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Friendship Survival Guide Sees Adam Wiltzie Complete a Decade-Old Collaboration with the Late Jóhann Jóhannsson 

Legendary ambient drone artist Adam Wiltzie salutes his longtime friend, the award-winning composer&nbsp;J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&nbsp;by finishing the album the pair started in 2013
Additional contributions to Friendship Survival Guide come from electronic musician Tim Hecker, the late producer Steve Albini and Grammy Award winning engineer, Francesco Donadello
The album will be released on 18 September 2026, listen&nbsp;to the first pre-release single&nbsp;White Gloves &amp; Turtlenecks&nbsp;<a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdg.lnk.to%2FFriendshipSurvivalGuide&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cconstanze.busch%40umusic.com%7Cd849013a52e640e657c108dee70814fe%7Cbbcb6b2f8c7c4e2486e46c36fed00b78%7C1%7C0%7C639202219064766946%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=7Ovznu5%2BMvsLs%2BdWGuqQYWyYRWY4Yxy5IFKVXuupYTk%3D&amp;reserved=0">here</a>.
&ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, (&hellip;) J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it's incredible. I could never have done it without him.&ldquo;&nbsp;&ndash; Adam Wiltzie
DG releases crystal-clear vinyl reissue of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s celebrated&nbsp;Orph&eacute;e&nbsp;for its 10th anniversary,
out 16 October
&nbsp;
On&nbsp;September 18th,&nbsp;Deutsche Grammophon&nbsp;will release&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, an album of orchestral psychedelic drone compositions by&nbsp;Adam Wiltzie&nbsp;and the late&nbsp;J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson. Wiltzie, co-founder of the now-legendary drone duo Stars of the Lid, and J&oacute;hannsson, the award-winning composer and orchestrator, shared a decade-long friendship and creative partnership, writing, performing and recording together prior to the latter&rsquo;s tragic passing in 2018.&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;stems from the pair&rsquo;s numerous 2013-17 studio collaborations on sessions for J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s scores of the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic&nbsp;The Theory of Everything&nbsp;(for which J&oacute;hann won a Golden Globe) and director Dennis Villeneuve&rsquo;s 2017 sci-fi thriller&nbsp;Arrival&nbsp;(for which he garnered an Academy Award nomination). The album will be available digitally, on CD and on black vinyl. Ahead of its release, two digital singles will be issued for streaming and download:&nbsp;White Gloves &amp; Turtlenecks, out today, July 31, followed by&nbsp;Dazed And Reflective Glory - Pt.1 on September 4.
After years away from the recordings, Wiltzie returned to the tapes with blessings from J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s family, completing&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;to honor J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s legacy. Some of these tracks&mdash;and the analog tape loops that form their core&mdash;remain as they were first recorded a decade ago by the pair&rsquo;s longtime friend and engineer&nbsp;Francesco Donadello, using J&oacute;hann's Revox machines. Other&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;pieces required additional recording that took place between 2023-25, with Wiltzie assisted by electronic musician&nbsp;Tim Hecker&nbsp;and composer&nbsp;Bryan Senti. Many of the guitar tracks on&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;were, in Wiltzie&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;recorded, blasted and amped&rdquo; by engineer/producer&nbsp;Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, months before his own sudden passing. The musical ghosts that permeate these recordings are staggering to behold.&nbsp;
Yet so is the camaraderie and creative love that informs the album and its name. As he often does with all his projects, Wiltzie gave original titles to the pieces at the end of the recording process, supplying them with &ldquo;hidden meanings.&rdquo; The titles on&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide &ldquo;anchor the sound in our recognizable friendship&rdquo; and &ldquo;function as a private language between the collaborators.&rdquo; For insight into how close Wiltize and J&oacute;hannsson were, look no further than the layered, starts-in-the-middle orchestral beauty of the opener, &ldquo;September Nineteen Sixty Nine,&rdquo; named after the month both men were born in, two days and an ocean apart.&nbsp;
The pair first met in 2007 in Prague, where J&oacute;hannsson was recording parts of his soon-to-be-released,&nbsp;Fordlandia, making the leap from the Icelandic shoegaze punk underground to the expansive, string-laden sound that would make him a global sensation. He&rsquo;d come to see Wiltzie&rsquo;s storied band, Stars of the Lid, then in the midst of a European tour, and introduced himself at the merch table. The pair went out drinking with friends that night, instantly bonding around similar lives and interests, and around shared musical aesthetics, ambient synths, orchestral grandeur, lo-fi tape loops and how various drones intermingle effortlessly. Wiltzie remembers the evening as a &ldquo;first-night-on-Earth-type meeting, two guys who just met but seemed like we'd known each other our entire lives.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
Over the next decade, Wiltzie and J&oacute;hannsson collaborated regularly. In 2009, Wiltzie helped book and tour manage J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s first (very DIY) tour of the U.S, and Adam would remain a regular part of J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s live band, and his live sound engineer, even as he also continued working on solo music, and launched the duo A Winged Victory for the Sullen with Dustin O&rsquo;Halloran. In 2013, J&oacute;hannsson invited Wiltzie to ghost-write and collaborate on the cues to the score for the James Marsh film,&nbsp;The&nbsp;Theory of Everything, the first time they&rsquo;d written and recorded together. Working in separate studios&mdash;J&oacute;hannsson in Berlin, Wiltzie from his home in Belgium&mdash;the collaboration was a &ldquo;back-and-forth, super-easy and quick. He loved it, and I loved what he was sending back.&rdquo; Wiltzie called the time &ldquo;very inspiring and creative&rdquo; for both men, and &ldquo;the catalyst for the idea of recording an album together.&rdquo; They began recording what J&oacute;hannsson called &ldquo;our own weird record&rdquo; right there and then; but before long, the&nbsp;Theory score won those Hollywood awards, and J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s career went, in Wiltzie&rsquo;s words, &ldquo;skyrocket to the moon,&rdquo; pushing their album idea onto the back-burner.
Yet the pair&rsquo;s friendship never receded. Wiltzie recalls the last of his regular check-in phone calls with J&oacute;hannsson, shortly before J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s passing in February 2018: &ldquo;He had just played a concert in Barcelona, and was sounding calm and lucid. I was so happy for him because he had a great show. He said, he wished he could do more shows like this, because it felt so good to be on stage.&rsquo; He was having a really good day, and seemed in a really good place. And then he was gone.&rdquo;
Speaking of&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, Wiltzie says: &ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, that one half of the duo is not around anymore, that he was a good friend of mine, and I'm still dealing with his loss. At the same time, it feels great to be finishing this music. Because you can feel J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s presence. It's this living, breathing thing, a beautiful reminder. The quintessentially most perfect and beautiful thing about collaboration is that it&rsquo;s something you could never do by yourself. It's as simple as that. J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it's incredible. I could never have done it without him.&rdquo;
(For more of Adam Wiltzie discussing his relationship with J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson and&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, read the full as-told-to text, culled from an interview with Piotr Orlov.)
Alongside the release of&nbsp;Friendship Survival Guide, September 18th will also see the release of an accompanying three-chapter short film by Belgian director Jonas Govaerts. Starring Wiltzie and the actor Jeroen Percevall (Bullhead), the film can be best described as a metaphysical nocturnal taxi ride, a visual (non-documentary) companion to the album, with scenes shot in a Gent studio and a bleak train station in Muizen.
The album&rsquo;s release date, September 18, also marks the pre-order start for the crystal-clear vinyl reissue of&nbsp;Orph&eacute;e, one of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s most successful albums celebrating its 10-year anniversary in 2026. The special edition will be released shortly afterwards, on October 16.
Upcoming live performances of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music will take place at the Vancouver International Film Festival (Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC,10/9/2026), featuring an orchestra playing to film clips of&nbsp;Prisoners,&nbsp;Arrival,&nbsp;Sicario, and&nbsp;The Theory of Everything; and at the Ambient Festival Cologne 2027 (location/date TBC), where Ensemble Musikfabrik will perform &ldquo;Drone Mass.&rdquo;&nbsp;
Upcoming North American live dates for A Winged Victory For the Sullen include Vic Theatre in Chicago (9/23/2026), The Concert Hall in Toronto (9/25/2026), Pop Montr&eacute;al (9/26/2026), and Pioneer Works in Brooklyn (9/28 &amp; 9/29/2026).&nbsp;

World Premiere Recordings of Haunting New Piano Versions of Works by Jóhann Jóhannsson Performed by Alice Sara Ott

Alice Sara Ott presents some of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s best-loved music, newly reimagined for solo piano 
J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson: Piano Works &ndash; Film Themes, the first of two digital EPs, will be released on 7 November 2025
&nbsp;
Pianist Alice Sara Ott presents the work of Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson (1969-2018) as never heard before. She has made the world premiere recordings of a new volume of piano transcriptions &ndash; published as a limited edition by Faber Music &ndash; which capture the essence of 30 of his most famous works. As composer Dustin O&rsquo;Halloran writes in the introduction to the book, &ldquo;J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s music, in its timelessness, will forever remain vibrant and alive&rdquo;.
The selection spans J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s career, from studio albums such as Englab&ouml;rn and Orph&eacute;e to the pioneering scores he wrote for documentaries or feature films such as Copenhagen Dreams, Personal Effects and the Golden-Globe-winning The Theory of Everything. Two digital EPs will be released by Deutsche Grammophon before the end of 2025, with the full 30-track album following next spring.
Though Alice Sara Ott never met J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson, she had always loved his music. In preparing for this unique project, she spoke to several of his friends and colleagues to gain greater insight into his work and processes: &ldquo;As I worked on these pieces &ndash; internalising the musical architecture, shapes and language of J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s music &ndash; it actually felt like a very personal dialogue with him.&rdquo;
Alice then travelled to Reykjav&iacute;k in July 2024 to record all 30 tracks at the studio of Grammy-nominated producer and engineer Bergur &THORN;&oacute;risson, who had himself worked with J&oacute;hannsson in the past. She played most of the pieces on &THORN;&oacute;risson&rsquo;s old upright piano, having fallen in love with the sense of nostalgia conjured by its felted sound.
&ldquo;What&rsquo;s so incredible about J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music,&rdquo; concludes Ott, &ldquo;is how his compositions, originally written for larger ensembles and different instruments, translate so beautifully to the piano. Within this more focused and intimate sound world, the writing reveals hidden nuances and enhances the purity and clarity that are so intrinsic to his music.&rdquo;
Available from 7&nbsp;November 2025, the first EP, J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson: Piano Works &ndash; Film Themes, comprises &ldquo;Beauty&rdquo; from Blind Massage, &ldquo;Dressing Up&rdquo; from Personal Effects, &ldquo;Innocence&rdquo; from Free&nbsp;the Mind and &ldquo;The Theory of Everything&rdquo; from the film of the same name. The last of these will be available to stream/download from 17&nbsp;October. The second EP, Piano Works &ndash; From Englab&ouml;rn, follows on 12&nbsp;December, and the album will be issued in all formats on 6&nbsp;March 2026.
ABOUT ALICE SARA OTT
One of the world&rsquo;s most-streamed female classical pianists, Alice Sara Ott is renowned not only for the poetry, refinement and emotional honesty of her playing, but for her innovative approach to programming and audience engagement. A global artist who performs in the most prestigious venues both as solo pianist and with the world&rsquo;s leading orchestras, she continually reimagines the repertoire, creating original multimedia experiences through cross-disciplinary collaborations.
Exploring and experimenting have long been part of the German-Japanese pianist&rsquo;s approach to her work. When touring the music from her 2021 DG album Echoes Of Life, for example, she worked with architect Hakan Demirel, whose digital video installation added a visual narrative to her live performances. Then, in 2023, she became the face of the Apple Music Classical app when she starred in its multi-platform video launch campaign, performing Beethoven&rsquo;s Piano Concerto No.&nbsp;1 with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Karina Canellakis.
Alice is also the first choice for many leading contemporary composers when it comes to premiering and recording their work. This has led to exciting collaborations with &Oacute;lafur Arnalds, Bryce Dessner, Chilly Gonzales, and Francesco Tristano, among others.
A talented illustrator and designer, Alice fosters her versatile image by merging classical music with fashion, jewellery and tech. She has worked closely with such leading international brands as Technics; JOST bags (Germany); French jewellery house Chaumet, part of the LVMH group; and German jeweller Wempe.
She became an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist in 2008, when she was only 19 years old. Her latest album, Alice Sara Ott: John Field &middot; Complete Nocturnes, was released in February 2025 to critical acclaim (&ldquo;Ott brings to these pieces an expressive touch, subtle rubato, graceful left-hand fluidity and sparkling right-hand filigree&rdquo; &ndash; Gramophone).
As a complement to the recording, she worked with director Andrew Staples to create Alice Sara Ott: Nocturne, a 45-minute film shot at the Hyperbowl virtual production house in Munich. Offering a rare glimpse into the artist&rsquo;s mind during the creative process, this immersive film went on to win the 2025 OPUS KLASSIK Audiovisual Music Production of the Year award.
ABOUT J&Oacute;HANN J&Oacute;HANNSSON
Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson was a hugely influential figure in the contemporary music scene. Disregarding any notion of barriers between different genres of music, he created his own compositional language, a fusion of classical, minimalist, ambient and electronic elements, with a frequent use of synths and drones. When he died in February 2018, at the age of just 48, he was at the height of his creative powers. His legacy lives on in his wide-ranging recorded catalogue, whose contents span everything from evocative works for small ensemble to strikingly original and multi-award-winning film scores.
Born in Reykjav&iacute;k in September 1969, J&oacute;hannsson learned piano and trombone in his youth, but was essentially a self-taught musician. He began playing in bands as a teenager, notably the indie outfit Daisy Hill Puppy Farm and the alt-rock HAM, gradually switching his focus to composition. His debut solo album, Englab&ouml;rn (&ldquo;Angels&rdquo;, 2002), revealed an early ability to translate emotions into atmospheric soundscapes and dramatic musical portraits, using a combination of acoustic and electronic instruments.
He developed his experimental idiom in studio albums such as Vir&eth;ulegu Forsetar (&ldquo;Honourable Presidents&rdquo;, 2004),&nbsp;IBM 1401, A User&rsquo;s Manual (2006) and Fordlandia (2008), while also starting to write music for theatre, television and film. In 2010-11, for example, he gained wider renown with the soundtrack he wrote for The Miners&rsquo; Hymns, American director Bill Morrison&rsquo;s wordless documentary depicting the ill-fated mining community of County Durham in the north-east of England.
Having settled in Berlin, J&oacute;hannsson began a successful working relationship with Denis Villeneuve with the score for 2013&rsquo;s Prisoners. He followed this with much-lauded soundtracks for Sicario (2015) and Arrival (2016). The former won him his second Oscar nomination &ndash; he had earned his first with the music he wrote for James Marsh&rsquo;s The Theory of Everything (2014), a soundtrack which was also Grammy-nominated and won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
In 2016 J&oacute;hannsson signed with DG, who issued both his final solo album, Orph&eacute;e (that same year) and his final soundtrack album, The Mercy (a second collaboration with Marsh), released just a week before the composer&rsquo;s death. Working closely with J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s family, friends and colleagues, DG released several posthumous albums, including Englab&ouml;rn &amp; Variations (2018); 12&nbsp;Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann (2019); and the soundtrack co-composed with Yair Elazar Glotman for Last and First Men (2020), a sci-fi film J&oacute;hannsson also co‑wrote and directed. These have since been followed by, among others, the &ldquo;contemporary oratorio&rdquo; Drone Mass (2022); the large-scale orchestral work A Prayer to the Dynamo (2023); and, now, the insightful pianistic readings offered on this album by Alice Sara Ott.

Jóhann Jóhannsson: A Lost Symphony

Deutsche Grammophon is proud to release the world premiere recording of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s A&nbsp;Prayer to the Dynamo. This major orchestral work was inspired in general by the composer&rsquo;s fascination with technology, and in particular by field recordings he made at Iceland&rsquo;s Elli&eth;a&aacute;r power plant and the writings of Henry Adams. It is paired on this new album with two suites compiled and arranged by the composer from existing material drawn from his Academy Award-nominated scores for Sicario and The Theory of Everything, also recorded here for the first time.
Dan&iacute;el Bjarnason conducts the Iceland Symphony Orchestra in recordings made at the Harpa concert hall in Reykjav&iacute;k. With booklet notes by renowned music writer and radio host John Schaefer, in conversation with J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s father, J&oacute;hann Gunnarsson, A Prayer to the Dynamo will be released on CD, vinyl (2&nbsp;LPs) and digitally on 15&nbsp;September 2023. Three taster tracks will be shared over the summer: &ldquo;A Model of the Universe&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forces of Attraction&rdquo; (both from The Theory of Everything) on 30 June and 28 July respectively, with Part&nbsp;1 of A Prayer to the Dynamo following on 25&nbsp;August.
A Prayer to the Dynamo was written in response to a commission from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. It received its first, and so far only performance at the orchestra&rsquo;s New Music Festival on 3&nbsp;February 2012. As noted by the festival&rsquo;s curator, composer Matthew Patton, it represented a turning-point in J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s career, having been written without any of the narrative constraints involved in composing for film. &ldquo;He never wrote a piece for orchestra this big, this long, and with this much freedom.&rdquo; This recording will turn a much-deserved spotlight on to a work Patton has described as a &ldquo;lost symphony&rdquo; and introduce it to audiences worldwide.
Composed for full orchestra, A Prayer to the Dynamo also features a soundtrack of recordings of electrical installations, generators and high-voltage wires made at the decommissioned Elli&eth;a&aacute;r hydroelectric power plant on the outskirts of Reykjav&iacute;k. Always fascinated by our relationship with (sometimes obsolete) technology, J&oacute;hannsson had wanted to capture the sights and sounds of Elli&eth;a&aacute;r. As he said at the time, &ldquo;I recorded the sounds [and] also filmed the station in black and white Super 8. [Together with] my experience of working with old technical images from the British coal industry in the work The Miners&rsquo; Hymns, [this] sparked in me the idea to make a short film about the power station.&rdquo;
Sadly, the film project was left unfinished on his death in 2018, but J&oacute;hannsson had also woven his Elli&eth;a&aacute;r experiences into his Winnipeg commission. For this he drew further inspiration from the work of Edison, Tesla and, primarily, a chapter in the memoirs of American historian Henry Adams (1838-1918). Entitled &ldquo;The Dynamo and the Virgin&rdquo;, this records his impressions of the 1900 Paris Expo, reflecting on the hidden force of the huge machinery he witnessed there and the similarly invisible power of religious faith, thoughts that also led him to write a &ldquo;Prayer to a Dynamo&rdquo;, as part of a longer poem. J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s notes for his film liken the Elli&eth;a&aacute;r plant to a cathedral, and ideas of scale, majesty, mystery and consolation can all be heard in the music of A&nbsp;Prayer to the Dynamo, featuring massed strings, chorale-like brass writing and soaring woodwind, all underpinned by the humming, pulsing reverberations of his field recordings.
The album also includes two short suites of music from the composer&rsquo;s soundtracks for The Theory of Everything and Sicario, both of which were nominated for Oscars and an array of other awards, with the former winning the Golden Globe for best original score. No longer tied to the narrative demands of a film, J&oacute;hannsson arranged his suites based on purely musical decisions. His Theory of Everything suite, for example, ends with the original opening track, &ldquo;Cambridge, 1963&rdquo;, and begins with &ldquo;A Model of the Universe&rdquo;. These frame a trio of pieces unified by the sound of the celesta, to create a lyrical sequence of episodes.&nbsp;
By contrast, in just three concise movements, starting with the stark sounds of &ldquo;Target&rdquo;, the Sicario suite captures the feeling of menace and impending violence that pervades the film. A solo cello takes centre stage in &ldquo;Desert Music&rdquo; before the closing track, &ldquo;Melancholia&rdquo;, brings the suite, and the album, to an end with what Variety has described as &ldquo;the kind of quiet, if rueful, beauty one has come to expect from J&oacute;hannsson&rdquo;.
These three world premiere recordings add yet more breadth and depth to the composer&rsquo;s discography. As noted by Gramophone last year in its review of Drone Mass, &ldquo;J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music gives the impression of having arrived in a time capsule from a distant planet that is a mirror image of our own. His own absence now adds further mystery and magic to his music&rsquo;s unique sound world.&rdquo;

Reissue of Jóhann Jóhannsson's tribute to the traditions of working-class culture

J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s The Miners&rsquo; Hymns exquisitely captured the dignity and despair of the ill-fated mining community of the northeast of England. Written to accompany American director Bill Morrison&rsquo;s powerful film paying homage to the miners of County Durham, it was initially released in 2011. The music still stands today as a monument remembering the life and death of the great coal mines, and the people they once sustained.
Deutsche Grammophon has now reissued the celebrated double LP. Each of the album&rsquo;s six original tracks bears a title taken from the Marxist and labour slogans proudly displayed on the trade union banners carried at the annual Durham Miners&rsquo; Gala. J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s compositions, recorded in the vast space of Durham Cathedral, combine echoes of the brass bands that still accompany the Gala procession today with organ sounds, percussion and ghostly traces of electronics. They are complemented by the addition of a previously unissued bonus track, &lsquo;Centennial&rsquo;, a piece J&oacute;hannsson created to celebrate the 100th birthday of his grandmother in 2004 and which is played here on a crank organ by his father, J&oacute;hann Gunnarsson.
The reissue of The Miners&rsquo; Hymns includes additional material in the form of a specially commissioned essay, in which Bill Morrison recalls his long friendship with the composer. &ldquo;As the last chords echoed through the Cathedral [at the work&rsquo;s live premiere in Durham, in 2010], we glanced around to see grown men openly weeping in the back. And we both looked at each other and exhaled a bit knowing we had passed some test.&rdquo; The album artwork also now contains photos of the two men taken at the beginning of their collaboration in 2009 and at their last meeting, shortly before J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s tragic death in February 2018.
J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music and Bill Morrison&rsquo;s compilation of monochrome archive footage and colour aerial shots of the closed mines of County Durham speak volumes about the disappearance of a culture and the brutal manner in which the national miners&rsquo; strike of 1984 was handled by the government of the day. The album embraces melancholy as well as the spirit of celebration to create what the BBC&rsquo;s reviewer described following its first release as &ldquo;a brooding, dark tribute focused on the appalling hardships of pit labour and the undeniable salience of the trade union movement in times of political cataclysm&rdquo;.
The Miners&rsquo; Hymns unfolds slowly and leaves plenty of space for reverent silences. It opens with &ldquo;They Being Dead Yet Speaketh&rdquo; &ndash; in which mournful chords from the organ are gradually taken up by the brass ensemble, with occasional percussive punctuation &ndash; and grows in stature and sound in numbers such as &ldquo;Industrial and Provident, We Unite to Assist Each Other&rdquo;. The brass chorale that emerges in the album&rsquo;s final track, &ldquo;The Cause of Labour Is the Hope of the World&rdquo;, heralds what &ldquo;feels like an epiphany, a generous flooding of light that casts a backward glow on all the gloom and pallor that preceded it &hellip; It&rsquo;s a quietly exhilarating &lsquo;hallelujah&rsquo; that depends entirely on the previous 45 minutes of buildup for its weight&rdquo; (Pitchfork.com).

DG Releases Jóhann Jóhannsson's Previously Unrecorded "Drone Mass"

Deutsche Grammophon is honoured to release the eagerly anticipated world premiere recording of&nbsp;J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s Drone Mass. Described by its composer as &ldquo;a&nbsp;contemporary oratorio&rdquo;, this exceptional work is written for voices, string quartet and electronics. It was commissioned by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME), who have now recorded Drone Mass together with&nbsp;vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices and its Artistic Director Paul Hillier. Both ACME and Theatre of&nbsp;Voices worked closely with J&oacute;hannsson on many occasions &ndash; in concert, on tour and in the studio. Out today, 18 March 2022, in digital format as well as on CD and 180g vinyl, this new album not only immortalises one of the Icelandic composer&rsquo;s defining works, it also stands as a moving tribute from some of the long-time collaborators with whom he worked closely during his illustrious career.
Drone Mass is a profoundly atmospheric work, at times reminiscent of the meditative minimalism of composers such as P&auml;rt or G&oacute;recki, and represents what J&oacute;hannsson called &ldquo;a distillation of a lot of influences and obsessions&rdquo;. One of these was, as the title suggests, his fascination with the musical device of the drone. Here, his drones have a motivic-like role, shifting and shimmering with hypnotic effect, conjuring different moods, from unsettling to uplifting, as the work progresses.
Beginning with strings and voices, but slowly integrating Jóhannsson&rsquo;s electronic techniques into its landscape, Drone Mass draws on material from the so-called &ldquo;Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians&rdquo; &ndash; part of the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945 &ndash; including a hymn the composer spoke of as &ldquo;a seemingly meaningless series of vowels&rdquo;. Both the enigmatic nature of the chosen texts and the sheer beauty of his vocalise-style writing add to the spiritual quality of the work as a whole. &nbsp;
The album was recorded in May 2019 at Copenhagen&rsquo;s Garnisonskirken (Garrison Church) and produced by Francesco Donadello, another of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s regular collaborators. ACME were joined by internationally renowned Danish vocal group Theatre of Voices and their Artistic Director Paul Hillier. They too have a very close connection with Drone Mass, having performed it twice in the US, and in Kr&aacute;kow, with J&oacute;hannsson and ACME. Most recently, ACME and Theatre of Voices gave a further performance in Athens, just four months after the composer&rsquo;s untimely death in Berlin on 9&nbsp;February 2018, at the age of 48. Their recording of the mysterious, and timeless, Drone Mass is a further reminder of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s rare visionary talent.

A Minimalist Masterpiece – World Premiere Recording of Jóhann Jóhannsson's 'Drone Mass'

The previously unrecorded Drone Mass was described by its composer, the late J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson, as &ldquo;a&nbsp;contemporary oratorio&rdquo;. Written for voices, string quartet and electronics, it was commissioned and premiered by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, aka ACME, who toured and recorded with J&oacute;hannsson for almost ten years. Now they have made the world premiere recording of this richly atmospheric work, in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, conducted by Paul Hillier, also a multiple Grammy Award-winner. The members of both ACME and Theatre of Voices worked closely with the composer many times, both in the studio and in multiple live performances and tours, before his untimely death. The album will be released by Deutsche Grammophon, digitally as well as on CD and 180g vinyl, on 18&nbsp;March 2022.
Drone Mass is an extraordinary, mysterious accomplishment which at times bears comparison with the meditative minimalism of composers such as Arvo P&auml;rt or Henryk G&oacute;recki. Beginning with strings and voices, but slowly integrating Jóhannsson&rsquo;s electronic techniques into its landscape, the work represents what the Icelandic composer called &ldquo;a distillation of a lot of influences and obsessions&rdquo;.
As the title suggests, those obsessions include his fascination with the musical device of the drone. This was something J&oacute;hannsson felt as a visceral presence, &ldquo;a fundamental vibration that anchors music and gives you a foundation&rdquo;. He&nbsp;often used both acoustic and electronic drones &ndash; sometimes gently underpinning the music, sometimes drowning out everything else. The new meaning the word has acquired in modern times gave it additional layers of resonance for him. Here, his drones have a motivic-like role, shifting and shimmering with hypnotic effect, conjuring different moods, from unsettling to uplifting, as the work progresses.
Adding to that mesmerising effect are the vocal lines, at times redolent of Renaissance polyphony, particularly in &ldquo;Two is Apocryphal&rdquo; and &ldquo;Moral Vacuums&rdquo;. Having long been interested in writing a large-scale vocal work, J&oacute;hannsson found his source material in the so-called &ldquo;Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians&rdquo;, part of the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945. Among other texts, he uses a hymn described as consisting of &ldquo;a seemingly meaningless series of vowels&rdquo;. Both the enigmatic nature of these Gnostic writings and the sheer beauty of the vocalise-style writing add to the spiritual quality of the work as a whole. &nbsp;
Given the origins of the Drone Mass texts, it is particularly appropriate that the work&rsquo;s 2015 premiere took place in the spectacular setting of the Egyptian Temple of Dendur at New York&rsquo;s Metropolitan Museum of Art. J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music filled this majestic space, captivating all present. Alongside the ACME players were Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, with the composer himself controlling the waves of electronic sound.
The album was recorded during May 2019 at the Garnisonskirken in Copenhagen. It was produced by Francesco Donadello, another friend and regular associate of Jóhannsson&rsquo;s. ACME were joined by internationally renowned Danish vocal group Theatre of Voices and their Artistic Director Paul Hillier. They too have a very close connection with Drone Mass, having performed it twice in the US, and in Kr&aacute;kow, with J&oacute;hannsson and ACME. Most recently, ACME and Theatre of Voices gave a further performance in Athens, just four months after the composer&rsquo;s death. Theatre of Voices also appear on other recordings of Jóhannsson&rsquo;s work, including Orph&eacute;e, Englab&ouml;rn &amp; Variations, Arrival and Last and First Men. The composer was known for his organic and inclusive manner of writing and performing, along with his collaborative spirit, which is at the heart of this recording.
By the time Drone Mass was first unveiled, Jóhannsson was already enjoying considerable mainstream success, thanks in part to his score for Denis Villeneuve&rsquo;s Sicario (2015), which followed his work on the Canadian director&rsquo;s Prisoners (2013). He won a Golden Globe in 2015 for his score to James Marsh&rsquo;s The Theory of Everything, and a year later his contributions to Villeneuve&rsquo;s celebrated Arrival earned him an Academy Award nomination. In addition, 2016 saw the release of Orph&eacute;e, his acclaimed debut album for Deutsche Grammophon. Jóhannsson died in Berlin on 9&nbsp;February, 2018, aged 48.
This eagerly awaited recording of Drone Mass marks the belated arrival of one of the composer&rsquo;s defining works. It is also a moving and personal tribute from some of those who knew him best.
ACME players for this recording are Clarice Jensen, artistic director and cello; Ben Russell, violin; Laura Lutzke, violin; and Caleb Burhans, viola.
Theatre of Voices singers for this recording are Else Torp, Kate Macoboy, Signe Asmussen, Iris Oja, Paul Bentley-Angell, Jakob Skjoldborg, Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Steffen Bruun Paul Hillier, conductor

Jóhann Jóhannsson: A Tribute

The tragic death of J&oacute;hannsson on February 9th 2018, following a long career of creating emotive and groundbreaking music that touched listeners around the world, came as a shock not only to those who personally knew him &ndash; but also to those who knew and loved his music.

In a poignant film tribute to Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson &ndash;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvhhTclmXHQ&amp;feature=emb_imp_woyt">On the trails of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson</a> &ndash; made just after his sudden death in 2018, the artist&rsquo;s father reveals how his son had showed an interest in music from as early as three years old: &ldquo;I was playing in a brass band then and I used to take him with me to rehearsals and he sat there quietly&hellip;and when we came home he wanted us to put on a brass-band record and he stood in front of the sound equipment and conducted the music with my drumsticks.&rdquo;
The tragic death of J&oacute;hannsson on February 9th 2018, following a long career of creating emotive and groundbreaking music that touched listeners around the world, came as a shock not only to those who personally knew him &ndash; but also to those who knew and loved his music. The shock of his premature passing prompted public tributes from everyone from the Pet Shop Boys to Darren Aronofsky and Steve Jablonsky, with many pointing out how J&oacute;hannsson was at the peak of his career and his creative powers when he passed away.
From his early experiments in his hometown of Reykjavik with the progressive Kitchen Motors label and his unique Apparat Organ Quartet project (formed in 1999), J&oacute;hann slowly but surely carved out a distinctive global niche within the heady realms of classical and film music. His sharp musical erudition and natural curiosity led him constantly towards the discovery of new sounds, arrangements, collaborations and compositions.
His quest to create original and emotionally dynamic musical worlds can be easily attested to by tracing his solo album releases: the innocent beauty of his debut Englab&ouml;rn (2002); the minimalist quietude of follow up Virdelgu Forestar (2004); the bolder, more enigmatic IBM 1401, AUser&rsquo;s Manual &ndash; based on recordings from his father&rsquo;s work as a computer technician at IBM; and the foreboding socio-political dystopias of Fordlandia.
Many of these records being inherently cinematic, it&rsquo;s no surprise that the decade or so before his death saw J&oacute;hann take more ambitious &ndash; and startlingly successful &ndash; leaps into the world of film music, starting with his music for the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (2014), for which he won the Golden Globe for best original score and was also nominated for an Academy Award. This was followed by several more award-winning collaborations with Canadian auteur director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival), among several others.
Indeed, J&oacute;hann was so prolific that several of his projects were still unreleased at the time of his passing, including the Nicolas Cage thriller&nbsp;Mandy,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/the-mercy-soundtrack-johannsson-569">The Mercy</a>, Mary Magdalene and Christopher Robin. On March 18th this year, another very special project will also be released by Deutsche Grammophon, who have already paid tribute to Johann&rsquo;s immense legacy with 2019&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/johann-johannsson-retrospective-i-10383">Retrospective 1</a> and 2020&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/johann-johannsson-retrospective-ii-11697">Retrospective II</a>;&nbsp; this previously unrecorded project is called Drone Mass.
Originally written as a contemporary oratorio for voices, strings, quartet and electronics, it was commissioned and premiered by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) who toured and recorded with J&oacute;hann for around a decade, performing the work in places such as the U.S. and Poland. The brand new recordings were made in Copenhagen in collaboration with more of J&oacute;hann&rsquo; long-term collaborators: Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, who worked on <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/johannsson-orphee-6626">Orph&eacute;e</a>, <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/englaboern-variations-johannsson-1569">Englab&ouml;rn &amp; Variations</a>, <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/arrival-soundtrack-johannsson-884">Arrival</a> and <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/last-and-first-men-johannsson-11917">Last and First Men</a> and more; vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth (also Grammy Award winners), producer Francesco Donadello, and ACME Artistic Director Paul Hillier.
Informed by the so-called &ldquo;Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians&rdquo;, part of the Nag Hammadi library discovered in 1945, Drone Mass is a meditative and mysterious accomplishment, undulating between uplifting and unsettling moods and bringing together, in Jóhann&rsquo;s own words, &ldquo;a distillation of a lot of influences and obsessions&rdquo;. Reminiscent of composers such as Arvo P&auml;rt and Henryk G&oacute;recki, the recording feels not only minimal but often timeless, moving through disquieting, otherworldly sounds, ghostly vocals and weightless strings, and spectral echoes of Renaissance choral music.
It is yet another side of the naturally diverse, multi-talented visionary that we all still sorely miss.
&nbsp;
Paul Sullivan

Music from the Heart - Jóhann Jóhannsson Retrospective II

Our celebration of the life and work of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson continues with Retrospective II, featuring previously unreleased music from Orph&eacute;e and Arrival including a new reworking of Orph&eacute;e&rsquo;s &ldquo;Flight from the City&rdquo; by fellow DG artist V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson. The Deluxe Edition includes a bonus DVD of the concert film &ldquo;Live at Funkhaus Berlin&rdquo; (2016).

&ldquo;My music is a way of communicating very directly with people and with people&rsquo;s emotions,&rdquo; he observed. &ldquo;I try to make music that doesn&rsquo;t need layers of complexity or obfuscation to speak to people. Music should resonate with them on an emotional level &ndash; simply and directly.&rdquo; (J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson)
Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson was at the height of his creative powers when he died suddenly in February 2018. His legacy lives on, however, through his catalogue of recordings, which encompasses everything from evocative compositions for small ensemble to strikingly original film soundtracks.
Retrospective II, released today, 18 September &ndash; the day before what would have been the composer&rsquo;s 51st birthday &ndash; pays further tribute to one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music. Complementing the April 2019 release of Retrospective I, which included such seminal works as The Miners&rsquo; Hymns, Copenhagen Dreams and Free the Mind, this second and final volume offers a wide-ranging selection of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s multi-award-winning film scores and influential studio albums.
It is available as a limited deluxe hardcover book edition of 8 CDs, including 5 previously unreleased tracks (one of them a new V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson re-work of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s most successful streaming track &lsquo;Flight from the City&rsquo;, two new essays by Wyndham Wallace and John Schaefer, a bonus-DVD documenting his memorable concert at Funkhaus Berlin in December 2016, and a large number of rare photographs offering deep insights into J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s biography and music. The 5 unreleased tracks are also released as a digital audio EP and the new V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson re-work of &lsquo;Flight from the City&rsquo; is also released as a <a href="https://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/catalogue/products/johannsson-flight-from-the-city-olafsson-re-work-visual-single-12067" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video single</a>.
---
Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson was at the height of his creative powers when he died suddenly in February 2018. His legacy lives on, however, through his catalogue of recordings, which encompasses everything from evocative compositions for small ensemble to strikingly original film soundtracks.
Retrospective II spans the remarkable inventive range of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s multi-award-winning film scores. First on the list is his Golden Globe-winning and Oscar- and Grammy-nominated soundtrack for James Marsh&rsquo;s Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything (2014) which, as the composer himself noted, reflects Hawking&rsquo;s &ldquo;zest for life&rdquo; as well as a sense of nostalgic melancholy.
Also included here are J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s groundbreaking compositions for two films directed by Denis Villeneuve: the action-thriller Sicario (2015) and science-fiction drama Arrival (2016). The former score, it too nominated for an Academy Award, picks up on the dark and violent atmosphere of the film, blurring the line between acoustic and electronic sounds. The Arrival soundtrack, meanwhile, mirrors the theme of communication explored in the film, using strands of real and altered voices to form a thread that runs throughout. The score was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy, and is enhanced here by the addition of two previously unreleased tracks. &ldquo;Arrival built bridges with the unknown and J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s sounds definitely help create that illusion,&rdquo; says Villeneuve. &ldquo;I cannot imagine Sicario or Arrival without his music.&rdquo;
The last film score included here was written for The Mercy (2018), again directed by James Marsh, an account of Donald Crowhurst&rsquo;s doomed attempt to sail solo around the world. J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music intensifies the portrayal of a man&rsquo;s gradual descent into madness in a story that fascinated the composer because it recalled &ldquo;the heroism and hubris you find in ancient myth&rdquo;.
The soundtrack for The Mercy combines new music with tracks from earlier albums, including J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s first solo album Englab&ouml;rn and his critically acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon debut, Orph&eacute;e (2016), both of which are included on Retrospective II, as is Englab&ouml;rn&rsquo;s companion piece, Englab&ouml;rn &amp; Variations (2018). Fifteen years after the release of Englab&ouml;rn, described by Pitchfork as sixteen miniatures transformed into &ldquo;an exquisite listening experience&rdquo;, J&oacute;hannsson decided to not only remaster the album but also to rework several of its tracks. Friends and colleagues such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, A Winged Victory for the Sullen and Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir added their own reworkings to create a series of reflections on a landmark of early 21st-century composition.
As for Orph&eacute;e, it was inspired by versions as different as Ovid&rsquo;s and Jean Cocteau&rsquo;s of the ancient story of the poet Orpheus, a myth that can be read as a metaphor for artistic creation. The album is presented here with three additional and previously unreleased tracks, including a new reworking of &ldquo;Flight from the City&rdquo; by J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s friend and collaborator V&iacute;kingur &Oacute;lafsson. These three tracks, together with the two new pieces from Arrival, will be released as a digital EP on the same date as Retrospective II, 18 September. As part of his European tour of Orph&eacute;e, J&oacute;hannsson performed at the Funkhaus in Berlin in December 2016 with the musicians of Echo Collective. The film of that concert is released for the first time as a bonus DVD with Retrospective II, and will also be released digitally on 25 September.
The final album in this volume is 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann (2019), a twelve-movement string quartet inspired by the composer&rsquo;s conversations about art, politics and more with Berlin-based artist Thilo Heinzmann. It is performed by members of Echo Collective, who were invited by J&oacute;hannsson to help him realise a definitive version of the work. After his sudden death, however, they were left to base their performance decisions on the conversations they had had about the quartet and their previous experience of performing the music from Orph&eacute;e with him. When the album was released last year The Guardian praised its &ldquo;grave, stately beauty&rdquo;.
Retrospective II documents the work of a pioneer among contemporary composers, one who freely crossed boundaries between genres and different artforms. J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s compositions embrace everything from minimalism and drone basses to electronic and classical orchestral sounds to create a deeply personal musical language.

Jóhann Jóhannsson’s previously unpublished soundtrack score to Personal Effects

&ldquo;J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s work was quickly and rightfully compared to that of some of the finest composers in the world&hellip;&rdquo; (David Hollander, director of Personal Effects)
J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music was in high demand in Hollywood. The Icelandic composer&rsquo;s unique voice, with its distinctive blend of minimalism and ambient electronic sounds, was ideally suited to the medium of film. Deutsche Grammophon pays tribute to his work with the world premiere release of his music for Personal Effects, a sublime collection of sixteen previously unpublished tracks that form an essential addition to the J&oacute;hannsson catalogue. Personal Effects will be available digitally and on vinyl from 29 May 2020.&nbsp;
The new album originated in 2009 as the score to director David Hollander&rsquo;s feature film debut. Hollander had fallen in love with J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music four years earlier while exploring an art installation on Santa Monica beach in California. Although transfixed by the multimedia exhibition&rsquo;s soundtrack, he left before discovering its composer&rsquo;s name. By chance the producer of Personal Effects had visited the same exhibition and also been hooked by what he heard. &ldquo;It was decided,&rdquo; the director recalls. &ldquo;This mystery person would be our composer.&rdquo;
The quest led Hollander to J&oacute;hannsson. Within a week of their first conversation, the composer had drafted music for sections of the film and recorded his ideas on piano. What followed was an intense three-month creative collaboration. J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s music, with its meditations on grief and loss, brought an extra dimension to Personal Effects, a romantic drama starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Ashton Kutcher as two grief-stricken individuals struggling to come to terms with the violent deaths of those closest to them. &ldquo;J&oacute;hann consistently reached into the images and emotions of the film to create something better than anything I had ever imagined,&rdquo; notes David Hollander.
The two men became friends as they worked together on Personal Effects and Hollander has found great comfort in listening to the soundtrack since J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s death in February 2018. He describes his friend as &ldquo;a kind genius&rdquo;, justly celebrated for his pioneering scores, including those for Denis Villeneuve&rsquo;s Sicario, Arrival and Prisoners and James Marsh&rsquo;s The Theory of Everything, for which he won a 2015 Golden Globe.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I never imagined this score would be something that would help me not only to cope with J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s death, but to feel his presence and be moved, time and time again, by his work,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;It has. And I hope, for those of you who knew and loved him, or simply loved his work, it does the same for you.&rdquo;

Last and First Men is J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s poetic swansong. The Icelandic composer was working on the score of his magnum opus at the time of his death in February 2018, distilling and intensifying the symphonic soundworld that he had premiered at Manchester International Festival (MIF) little more than six months earlier.

Last and First Men is J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s poetic swansong. The Icelandic composer was working on the score of his magnum opus at the time of his death in February 2018, distilling and intensifying the symphonic soundworld that he had premiered at Manchester International Festival (MIF) little more than six months earlier. J&oacute;hannsson devised the multimedia work&rsquo;s visual concept, travelled to the former Yugoslavia to shoot footage of isolated locations and futuristic war memorials, then set about marrying haunting images to music. The final version of the film, which tells the story of the extinction of humanity, was completed by Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Gr&oslash;vlen. It is narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, and features performances by several of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s regular musical collaborators, including members of Theatre of Voices, and the Academy Award-winning Hildur Gu&eth;nad&oacute;ttir on vocals, cello and percussion.
Last and First Men received its world premiere this week on 25 February at the 2020 Berlinale Film Festival. The audio album of the original score is released digitally to streaming services. The film is also released on Blu-ray, packaged together with the original score recording on CD; the Blu-ray will be released as part of a Limited Deluxe Vinyl Art-Edition, which also comprises three art prints.
Available internationally <a href="https://DG.lnk.to/johannssonLAFM">here</a>.

Capturing the Essence

A year has passed since the untimely death of Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson. In tribute to the exceptional artist and musical storyteller, Deutsche Grammophon celebrates the life and music of J&oacute;hannsson with a two-volume retrospective edition. The deluxe hardcover book edition features seven albums of J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s earlier works, including <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/MinersHymns">The Miners&rsquo; Hymns</a>, <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/CopenhagenDreams">Copenhagen Dreams</a>, <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/VirthuleguForsetar">Vir&eth;ulegu Forsetar</a>, and the previously unreleased soundtrack to the documentary <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/whiteblackboy">White Black Boy</a>. It's the first part of a two-volume release with RETROSPECTIVE II&nbsp;being released in 2020.
&nbsp;The first part is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MPK2XTX/">out now.</a>

Our Tribute To The Late Jóhann Jóhannsson

The Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson was known for his inventiveness in allowing music and other art forms to communicate with one another in his works. British philanthropist and art collector Richard Thomas was fascinated by this process of breaking down artistic boundaries. He came up with the idea of commissioning a work that would establish a dialogue between music and the visual arts, and he instantly thought of J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson and Berlin-based painter Thilo Heinzmann. Over a period of four years, the two artists met up from time to time and engaged in a series of in-depth conversations about art, politics and their own lives. Working to, or rather with, a painting by Heinzmann, J&oacute;hannsson composed a new work for string quartet, 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann, recorded by Echo Collective, which is released posthumously today, September 20, the day after what would have been his 50th birthday. <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/johannsson_conversations">Listen to the album here</a>.

Jóhann Jóhannsson – Retrospective

The first part of a two-volume project in celebration of the late J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s legacy, RETROSPECTIVE I&nbsp;will feature J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s early works as well as the unreleased soundtrack of the Danish documentary film White Black Boy, now available for download and streaming. The film White Black Boy&nbsp;follows a boy named Shida, who, like most children with albinism in Tanzania, was taken away from his parents to be protected from witchcraft related killings. Listen to the new release <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/WhiteBlackBoy">here</a>.

The selection of early works that have been chosen for Deutsche Grammophon&rsquo;s &ldquo;RETROSPECTIVE I&rdquo;, the first part of a two-volume project in celebration of his legacy, show J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson to have been a composer of imagination and versatility in equal measure. J&oacute;hannsson wrote &ldquo;D&iacute;s&rdquo; based on music written for the film of the same name by director Silja Hauksdottir. Like &ldquo;Englab&ouml;rn&rdquo;, which was based on music originally written for the theatre, &ldquo;D&iacute;s&rdquo; elaborates and expands on themes used in the film. J&oacute;hannsson had asked members of the bands Funerals, Singapore Sling, Slowblow and Trabant to join him, along with fellow Kitchen Motors founder Hilmar Jensson and Ragnheidur Grondal, one of Iceland's best beloved singers. This gives the album a loose and intricate feel, with the mood veering from joyous to sad, on the surface buoyant and playful, but revealing a strong melancholic undercurrent. &ldquo;D&iacute;s&rdquo;&nbsp;is now available for <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/dis">download and streaming.</a>

The selection of early works that have been chosen for Deutsche Grammophon&rsquo;s &ldquo;RETROSPECTIVE I&rdquo;, the first part of a two-volume project in celebration of his legacy, show J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson to have been a composer of imagination and versatility in equal measure. The earliest recording is Vir&eth;ulegu Forsetar&nbsp;(2004), an one-hour-long piece for an eleven-piece brass ensemble, percussion, electronics, organ and piano. It was composed with a specific site in mind, the Hallgr&iacute;mskirkja (Hallgrimur&rsquo;s church) in Reykjavik, Iceland, and was recorded there. The piece has Englab&ouml;rn's quiet, elegiac beauty, but abandons the brevity of the first album's exquisite miniatures in favour of an extended form that reveals a long, slow process. Vir&eth;ulegu Forsetar&nbsp;is now available for <a href="https://dg.lnk.to/VirthuleguForsetar">download and streaming</a>.

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Adam Wiltzie, J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson Bryan Senti Budapest Art Orchestra Peter Pejtsik

FRIENDSHIP SURVIVAL GUIDE Adam Wiltzie, Jóhann Jóhannsson

Friendship Survival Guide

The upcoming album Friendship Survival Guide by the late Icelandic composer J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson and close friend and composer Adam Wiltzie features a number of collaborative orchestral psychedelic drone compositions.
Wiltzie, co-founder of the now-legendary drone duo Stars of the Lid, and J&oacute;hannsson, the award-winning composer and orchestrator, shared a decade-long friendship and creative partnership, writing, performing and recording together prior to the latter&rsquo;s tragic passing in 2018. Friendship Survival Guide stems from the pair&rsquo;s numerous 2013-17 studio collaborations on sessions for J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s scores of the 2014 Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything and director Dennis Villeneuve&rsquo;s 2017 sci-fi thriller Arrival. &nbsp;
After years away from the recordings, Wiltzie returned to the tapes with blessings from J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s family, completing Friendship Survival Guide to honor J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s legacy. &ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, (&hellip;) J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it&rsquo;s incredible. I could never have done it without him&ldquo;, says Wiltzie.
The full album will be released digitally and on CD on 18 September. Order the CD edition in the <a href="https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/de-de/collections/johann-johannsson">DG Store</a>.
Listen to a second pre-release track, Dazed And Reflective Glory - Pt. 1.

Amazon physisch Album/Track

DG Artist Store

Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;brings together recordings by Adam Wiltzie and J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson, born from their close artistic collaboration. The pieces were created during shared sessions between 2013 and 2017 and were sensitively continued and completed by Wiltzie following J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s passing.
The result is a richly layered soundscape that moves between orchestral expansiveness, electronic textures, and floating drones. The music preserves the original intimacy of their collaboration while integrating subtle additions that respect and expand the character of the material. Contributions from artists such as Tim Hecker, Francesco Donadello, and Steve Albini further enrich and deepen this sonic world.
Friendship Survival Guide&nbsp;is more than a posthumously completed release. It is a testament to an enduring friendship and creative bond &mdash; an album that continues J&oacute;hann J&oacute;hannsson&rsquo;s musical legacy while opening new perspectives.
&ldquo;Our friendship is the story here, (&hellip;) J&oacute;hann&rsquo;s not there anymore, but this artifact we created together, is alive and it's incredible. I could never have done it without him.&ldquo; &ndash; Adam Wiltzie

Jóhann Jóhannsson - News | Deutsche Grammophon

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