Hildur Guðnadóttir

Hildur Guðnadóttir, an Icelandic cellist, composer, and producer who has earned multiple awards, is recognized for experimental solo recordings that often carry a cinematic quality. She has worked extensively with the late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and with a wide array of musicians ranging from Animal Collective and Throbbing Gristle to Múm and Sunn 0))). Her film scores include Mary Magdalene and Sicario: Day of the Soldado. Although she resides in Germany and has issued material on labels such as Morr, Oral, and Fat Cat, her most celebrated solo releases—Mount A from 2006 and Saman from 2014—appeared on the English imprint Touch Music under the Lost in Hildurness moniker. In later years she devoted greater attention to scoring projects, among them the 2018 Netflix documentary Strong Island and the 2019 feature Joker.

Born in Reykjavík in 1982, she took up the cello early and progressed through the Reykjavík Music Academy before pursuing composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts; she eventually moved to Berlin for further study at Universitat der Kunste. Despite her classical background she maintained strong connections to Iceland’s experimental band community, especially the pop collective Múm, with whom she has worked repeatedly. A 2005 electro-acoustic collaboration with German musician Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) under the name Mr. Schmuck’s Farm produced the album Good Sound. The following year brought several milestones, including the solo debut Mount A and joint efforts with the duo Angel—comprising Dresselhaus and Pan Sonic’s Ilpo Väisänen—as well as Ben Frost, Nico Muhly, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. Subsequent activity encompassed appearances on recordings by Múm, Pan Sonic, and Valgeir Sigurðsson, plus the 2009 solo album Without Sinking, which included contributions from Jóhannsson, Skúli Sverrisson, and her father, the clarinetist and composer Guðni Franzson.

Further partnerships with Hauschka and the Knife ensued. In 2011 she entered film scoring with the horror movie The Bleeding House. Her 2012 release Leyfðu Ljósinu consisted entirely of solo cello captured live at the Music Research Centre in York, England. Over the ensuing period she concentrated increasingly on cinema, supplying music for the 2013 German-Turkish drama Jîn and the 2016 Icelandic thriller The Oath while also performing cello on Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario (2015) and Arrival (2016), both scored by Jóhannsson. She issued her fourth solo album, Saman, in 2014. Together with Jóhannsson she composed the score for Mary Magdalene; after his sudden death in early 2018 she participated in the posthumous reissue of his debut as Englabörn & Variations. That same year she also completed scores for Sicario: Day of the Soldado and Strong Island. In 2019 her Emmy-winning music for the HBO miniseries Chernobyl appeared alongside the soundtrack for the Joaquin Phoenix film Joker, which earned her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination.