Studio Soundtracks takes listeners behind the scenes of how music is crafted for film and television by hearing directly from composers, songwriters and music professionals in the Entertainment Industry. Listen to inspiring conversations about composition and hear works from Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar-winning film scores on the show.

HERDÍS STEFÁNSDÓTTIR
Herdís Stefánsdóttir is a composer of music for multimedia, a songwriter, and an electronic musician. Her compositional endeavors — installations in museums, dance, theatre, and a successful electronic music duet she is a part of – are establishing her as an expansive artist.

Herdís Stefánsdóttir graduated with an M.A. degree in film scoring from New York University in 2017. Since graduation she has scored two feature films, an HBO series and a few short films. She won the 2022 Icelandic Music Award for her score to the FX series Y: the Last Man and was also nominated for her score in Ry Russo-Young’s MGM/Warner Bros. feature film The Sun Is Also a Star. Her other scoring work includes the HBO series We’re Here, and in 2022 she co-scored Apple TV+’s Essex Serpent with Dustin O’Halloran, starring Claire Daines and Tom Hiddleston.

Herdís interned for the Oscar nominated composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in Berlin while he was working on the film Arrival (2016) and she has scored numerous short films that have premiered at top-tier festivals around the world like Berlinale, TIFF, Sundance and Palm Springs International Film Festival. Herdís formed her electro-pop duo East of My Youth in 2015. East of My Youth’s music has been described as sensual and addictive as getting your tongue frozen to a glacier of pure honey (jajaja music). The duo has showcased at SXSW, Eurosonic Noorderslag, KEXP, Sonar Reykjavík and Iceland Airwaves.

Born in Reykjavík, Iceland, Herdís currently lives between Los Angeles and Reykjavík.

DUSTIN O’HALLORAN
Dustin O’Halloran is an American pianist and composer with four acclaimed solo albums under his own name, and a member of the band A Winged Victory for the Sullen. Winner of a 2015 Emmy Award for his main title theme to Amazon’s comedy drama Transparent, he was also nominated for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and a Critics’ Choice Award for his score to 2016’s Lion, written in collaboration with Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka). O’Halloran’s film career began when Sofia Coppola invited him to contribute to 2006’s Marie Antoinette, and since then he’s worked on multiple films and TV shows, including Drake Doremus’ Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, Like Crazy (2011), and Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle (2018), where he collaborated with veteran Scandinavian chart-topper Ane Brun for the film’s closing song. In 2018, he scored George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give and joined forces with Bryan Senti for Nick Murphy’s six-part Sky TV series, Save Me, while he and Bertelmann also reconvened that year for Netflix’s The Old Guard, starring Charlize Theron. He and Bertelmann continue to collaborate, scoring the BBC’s 2019 adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

O’Halloran released his first EP for renowned classical musical label Deutsche Grammophon in 2019, with a new album currently in the works, and A Winged Victory for the Sullen, his ambient orchestral project with Adam Wiltzie, released their latest album, The Undivided Five, on Ninja Tune the same year. In addition, O’Halloran worked as a producer for Katy Perry’s ‘Into Me You See,’ from her 2017 album, Witness, and appears on Leonard Cohen’s 2019 posthumous album, Thanks for the Dance. O’Halloran lives in Los Angeles and Reykjavik, Iceland.

Studio Soundtracks is made possible in part by the generous support of Spitfire Audio, makers of inspiring sounds and scoring tools for film, in collaboration with the world’s best composers, musicians and engineers. More details available at spitfireaudio.com

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