Press room

Hildur Guðnadóttir: Chernobyl Live
On Demand
Friday 4 December – Friday 11 December 2020
Tickets £10

The Barbican announced today that its co-commissioned concert film of the recent live performance of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s soundtrack to Chernobyl as part of the Ephemera Warsaw Arts Festival will be available to rent online via the Barbican’s On Demand channel from Friday 4 – Friday 11 December 2020.

The film, directed by Zoe Kahlert, features an immersive and experimental live presentation of Hildur Guðnadóttir’s ground-breaking score to critically acclaimed HBO TV historical drama series Chernobyl, revolving around 1986’s disastrous nuclear accident at the Chernobyl power plant and the clean-up efforts that followed. For this, Hildur received a Primetime Emmy Award and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Recorded live at the Unsound produced multi-arts festival Ephemera in Warsaw in September 2020, the concert featured Hildur herself on vocals alongside British sound artists Sam Slater and Chris Watson. The performance, which took place in front of a limited live audience in the industrial setting of Mińska 65, a former printworks, also incorporated field recordings from Chernobyl’s sister power plant Ignalina in Lithuania. Immersive lighting was created by Theresa Baumgartner, and sound spatialisation by Francesco Donadello.

Academy Award winning Hildur Guðnadóttir is an Icelandic composer, cello player, and singer who has been manifesting herself at the forefront of experimental pop and contemporary music. Her body of work also includes the score for Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score and an Academy Award. Hildur has released four critically acclaimed solo albums on Touch: Mount A (2006), Without Sinking (2009), Leyfðu Ljósinu (2012) and Saman (2014). She has also composed music for theatre, dance performances and other films and has collaborated with artists such as Sunn O))), Pan Sonic and Throbbing Gristle.

Hildur Guðnadóttir has previously performed at the Barbican in March 2017 with drone metal masters Sunn O))) and she was also commissioned by the Barbican to write arrangements for the Wildbirds & Peacedrums session as part of Possibly Colliding, the Nils Frahm curated marathon weekend, in July 2016.

Streaming tickets for Hildur Guðnadóttir: Chernobyl Live will be on sale from Fri 4 December 8pm till midnight on Fri 11 December. Ticket holders will then be able to watch the concert film within a 48-hour window once their purchase has gone through.

Chernobyl Live was originally commissioned by Unsound Festival, Rewire, Dark Mofo and Barbican.

Further info and credits here.