- EDITOR’S CHOICE
- A bold sonic explorer translates her ideas to the silver screen.
Hildur Guðnadóttir
Biography
Singer Hildur Guðnadóttir made her professional debut at age 10 when she accompanied her opera singer mother at a Viking-themed restaurant in Iceland. ∙ She made her recorded debut at age 15, as lead singer of Icelandic alt-rockers Woofer. ∙ She played all the instruments on her debut solo album, Mount A, which was partly recorded in a reconstructed 14th-century log cabin in Hólar, Iceland. ∙ Guðnadóttir has collaborated with an array of experimental artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Knife, David Sylvian, Sunn O))), and Throbbing Gristle. ∙ She became interested in film music through her work with soundtrack composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, with whom she began collaborating after moving to Berlin in her early twenties. ∙ Her work on the Joker soundtrack earned a Grammy nomination and also an Academy Award, making her just the fourth woman to win an Oscar for Best Original Score. ∙ Before composing her Grammy- and Emmy-winning score for the miniseries Chernobyl, she insisted on visiting a nuclear power plant, saying, “I wanted to explore what nuclear disaster sounds like.”