Hildur Guðnadóttir

Singer Hildur Guðnadóttir made her professional debut at age 10 when she accompanied her opera singer mother at a Viking-themed restaurant in Iceland. ∙ She made her recorded debut at age 15, as lead singer of Icelandic alt-rockers Woofer. ∙ She played all the instruments on her debut solo album, Mount A, which was partly recorded in a reconstructed 14th-century log cabin in Hólar, Iceland. ∙ Guðnadóttir has collaborated with an array of experimental artists, including Ryuichi Sakamoto, The Knife, David Sylvian, Sunn O))), and Throbbing Gristle. ∙ She became interested in film music through her work with soundtrack composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, with whom she began collaborating after moving to Berlin in her early twenties. ∙ Her work on the Joker soundtrack earned a Grammy nomination and also an Academy Award, making her just the fourth woman to win an Oscar for Best Original Score. ∙ Before composing her Grammy- and Emmy-winning score for the miniseries Chernobyl, she insisted on visiting a nuclear power plant, saying, “I wanted to explore what nuclear disaster sounds like.”