© Jónatan Grétarsson / DG
Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969–2018) was a highly influential Icelandic composer that fused classical and electronic music, and worked across film, television, theatre and dance. Among his most revered film scores are Denis Villeneuve’s “Prisoners”, “Sicario”, and “Arrival”, and James Marsh’s “The Theory of Everything”. Starting out as an indie rock guitarist, Jóhannsson became a driving force of the neoclassical movement in the 2000s. He died in his adopted hometown of Berlin at age 48.
A dive into Jóhann Jóhannsson’s formative early years in the Icelandic capital, where he played guitar and keyboards for rock, indie and electronic bands; collected—and formed a group based on—vintage organs; and blurred the boundaries between music and art with the progressive Kitchen Motors collective.
Easy listening for the TikTok age or sophisticated post-classical contemporary music? Regardless of where you stand on the matter of "neoclassical" music, there’s no doubt that these 7 albums by composers such as Einaudi, Richter, Jóhannsson and others have already stood the test of time.
A small island in the Northern Atlantic ocean massively shaped neoclassical music: Icelandic composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson or Ólafur Arnalds created a movement by infusing their compositions with influences from cinematic post-rock, crescendo-core and widescreen electronic music. We picked 5 of the most influential records from Iceland.
