Hildur Guðnadóttir, Under: A Musical Journey Beneath the Sea - ARTE Concert

On the Norwegian coast, Hildur Guðnadóttir gives a concert between land and sea alongside the Norwegian Opera Orchestra, inside Under, an underwater restaurant designed by Snøhetta. A performance to experience on arte.tv.

The Listening

I am beyond excited about the upcoming release of This Will Be Us and the release concert with the DSO at the Berlin Philharmonic this month!

To countdown, I’ll be doing a series of listening events, both online and in person, where we will listen to my previous solo releases.

I’m inviting anyone who’s interested to sit and listen with me and I will have the chat open for questions and thoughts. It’s a free event and open for anyone! In the spirit of shared listening, if people are interested and this format is exciting for us, I’m planning on continuing the listening events, so we can listen to exciting albums together. Kind of like an “album club”.

The first of 'The Listening' will be taking place on Friday 2nd October at 8pm CEST / 6pm UTC: RSVP.

Hildur Guðnadóttir Wins Best Cinema Composer at ELLE BNP Paribas Women in Venice

Hildur Guðnadóttir is one of the seven women celebrated at ELLE BNP Paribas Women in Venice, receiving an award for her minimalist and evocative music, which becomes an integral part of a film’s emotional core.

“Venice is a diva, one with so many faces that she can overwhelm you, make you fall in love, and then make you believe in the future. Venice is a film we have all experienced, and in which we always have a part to play.”

With these words, Manuela Ravasio, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE Italia, opened the inaugural ELLE BNP Paribas Women in Venice evening at Giardino Fortuny on the island of Giudecca. The ceremony was followed by a gala dinner curated by chef Enrico Bartolini at Oficine 800.

Inspired by the longstanding ELLE US Women in Hollywood event, the initiative was created to honor seven professionals who, through their distinctive perspectives and talents, are helping shape contemporary cinema, spanning directing, costume design, acting, screenwriting, cinematography, and music.

Then came Hildur Guðnadóttir’s moment. Valeria Bilello introduced her on stage, while Silvia Locatelli presented her with the award for Best Cinema Composer. The jury’s citation follows.

Award Citation

“Hildur Guðnadóttir receives the award for Best Cinema Composer. We love her minimalist and evocative music, capable of communicating what words cannot express. Her music is never simply a commentary on a film. It enters the DNA of the story and becomes an integral part of its emotional core. It is powerful enough to alter our perception of space, time, and color, and so profoundly empathetic that it creates an intimate connection between what we see and what we hear. Visually, everything communicates control. Through sound, however, we sense an invisible danger. Visual order becomes a psychological cage. Her hypnotic and meditative music creates immersive soundscapes of extraordinary warmth and intimacy. Ultimately, it transports films into an entirely different dimension.”

Source: ELLE Italia

Hildur Guðnadóttir Reimagines Two Decades of Music on New Orchestral Album This Will Be Us

Album artwork by Olafur Eliasson

Revered today for her multi-award-winning scores for film and TV (Chernobyl, Joker, Tár), Hildur Guðnadóttir released her debut album, Mount A, in September 2006. Twenty years on, the Icelandic composer is celebrating this anniversary by reimagining some of her earlier music. For her latest Deutsche Grammophon album, This Will Be Us, she has recorded orchestral versions of eight tracks that first appeared on Mount A, Without Sinking (2009) or Saman (2014), as well as two newly written pieces. Guðnadóttir herself plays solo cello, performing with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Robert Ames. She also produced the album, which was recorded, mixed and mastered by her long-time collaborator Francesco Donadello. 

Set for release on 23 October 2026, This Will Be Us includes notes by Hildur herself and by film-maker Sarah Polley. Guðnadóttir will perform at a special launch event at the Berlin Philharmonie on 25 October and, to coincide with the anniversary, DG is reissuing the three earlier albums as LPs on 3 July – a first vinyl release for Mount A.

Hildur Guðnadóttir grew up making music with others, in choirs, bands and orchestras. “That world meant everything to me,” she recalls. “But I felt I needed some space to hear my own thoughts.” She recorded what became Mount A alone with her cello, but had to be persuaded by her friend Skúli Sverrisson to share her work with the outside world. The album was released under the pseudonym “Lost in Hildurness”, a nickname friends had given her because she was so often lost in her own world.

She was then joined by Sverrisson, fellow composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, and her father Guðni Franzson and others on her subsequent albums, Without Sinking, Leyfðu Ljósinu and Saman. “Even though the music on these records is deeply personal,” she says, “my closest friends and family have always been essential to my having the courage to keep playing and to share the music at all.”

That courage has helped Guðnadóttir establish herself as one of the leading composers of our age, notably in the soundtrack world. Her many accolades include two Grammy Awards® (Chernobyl, Joker), an Academy Award (Joker), an Emmy Award (Chernobyl) and a Golden Globe (Joker). In the last few years she has also written acclaimed scores for films as varied as Todd Field’s Tár, Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, while The Fact of the Matter, for choir and orchestra, was premiered at the 2022 BBC Proms.   

Mount A’s 20th anniversary was an opportunity to take stock. “Seeing that number on the horizon felt like a good moment to pause,” says Guðnadóttir. “When I was trying to be a one-person string orchestra, I always dreamed of having more people playing with me. I decided to give that young person the anniversary gift of hearing her music played by an orchestra.” 

On This Will Be Us, she does just that, recording beautifully reinvented versions of “In Gray” (Mount A), “Ascent”, “Erupting Light”, “Opaque”, “Overcast” and “Unveiled” (Without Sinking) and “Bær” and “Birting” (Saman), together with new tracks “Blind Sarabande” and “The Song That Never Was”, with Ames and the full forces of the DSO Berlin. 

As her friend and colleague Sarah Polley writes in her notes for the album, Guðnadóttir’s fans will recognise many of these tracks, “but here they take on a new life, an expansive scope, and a sense of being in fellowship with others. [They are] the work of someone who listens long enough to hear and who understands the movement of seeking and finding connection in both the light and the dark.”

Album artwork by Olafur Eliasson. Recording, mixing, mastering by Francesco Donadello. Photography by Camille Blake. Design by Philip Marshall. Comms by Maria Orciuoli (KO-HUM). Live tour and management by Moema Parrott, Eva Pires (Harrison Parrott Group / Polyarts).