Henning Sommerro built substantial careers across classical composition for film and theater, alongside pop and folk idioms, while establishing himself as a significant educator. His recorded output stretches back to the 1970s, when several successes appeared with the folk ensemble Vårsøg. In 2024 the Trondheimsolisten captured three of his pieces on the release People of the Book.
Born May 3, 1952, in Surnadal along Norway’s western coastline near a fjord’s end, Sommerro spent his childhood on the family farm. Only at sixteen did he begin piano and organ lessons at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music. Trondheim remained his principal base for most of his life. Between 1974 and 1976 he held church-organist posts in two Norwegian villages, performed with the rock group The Tramps (subsequently renamed Mad Movies), and in 1977 entered Vårsøg, whose self-titled album drawn from a Norwegian poem became a hit that year. He then pursued two further years of organ and composition study in Basel, Switzerland. Upon returning he assumed leadership of the regional theater Teatret Vårt and, in 1985, transferred to Trondheim’s Trøndelag Theater while also serving as music consultant for Norwegian Radio.
More than 140 theater productions and films have featured his scores since the late 1970s. One such project, the 1988 remake of the 1969 film An-Magritt, earned him a nomination for the Nordic Council Music Prize. Additional Vårsøg albums followed, including a 1992 recording with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. Sommerro contributed keyboards to numerous Norwegian pop and folk ensembles and joined folk musician Aly Bain for the 1996 album Follow the Moonstone. In 1990 he joined the faculty of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim and thereafter composed larger-scale classical works often infused with folk elements, among them the Partisan Requiem (2001) and a Magnificat (2009). Frequent partnerships linked him to the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and the Trondheimsolisten chamber ensemble. The former issued Borders, a triptych of interrelated Sommerro pieces, in 2023; the following year the Trondheimsolisten released People of the Book, whose three movements address themes drawn from the principal religions of the Middle East.
