Haukur Tómasson

Haukur Tómasson was awarded the 2004 Nordic Council Music Prize, the greatest honor awarded to a Nordic composer. This award, which Tómasson received for his chamber opera Guðrún´s 4th Song, firmly established his stature as one of Scandinavia´s most outstanding composers.   

The music of Haukur Tómasson is vibrant and scintillating, characterized by intense rhythmic activity, bright, colorful timbres, and a keen ear for novel and effective instrumental combinations. Tómasson´s music bustles with energy and is often quite complex, although the rapidly moving surface rhythm occasionally comes to a halt, giving way to slowly moving sonorities of imposing power and austere beauty.  

Tómasson´s earliest compositions use the numbers of the Fibonacci series to organize durations, intervals and formal proportions (Octette , Eco del passato). His later works (Spiral , Strati , Offspring) are examples of the composer's ‘spiral technique', the chaconne-like development of an underlying chord progression. In the late 1990s Tómasson also began using Icelandic folk material as a basis for his compositions ( Rhyme , Long Shadow ). Tómasson´s interest in form and structure is evident in all his works, lending them a clear underlying sense of unity and logic.
(Árni Heimir Ingólfsson)  

Tómassons music is recorded on BIS, 12 Tonar and ITM (label of the Iceland Music Information Center.)

Studies:

Reykjavík College of Music
Musikhochschule Köln
Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam
University of California San Diego, Masters degree in music 1990

Commissions:

Bifrons Foundation Amsterdam
Caput Ensemble
EPTA - Iceland Section
The Gogmagogs
Iceland University Choir
Icelandic Radio Composers Fund
Icelandic Symphony Orchestra
Ísafold Chamber Orchestra
North Icelandic Symphony Orchestra
Orkester Norden
OperaNord
Reykjavík Arts Festival
Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra
Reykjavik Cultural City of Europe
Reykjavík Woodwind Quintet
Skálholt Summer Concerts
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
STEF
Vox Academica
The Warsaw Autumn

Recognitions:

1993
Strati wins the Icelandic State Radio Music Prize
1996
Awarded the Bröste Optimistic Prize
1996
Nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for Spiral
1998
Cultural award of the DV
newspaper for Gudrun´s 4th Song
1998
Icelandic Music Award for Gudrun´s 4th Song
2000
Nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize for Violin Concerto
2000
Icelandic State Radio 70 anniversary
Composition Prize for Fabella
2004
Awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize for Gudrun´s 4th Song
2005
Icelandic Music Award for Ardente
2011
Wins competition for new orchestral piece to be performed at the inaugural concert of the new concerthall Harpa in Reykjavík.