Ketill Jensson

Icelandic tenor singer, born in 1925 in Reykavík, died in 1994. He was one of Iceland's most promising singers in the middle of the century. His singing ability was questioned and several sponsors paid for his three-year singing studies in Milan, Italy, where he studied with several other Icelanders around and before the 1950s. Ketill came home and sang publicly with a good reputation, he went back to Italy twice for further singing studies and in 1955 two albums were released with his solo singing accompanied by Fritz Weisshappell, they contained, among other things, music from the opera Cavalleria Rusticana which he sang in here on Iceland, but he also sang one of the roles in the operetta Leðurblákunn around that time. Furthermore, an album was released in 1956 where he sang together with Guðrúna Á. Simon and the National Theater Choir. At this time, Ketil's singing career was at its peak and all his singing paths seemed straight and wide ahead. But after that he stopped singing for some reasons that are not entirely known. It is known that projects were scarce at that time and Ketill could not survive on singing alone here at home, and so he went to study fish assessment and then worked at Ríkismati marine products for years, which may also have something to say but there followed by both irregular working hours and absences from home. He also got into a scene due to a singing job at the National Theater and seems to have decided not to sing anymore, but it is not entirely clear. Ketill therefore stopped all public singing for about thirty years, but then appeared unexpectedly in 1986 with a new album called Ketill Jensson singur: Jónas Ingimundarson and Fritz Weisshappel play along on the piano. On that album, you could find the old recordings as well as new ones made in the Hlégarð community center. The album, which Ketill released himself, received fair criticism from the music critics of DV, Tímans and Morgunblaðinn, who all agreed that there was more in the older recordings, although the voice was certainly still there. It can be said that external circumstances have shackled Katli and his singing career has become much less than it could have been otherwise. He also faced another shock in his life when he lost one of his sons in a fire so that his life was strewn with thorns. The tenor singer Kolbeinn Ketilsson is his son, and his nephews are the brothers Guðbjörn Guðbjörnsson and Gunnar Guðbjörnsson.