Jóhann Jóhannsson - a long overdue tribute

There is a particular quality that pulses throughout the expansive catalogue of Icelandic composer/musician Jóhann Jóhannsson: a kind of tender intensity, an extraordinary depth of mood. The range of his expressions has proved incredibly vast; Jóhannsson’s music made vital impact across contemporary classical, electronic, and film soundtrack realms (notably 2014’s Oscar-nominated The Theory Of Everything and 2016’s Arrival),

Jóhann Gunnar Jóhannsson was born in Reykjavik on 19 September, 1969, to Edda Thorkelsdottir and Johann Gunnarsson. His parents’s and sisters’s record collections formed a backdrop to his youth, spanning classical music to ‘70s experimental rock and beyond; his father, a computer programmer, also played percussion in a brass band.

Jóhannsson spent part of his childhood in France, where he also perfected his English language, studying at an American middle school; at 12, his family returned to Reykjavik. He learned to play trombone and piano around this time, though he would shift away from formal music schooling, and studied literature and languages at the University of Iceland; his later musical compositions would also be heavily laced with literary influences, across genres and movements.

Excerpted from the article Arwa Haider article, “Remembering Jóhann Jóhannsson.”