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

The star composer-performer is joined on the album by Robert Ames and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Together they have recorded orchestral versions of tracks from three of Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s early albums and two brand-new pieces
This Will Be Us&nbsp;comes out on 23&nbsp;October 2026
&ldquo;Hildur never shies away from the darkness, but lights a path through it, with purposeful intention&rdquo; &nbsp;Sarah Polley, film director
&nbsp;
Revered today for her multi-award-winning scores for film and TV (Chernobyl,&nbsp;Joker,&nbsp;T&aacute;r),&nbsp;Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&nbsp;released her debut album,&nbsp;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&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;album,&nbsp;This Will Be Us, she has recorded orchestral versions of eight tracks that first appeared on&nbsp;Mount A,&nbsp;Without Sinking&nbsp;(2009) or&nbsp;Saman&nbsp;(2014), as well as two newly written pieces. Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir herself plays solo cello, performing with the&nbsp;Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin&nbsp;and conductor&nbsp;Robert Ames. She also produced the album, which was recorded, mixed and mastered by her long-time collaborator&nbsp;Francesco Donadello.
Set for release on&nbsp;23&nbsp;October 2026,&nbsp;This Will Be Us&nbsp;includes notes by Hildur herself and by film-maker&nbsp;Sarah Polley. Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir will perform at a&nbsp;special launch event at the Berlin Philharmonie&nbsp;on&nbsp;25&nbsp;October&nbsp;and, to coincide with the anniversary, DG is reissuing the three earlier albums as LPs on&nbsp;3&nbsp;July&nbsp;&ndash; a&nbsp;first vinyl release&nbsp;for&nbsp;Mount&nbsp;A.
Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir grew up making music with others, in choirs, bands and orchestras. &ldquo;That world meant everything to me,&rdquo; she recalls. &ldquo;But I felt I needed some space to hear my own thoughts.&rdquo; She recorded what became&nbsp;Mount&nbsp;A&nbsp;alone with her cello, but had to be persuaded by her friend Sk&uacute;li Sverrisson to share her work with the outside world. The album was released under the pseudonym &ldquo;Lost in Hildurness&rdquo;, a nickname friends had given her because she was so often lost in her own world.
She was then joined by Sverrisson, fellow composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson, and her father Gu&eth;ni Franzson and others on her subsequent albums,&nbsp;Without Sinking,&nbsp;Leyf&eth;u Lj&oacute;sinu&nbsp;and&nbsp;Saman. &ldquo;Even though the music on these records is deeply personal,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;my closest friends and family have always been essential to my having the courage to keep playing and to share the music at all.&rdquo;
That courage has helped Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir establish herself as one of the leading composers of our age, notably in the soundtrack world. Her many accolades include two Grammy Awards&reg; (Chernobyl,&nbsp;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&rsquo;s&nbsp;T&aacute;r, Sarah Polley&rsquo;s&nbsp;Women Talking, Kenneth Branagh&rsquo;s&nbsp;A Haunting in Venice, Nia DaCosta&rsquo;s&nbsp;Hedda&nbsp;and&nbsp;28 Years Later: The Bone Temple&nbsp;and Maggie Gyllenhaal&rsquo;s&nbsp;The Bride!, while&nbsp;The Fact of the Matter, for choir and orchestra, was premiered at the 2022 BBC Proms.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Mount&nbsp;A&rsquo;s 20th anniversary was an opportunity to take stock. &ldquo;Seeing that number on the horizon felt like a good moment to pause,&rdquo; says Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir. &ldquo;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.&rdquo;
On&nbsp;This Will Be Us, she does just that, recording beautifully reinvented versions of &ldquo;In Gray&rdquo; (Mount&nbsp;A), &ldquo;Ascent&rdquo;, &ldquo;Erupting Light&rdquo;, &ldquo;Opaque&rdquo;, &ldquo;Overcast&rdquo; and &ldquo;Unveiled&rdquo; (Without Sinking) and &ldquo;B&aelig;r&rdquo; and &ldquo;Birting&rdquo; (Saman), together with new tracks &ldquo;Blind Sarabande&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Song That Never Was&rdquo;, with Ames and the full forces of the DSO Berlin.
As her friend and colleague Sarah Polley writes in her notes for the album, Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s fans will recognise many of these tracks, &ldquo;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.&rdquo;

Hildur Guðnadóttir Presents Where to From,  Her Eagerly Awaited Debut DG Studio Album

Where to From celebrates the creative power of friendship and artistic collaboration
The album comes out on 31 October 2025
Its music will form the core of a series of concerts given during the 2025-26 season by Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir and some of the musician friends who helped bring it to life in the studio
&ldquo;The title Where to From suggests a sense of direction. Whenever you create something, an idea comes from thin air and becomes whatever it becomes, moving from where it begins to where it ends.&rdquo;
Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir
&nbsp;
Deep friendships and creative collaboration proved decisive in shaping Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s debut studio album for Deutsche Grammophon. Where to From consists of nine intimate and contemplative tracks written, arranged and produced by the Icelandic composer whose soundtrack scores have been recognised with, among other accolades, two Grammy Awards&reg; (Chernobyl, Joker) and an Academy Award (Joker). Her new album is a highly personal yet universally resonant collection of works rooted in spontaneous musical ideas that were originally captured on her smartphone.
Also providing cello and/or vocals on several tracks, Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir is joined on Where to From by close friends and long-time collaborators Liam Byrne (viola da gamba), Clare O&rsquo;Connell (cello), Eyvind Kang (viola), and Jessika Kenney and Elsa Torp (vocals). Two other friends played key roles: Francesco Donadello recorded, mixed and mastered the album, while artist, choreographer and director Gis&egrave;le Vienne created its striking cover artwork.
Where to From will be released in all formats on 31 October 2025. Its accompanying booklet includes an interview between Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir and film director Todd Field (T&Aacute;R), as well as more of Vienne&rsquo;s atmospheric images &ndash; &ldquo;her work is so deep, haunting and beautiful, it&rsquo;s a great privilege to represent it on the album&rdquo;, says the composer. A first single, &ldquo;Make Space&rdquo;, featuring all six musicians, will be available digitally on 19 September.
&ldquo;The friendships that form when you work in collaboration are such a privilege,&rdquo; explains Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a special bond and a telepathy that connects you with others the more you perform with them. It&rsquo;s magnificent when you&rsquo;ve been playing with someone for 20 or 30 years and you witness how you and your friendship have evolved through the music you make together.&rdquo;
Where to From grew from musical diary entries, some little more than melodic snippets, that Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir sang into her phone&rsquo;s voice recorder &ndash; traces of what she calls &ldquo;the constant stream of music&rdquo; that flows through her mind. When the time felt right, she turned to her collection, chose melodies that felt ripe for development and spent a month transforming them into exquisitely crafted compositions.
&ldquo;The original seeds were planted in my phone across six or seven years,&rdquo; she recalls. &ldquo;After working on so many film soundtracks, it was interesting to take a completely different look at the way music comes to me. There&rsquo;s a lot of space in the music that&rsquo;s playing in my head, which I realised from listening to these phone recordings is the mind-space I would generally like to be in.&rdquo;
&ldquo;I love writing music to commission, but there are certain parameters set before you create it &mdash; a story or a timeline&rdquo; she adds. &ldquo;And then there&rsquo;s the music that just arrives. The way that happens is as mysterious to me as it is to anyone else. It&rsquo;s the music that wakes me up at night or flies into my head as I&rsquo;m driving, walking or cycling. It always arrives unannounced!&rdquo;
The ten-year break from creating a studio album prompted her to reflect on the purpose of her past solo recordings. She was encouraged by feedback from fellow artists, filmmakers Todd Field and Sarah Polley included, that they drew from her music as a source of inspiration for their own creativity, and from a biologist, who told her he had made a breakthrough in his study of photosynthesis while listening to one of her albums.
&ldquo;Composing Where to From consequently felt like a creative dialogue with the people who will listen to this music in the future. It&rsquo;s a big motivation to think that what I&rsquo;m doing might inspire the work of others. That is all you can hope for by releasing anything into the world. That creating something might spark something else to be created. More &lsquo;wheres&rsquo; and &lsquo;froms&rsquo;.&rdquo;
This season Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir and friends will perform the music from Where to From live, along with other key works &ldquo;from two decades of exploring the relationship between strings and voices, and the space that music both creates and captures&rdquo;. Tickets are on sale now for their concerts at the <a href="https://ticket.volksbuehne-berlin.de/eventim.webshop/webticket/seatmap?eventId=22863&amp;el=true">Volksb&uuml;hne, Berlin (1/2&nbsp;November)</a>; <a href="https://tickets.barbican.org.uk/choose-seats/2785601">London&rsquo;s Barbican Centre (21 March 2026)</a>; the <a href="https://ticket.konzerthaus.at/de/buyingflow/tickets/14743/21948/#tixsp">Vienna Konzerthaus (26 April)</a>; and <a href="https://www.listahatid.is/en/frett/hildur-gu&eth;nadottir-residency-artist-at-reykjavik-a">Reykjav&iacute;k&rsquo;s Harpa (6 June)</a> &ndash; Hildur is Artist in Residence at the 2026 Reykjav&iacute;k Arts Festival. She will also present Where to From at Amsterdam&rsquo;s Muziekgebouw as part of next year&rsquo;s Holland Festival (late June 2026).

Music from and Inspired by the Motion Picture TÁR –  Featuring New Works by Hildur Guðnadóttir

Deutsche Grammophon presents Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s exciting new film project &ndash; a groundbreaking concept album for the much-anticipated T&Aacute;R, premiered yesterday at the Venice Film Festival. The recording features music from and inspired by the movie, including a series of stunning new tracks by Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir, as well as extracts from major works by Elgar and Mahler. The concept album complements the film by presenting completed, real-life versions of the music on which we see the fictional protagonist working. The aim of the album is to reveal something of the rehearsal and recording process of orchestral music-making.
Written and directed by three-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker Todd Field, and starring two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett, T&Aacute;R tells the story of high-powered composer-conductor Lydia T&aacute;r. Blanchett immersed herself in every aspect of her character&rsquo;s life and can be seen &ndash; and heard on the DG album &ndash; conducting rehearsals of a Mahler symphony with extraordinary skill.
The film will open in US cinemas on 7 October, and worldwide in January/February 2023. The concept album will be released by Deutsche Grammophon digitally and on CD on 21 October 2022, with a vinyl edition following on 20 January 2023.
Widely acclaimed for film and TV music including the Golden Globe, Grammy and Academy Award-winning soundtrack for Joker and Emmy and Grammy-winning score for the HBO series Chernobyl, Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir is renowned as &ldquo;a supremely creative musician [and] an experimental composer to her bones&rdquo; (Gramophone). &nbsp;The Icelandic composer enjoyed further success this summer with the premiere of The Fact of the Matter at the BBC Proms in July (&ldquo;Her new piece &hellip; was that rare thing, a musical meditation on a burning contemporary issue which felt as complex as the issue itself&rdquo; The Telegraph).

Record-breaking Chernobyl composer becomes first solo woman ever to win Grammy for best score

<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">Golden Globe and Emmy-winning&nbsp;Icelandic composer&nbsp;Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&nbsp;has now got a&nbsp;GRAMMY&nbsp;to add to her growing collection, after winning the award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for her music to&nbsp;Chernobyl. She picked up the accolade at last night&rsquo;s star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles, becoming the&nbsp;first solo woman ever&nbsp;to win in that category &ndash; and the&nbsp;first female winner in 35 years&nbsp;(since Sharon Robinson, Sue Sheridan and Allee Willis won for&nbsp;Beverly Hills Cop&nbsp;in 1985).</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">Golden Globe and Emmy-winning&nbsp;Icelandic composer&nbsp;Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&nbsp;has now got a&nbsp;GRAMMY&nbsp;to add to her growing collection, after winning the award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for her music to&nbsp;Chernobyl. She picked up the accolade at last night&rsquo;s star-studded ceremony in Los Angeles, becoming the&nbsp;first solo woman ever&nbsp;to win in that category &ndash; and the&nbsp;first female winner in 35 years&nbsp;(since Sharon Robinson, Sue Sheridan and Allee Willis won for&nbsp;Beverly Hills Cop&nbsp;in 1985).</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">The latest award comes as Hildur unveils her new single and video for the beautifully haunting song&nbsp;F&oacute;lk f&aelig;r andlit&nbsp;(&ldquo;People Get Faces&rdquo;), which is out today. The Berlin-based Icelandic composer, cellist and singer is also releasing her earlier albums on&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon, where she signed as an exclusive artist in October last year.</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">Hildur&rsquo;s phenomenal run of success looks set to continue following her first&nbsp;Oscar&nbsp;and&nbsp;BAFTA&nbsp;nominations for Best Original Score for&nbsp;Joker. Her music to Todd Phillips&rsquo; dark psychological thriller, starring Joaquin Phoenix, scooped Best Original Score &ndash; Motion Picture at the&nbsp;Golden Globes, making her the&nbsp;first woman ever to win the coveted prize as solo composer. Hildur&rsquo;s&nbsp;Joker&nbsp;soundtrack also emerged from a strong field to win the 25th annual&nbsp;Critics&rsquo; Choice Award&nbsp;for Best Score just days after securing Best Score at the&nbsp;Hollywood Critics Association Awards. She was also a double-winner at the inaugural&nbsp;Society of Composers and Lyricists&rsquo; Awards, picking up Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film (Joker) and Outstanding Original Score for Television or Streaming Production (Chernobyl).</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">Hildur&rsquo;s soundtrack for&nbsp;Chernobyl&nbsp;has also amassed a series of glittering prizes. In addition to her ground-breaking&nbsp;GRAMMY&nbsp;Award, she has also won an&nbsp;Emmy&nbsp;for her score to the HBO mini-series. She was named&nbsp;Television Composer of the Year&nbsp;at the&nbsp;2019 World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent&nbsp;and is currently nominated in the Best Classical Artist category at this year&rsquo;s Global Awards. Hildur will be giving a&nbsp;live performance&nbsp;of her&nbsp;Chernobyl&nbsp;soundtrack at the Betonhalle on&nbsp;29 and 30 January&nbsp;as part of the&nbsp;CTM Festival, an event held annually in Berlin and dedicated to &ldquo;Adventurous Music and Art&rdquo;.</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">To celebrate the international acclaim and widespread creative impact of her work, Deutsche Grammophon has released Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s earlier recordings under its own imprint. Her first two solo albums,&nbsp;Mount&nbsp;A&nbsp;and&nbsp;Without Sinking, were released on 10&nbsp;January, as was&nbsp;Iridescence, an 11-minute extended-play single also featuring J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson and Sk&uacute;li Sverrisson. Her remaining two solo albums,&nbsp;Leyf&eth;u Lj&oacute;sinu&nbsp;(&ldquo;Allow the Light&rdquo;) and&nbsp;Saman&nbsp;(&ldquo;Together&rdquo;), were released a week later. The Yellow Label&rsquo;s schedule further includes the release today of a new single and video for&nbsp;F&oacute;lk f&aelig;r andlit&nbsp;(&ldquo;People Get Faces&rdquo;), a deeply moving track featuring her own vocals and inspired by the international refugee crisis.</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir is naturally delighted with the recognition her work is currently receiving, and aware of the opportunity it is giving her to speak out on behalf of female composers in general. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been doing film music for almost 20 years, so it&rsquo;s been a long time coming,&rdquo; she noted at the press conference following her Golden Globe win. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t really know exactly what happened at this point for everything to explode so massively [for me] but it&rsquo;s definitely been a beautiful year and incredible to get both of these opportunities at the same time. [Joker&nbsp;and&nbsp;Chernobyl] were so different and so all-encompassing.&rdquo;</div>
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<div class="_3Y0Lj _I3ng4 _1y3tn">She went on to say that attitudes to women were changing for good within the film and TV business. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve noticed a bit of wariness sometimes in the last decade or so to trust women for these bigger projects. But I believe that because of all the awareness that has been raised in the last couple of years about the position of women in the industry, I have benefited a lot.&rdquo;</div>

Hildur Guðnadóttir - Music from "Chernobyl"

Chernobyl&nbsp;is a five-part miniseries by producer Craig Mazin, which premiered on HBO on May 6. The series deals with the nuclear disaster which occurred in the Ukraine in April, 1986, with tragic effects on both the Soviet Union and numerous countries in Western Europe. Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir, Icelandic composer, cello player and singer, has composed the music score. The original soundtrack of Chernobyl&nbsp;is now available for download and streaming. <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/Chernobyl">Listen here</a>

The Universe That Is Bach

The infinitely inspirational power of Bach&rsquo;s music can be heard on V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson&rsquo;s Bach Reworks, bringing together atmospheric reworkings of music by composers such as Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Ben Frost, Peter Gregson and Valgeir Sigur&eth;sson &ndash; reimaginings that artfully defragment the creations of Bach. Bach Reworks / Part 2 is now available for download and streaming. Both Part 1 and Part 2 together are now available on <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/bach-reworks-part-2-vkingur-olafsson-9047">vinyl</a>.&nbsp;

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Title

THIS WILL BE US Hildur Guðnadóttir

This Will Be Us

Award-winning Icelandic composer Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s upcoming album This Will Be Us is a deeply personal reflection on memory, connection and the people who shape us. &nbsp;
On it, Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir revisits music from across her catalogue alongside two new compositions &ndash; the album reimagines works once recorded in solitude through the expansive voice of orchestra, for which she is joined by conductor and longtime collaborator Robert Ames and the DSO Berlin. The album cover artwork was created by acclaimed Icelandic-Danish artist &Oacute;lafur El&iacute;asson, with liner notes by Hildur herself and filmmaker Sarah Polley.&nbsp;
&ldquo;When I was recording, trying to be a one-person string orchestra, I always dreamed of having more people playing with me. Now, twenty years later, I decided to make that dream come true &ndash; to give that young person the anniversary gift of hearing her music played by an orchestra,&rdquo; says Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir.&nbsp;
At its heart, This Will Be Us is an album about interdependence &mdash; the friendships, family and creative kinships that make art possible. Across luminous arrangements and quietly powerful textures, Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir explores the space between darkness and light, solitude and togetherness, seeking and belonging. The result is both retrospective and forward-looking: music that honours where she has been while embracing the shared humanity that continues to guide her work.&nbsp;
Listen to a first pre-release track, the orchestral version of Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir&rsquo;s moving piece B&aelig;r. The full album is released digitally, on CD and on vinyl on 23 October.

DG Artist Store

Twenty years after the release of her debut album&nbsp;Mount A, Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir revisits the music that shaped her early artistic journey on&nbsp;This Will Be Us. Joined by conductor Robert Ames and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, she reimagines tracks from&nbsp;Mount A,&nbsp;Without Sinking&nbsp;and&nbsp;Saman&nbsp;alongside two newly composed works. Featuring Hildur as solo cellist and producer,&nbsp;This Will Be Us&nbsp;brings together music from across her early catalogue, presenting these deeply personal compositions in new orchestral arrangements.
Side A
<ol>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">Overcast</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">Birting&nbsp;</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">B&aelig;r</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">Opaque</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">In Gray</li>
<li style="padding-left: 30px;">The Song That Never Was&nbsp;</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;
Side B
<ol>
<li>Blind Sarabande</li>
<li>Ascent&nbsp;</li>
<li>Erupting Light</li>
<li>Unveiled</li>
</ol>

Hildur Guðnadóttir - News | Deutsche Grammophon

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