Laufey

Laufey Lín Bing Jónsdóttir was born on April 23, 1999 in Reykjavík, Iceland — the daughter of an Icelandic father who loved jazz and a Chinese mother who played violin professionally. Her maternal grandfather, Lin Yaoji, was one of China's most revered violin educators at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Music wasn't just in the household; it was in the bloodline.

She started piano at four, picked up the cello at eight, and by fifteen was performing as a soloist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. But classical music, for all its beauty, felt like a costume that didn't quite fit. At the Reykjavík music school, she'd sneak into practice rooms to play jazz standards instead of her assigned classical pieces — describing the thrill as "rebellious, like sneaking candy."

A presidential scholarship took her to Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she finally found her tribe. It was her first time studying contemporary music formally, and the collision of her classical training with jazz harmony created something entirely new. Then the pandemic hit. The day before Berklee's campus shut down in spring 2020, a heartbroken nineteen-year-old Laufey recorded her first original song, "Street by Street." She posted it online. The rest, as they say, unfolded.

What followed was a trajectory that reads like fiction: viral TikTok fame, a debut EP, three studio albums, two Grammy wins, sold-out world tours, and the quiet, extraordinary achievement of making jazz — real, sophisticated, orchestral jazz — genuinely cool for an entire generation that had never given it a second thought.