artist on Spotify in 2022 and won a Grammy for the Traditional Pop Vocal Album in 2024. She has previously performed in venues like the Sydney Opera House and Radio City Music Hall.
However, this wasn’t a packed arena. Instead, Laufey was sitting down for a Princeton-exclusive event — a personal conversation with Anna Yu Wang, a Princeton assistant professor of music. The event was co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies.
“I’m feeling so good. Thank you so much for having me. This is such a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to come and walk around this campus, and it’s so inspiring,” Laufey said in her opening remarks, joking that she wanted to “soft launch” Princeton as her new study spot.
The conversation wandered between Laufey’s upbringing in classical music, her breakthrough into improvisational music, her social media presence, and the impact of her cultural and familial background on her growth as a musician.
Laufey credits her background in classical music as informing her prowess in melody today; growing up, she played the cello and piano, instruments she practiced regularly after school. Yet, when she realized that she didn’t want to pursue classical music professionally, Laufey began to consider other avenues for a career in the industry.
“I still knew that I wanted to be a musician and I wanted to find a way to mix all of these different things together, but I hadn’t really found any artists to listen to or follow, and had mixed those worlds together. I guess I kind of just became that. It was a difficult journey for me because I became such a good rule follower through classical music,” she said.
Improvisation — a key component of the jazz genre that Laufey now embraces — did not come so easily after her start in classical music.
“I was mortified. I was so scared every week, and I’d sit in a practice room just trying to figure [improvisation] out, and I barely knew where to start,” she said when asked about improvising for the first time publicly, an experience she faced as an undergraduate at the Berklee College of Music.
As the conversation unfolded, Laufey began to diverge into her identity and its influence on her decisions, particularly as an artist. Laufey is Chinese and Icelandic, and she grew up splitting her time between Iceland, the United States, and China.
“I think being straddled in so many cultures has been such a good thing for me as a musician, because now, I get to travel the world and tour the world, and I’m so innately aware of how big the world is and how many people there are. There isn’t just a group of 400,000 people on an island … that’s Iceland,” she said.
Bringing Laufey to campus was a group effort involving several parties, particularly Princeton Encore and McCarter Theatre. Princeton Encore, founded by Simon Marotte ’26, is a group that looks to bring well-known artists to campus for Q&A conversations.
“I was interested in having intimate Q&A conversations … I would love to see artists come and talk about their lives and not just perform,” Marotte told The Daily Princetonian.
Marotte brought a list of dream guest artists to the staff of McCarter, and the team began working on pitches. Laufey, not on Marotte’s original list, came into the fold later.
“For some reason, she wasn’t on the initial wish list. I don’t know why I was not thinking of her … she would be perfect for Princeton because she’s dubbed as Gen Z’s jazz icon. So many members of my generation love her, and I’ve been a fan of her for a while because I love jazz, and I play piano, and I really appreciate what she’s doing,” Marotte told the ‘Prince.’
According to Marotte, it took about a year of pitching and negotiating to bring Laufey to McCarter. In the future, he hopes to see her visit campus again and continue a conversation about her music.
Marotte is a former head Puzzles editor for the ‘Prince.’
Laufey’s arrival was also a sizable undertaking for McCarter Theatre, both in the process of booking Laufey and the ordeal of preparing the theater for her arrival. The bulk of responsibility was directed to Arts & Ideas, a program housed within McCarter’s services that “connects Princeton University scholarship, campus life and community partners to the work on our stage and behind-the-scenes.”
“We’re a smaller venue than Radio City, and we get major artists here,” Debbie Bisno, Director of University and Artistic Partnerships at McCarter Theatre, told the ‘Prince.’
“We knew that we were going to have to be competitive in a different way … it’s not easy to book the people that we book … and one of the things we can offer is direct and authentic engagement with students and campus,”
Paula Abreu, Director of Presented Programming at McCarter Theatre, broke down the logistics of booking an artist like Laufey in more depth.
“I reached out to the agent. It was a longshot,” she said. “[W]e have these relationships with agents and reps and that makes a difference … when you already have an established relationship, it cuts through a layer. It was actually a quick response,” Abreu told the ‘Prince.’ From there, negotiations about fees and dates began.
Abreu also noted that McCarter had to gear up the theater to prepare for Laufey’s arrival.
“McCarter may have worked with artists like this before, but it’s rare that this sort of relationship happens, and it’s delicate in the sense that they come with many more requirements. This informs things like, what does the security look like at our theater, things that we usually don’t have to pay very deep attention to,” she said to the ‘Prince.’
Yet for many audience members, the logistics were worth it, especially with the surprise miniature concert that concluded the event.
Laufey slung a guitar over her shoulder and approached a standing microphone. She sang two songs: “Bored” and “From the Start.” The theater became alive as students raised phones to record and sang softly along with her.
Students chanted “blah, blah, blah” along with Laufey, some of the more playful lyrics of “From the Start.” During her performance, Laufey also twisted a lyric or two, telling Princeton she “loved [them] from the start” in some of the last lines of her performance.
Her exit, where she wished students a great semester before leaving the stage, was met with a standing ovation.
Editor's Note: This piece has been updated to include that the event was co-sponsored by the Department of East Asian Studies.
Isabella Dail is a staff News writer and head editor for The Prospect for the ‘Prince.’
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