Composers

Finnur Torfi Stefánsson graduated from the University of Iceland in 1972 as Cand.Jur, and received a degree in political science from the University of Manchester, England in 1974. He worked as a lawyer and was active on the political scene in Iceland as a municipal council member, and a...

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.

Páll Ragnar Pálsson was born in 1977 in Reykjavík, Iceland. For most of his youth he played the guitar in a rock band called Maus. When Maus quit in 2004, he found his musical identity through electronic music studies that led into classical composition.

If one disregards composers such as Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson, Jón Leifs and Þórarinn Jónsson who mostly worked abroad, one can argue that Icelandic instrumental music was not born before the Second World War. Instrumental ensembles, often small wind orchestras, had existed in differ...

Egill Ólafsson studied voice and music theory at the Reykjavík College of Music 1970-1976. He has also attended various courses in Scandinavia related to theatre music. In recent years Egill has composed incidental music for theatre, motion pictures as well as musicals. Of his musica...

Ingibjörg Þorbergs was born to Kristjana Sigurbergsdóttir, a homemaker, and Þorbergur Skúlason, a master shoemaker in Reykjavík. Ingibjörg’s brother is Skúli Ólafur Þorbergsson, born on April 3, 1930, married to Guðrún Stefanía Björnsdóttir.

Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson (b.1938) studied piano at the Reykjavík College of Music, then continued his education in the United States. He attended Hamline University, Minnesote, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completing a master´s degree in composition in 1961 under t...

Creation and research; music, theatre and literature, these have taken Atli Ingólfsson on extensive residencies in Italy, France, Germany and Sweden, although he finally settled down in his native Iceland in 2005, where he now holds the post of professor of composition at the Iceland Univ...

Atli Heimir Sveinsson is one of the most prominent Icelandic postwar composers with a varied list of works to his credit, including operas, ballet and major orchestral works, widely performed.