Composers

Leifur Þórarinsson was born in Reykjavík on 13 August 1934, and died on 24 April 1998 at the age of only 63. He began violin studies with Þorvaldur Steingrímsson at an early age, progressing to the Reykjavík College of Music, where he studied with Björn Ólafsson. He also studied th...

Belonging to the younger generation of Icelandic composers, Thordur Magnusson bears the fresh and audacious qualities of his generation, whilst unafraid to maintain ties with tradition, with his Icelandic as well as international musical heritage. Magnusson feels that the word traditional...

Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson is an Icelandic composer writing music based on irregular and non-pulse based rhythms. This often requires presenting the music moving on a computer screen.

Gísli Magnússon is a composer and music theory teacher from Reykjavík, Iceland. He frequently seeks inspiration in the nature of his home country, and in some of his works he deliberately depicts natural phenomena, such as waterfalls, lava-fields and geysers. A recurring element in his...

Páll P. Pálsson was born in Graz, Austria. He began his musical studies at the Conservatory in Graz with trumpet, violin, piano, composition and later on conducting. He joined the trumpet section of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Graz at the age of 17. In 1948 he was offered the princi...

Hildigunnur Rúnarsdóttir completed a B.A. degree in composition from the Reykjavík College of Music in 1989. She continued her studies in Hamburg with Professor Günther Friedrichs, and in Copenhagen with Dr. Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen. Hildigunnur has sung in a number of choirs, among t...

Jon Nordal was born in 1926. He studied piano and composition at the Reykjavik College of Music with Arni Kristjansson, Jon Thorarinsson and Victor Urbancic. He pursued further studies in Zürich with Walter Frey and Willy Burkhard in 1949-1951. Later came years of study in Copenhagen, Par...

Halldór Smárason was born in Iceland in 1989. He completed an Advanced Level Piano Examination in the spring of 2009 concurrently with his college graduation, and holds a B.A.-degree in composition from the Iceland Academy of the Arts and an M.M.-degree in classical composition from the ...