HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR REIMAGINES TWO DECADES OF MUSIC ON NEW ORCHESTRAL ALBUM THIS WILL BE US
Cover artwork by Ólafur Elíasson: The purple sun for Hildur (2026)
The star composer-performer is joined on the album by
Robert Ames and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Together they have recorded orchestral versions of tracks
from three of Guðnadóttir’s early albums and two brand-new pieces
This Will Be Us comes out on 23 October 2026
“Hildur never shies away from the darkness,
but lights a path through it, with purposeful intention”
Sarah Polley, film director
05 JUNE 2026 (TORONTO, ON) — Revered today for her multi-award-winning scores for film and TV (Chernobyl, Joker, Tár), Hildur Guðnadóttir released her debut album, Mount A, in September 2006. Twenty years on, the Icelandic composer is celebrating this anniversary by reimagining some of her earlier music. For her latest Deutsche Grammophon album, This Will Be Us, she has recorded orchestral versions of eight tracks that first appeared on Mount A, Without Sinking (2009) or Saman (2014), as well as two newly written pieces. Guðnadóttir herself plays solo cello, performing with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and conductor Robert Ames. She also produced the album, which was recorded, mixed and mastered by her long-time collaborator Francesco Donadello.
Set for release on 23 October 2026, This Will Be Us includes notes by Hildur herself and by film-maker Sarah Polley. Guðnadóttir will perform at a special launch event at the Berlin Philharmonie on 25 October and, to coincide with the anniversary, DG is reissuing the three earlier albums as LPs on 3 July – a first vinyl release for Mount A.
Hildur Guðnadóttir grew up making music with others, in choirs, bands and orchestras. “That world meant everything to me,” she recalls. “But I felt I needed some space to hear my own thoughts.” She recorded what became Mount A alone with her cello, but had to be persuaded by her friend Skúli Sverrisson to share her work with the outside world. The album was released under the pseudonym “Lost in Hildurness”, a nickname friends had given her because she was so often lost in her own world.
She was then joined by Sverrisson, fellow composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, and her father Guðni Franzson and others on her subsequent albums, Without Sinking, Leyfðu Ljósinu and Saman. “Even though the music on these records is deeply personal,” she says, “my closest friends and family have always been essential to my having the courage to keep playing and to share the music at all.”
That courage has helped Guðnadóttir establish herself as one of the leading composers of our age, notably in the soundtrack world. Her many accolades include two Grammy Awards® (Chernobyl, Joker), an Academy Award (Joker), an Emmy Award (Chernobyl) and a Golden Globe (Joker). In the last few years she has also written acclaimed scores for films as varied as Todd Field’s Tár, Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, while The Fact of the Matter, for choir and orchestra, was premiered at the 2022 BBC Proms.
Mount A’s 20th anniversary was an opportunity to take stock. “Seeing that number on the horizon felt like a good moment to pause,” says Guðnadóttir. “When I was trying to be a one-person string orchestra, I always dreamed of having more people playing with me. I decided to give that young person the anniversary gift of hearing her music played by an orchestra.”
On This Will Be Us, she does just that, recording beautifully reinvented versions of “In Gray” (Mount A), “Ascent”, “Erupting Light”, “Opaque”, “Overcast” and “Unveiled” (Without Sinking) and “Bær” and “Birting” (Saman), together with new tracks “Blind Sarabande” and “The Song That Never Was”, with Ames and the full forces of the DSO Berlin.
As her friend and colleague Sarah Polley writes in her notes for the album, Guðnadóttir’s fans will recognise many of these tracks, “but here they take on a new life, an expansive scope, and a sense of being in fellowship with others. [They are] the work of someone who listens long enough to hear and who understands the movement of seeking and finding connection in both the light and the dark.”