Jon Opstad (born 1983) is a British composer. His work spans music for film and television, contemporary dance, concert music and album projects. He has collaborated with other artists, such as Max Richter. [1] Opstad is classically trained, having studied music at Cambridge University, before graduating with an MA in film composition from the National Film and Television School. [2]
In television, Opstad is best known for his scores for dark dramas such as Netflix's Bodies and Black Mirror. His score with Max Richter for Elisabeth Moss thriller The Veil was acclaimed by IndieWire as one of "The Best TV Scores of 2024". [3]
Opstad's 2014 contemporary dance score Ignis was nominated for a British Composer Award (since rebranded as Ivors Classical Awards) for "Best Stage Work". [4] [5] Tracks from Ignis have been used extensively in other productions, with the composition "Ignis IV" featuring in the trailer for Hollywood feature film Ad Astra, [6] [7] a trailer for Amazon Prime series The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power , and the drama series The Veil. [8] The track "Ignis I" was featured in the opening episode of Paramount drama series The Man Who Fell To Earth. [9]
In 2021, Opstad was featured as an answer to a question on the long-running British TV game show Mastermind, as part of a specialist round on Black Mirror. Opstad has been quoted on his approach to scoring the Black Mirror episodes White Bear and White Christmas in the official book on the series written by Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones and Jason Arnopp, "Inside Black Mirror" [10]
In 2015 the WNYC radio show New Sounds, presented by John Schaefer, focussed an episode on Opstad's music. Opstad's music has also featured on BBC Radio 3 programmes Late Junction, In Tune and Unclassified [11] amongst others.
Year | Title | Studio | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2013 | Silent Witness (series 16) | BBC | co-composed with Sheridan Tongue |
2013 | Black Mirror (episode White Bear) | Channel 4/Netflix | |
2014 | Black Mirror (episode White Christmas) | Channel 4/Netflix | |
2015 | Cyberbully | Channel 4 | |
2016 | The Murder Detectives | Channel 4 | |
2016 | Louis Theroux: Savile | BBC | |
2017 | Safe House (season 2) | ITV | |
2018 | The Woman In White | BBC | |
2019 | The Feed | Amazon Prime Video | |
2020 | We Hunt Together | BBC | |
2021 | Surviving 9/11 | BBC | |
2022 | We Hunt Together (season 2) | BBC | |
2022 | Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 | Netflix | |
2023 | Bodies | Netflix | |
2024 | The Veil | FX/Hulu/Disney+ | co-composed with Max Richter |
Year | Title | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Uncle David | David Hoyle | co-composed with Richard Thomas |
2012 | A World Not Ours | Mahdi Fleifel | |
2014 | Theeb | Naji Abu Nowar | (additional music) |
2014 | X+Y | Morgan Matthews | (additional music) |
2022 | Merkel | Eva Weber |
Year | Title | Studio | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2018-present | Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege | Ubisoft | composer from Year 3 onwards of the game |
Title | Album Details |
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Still Picture |
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Interpretations |
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Ignis |
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Extensions: Music for Computer-Controlled Prepared Piano |
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Title | Single Details |
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Blue Sky, White Clouds |
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Title | Album Details |
---|---|
Black Mirror: White Bear (Original Television Soundtrack) |
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Black Mirror: White Christmas (Original Television Soundtrack) |
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Safe House Series 2 (Original Television Soundtrack) |
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The Woman In White (Original Television Soundtrack) |
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Surviving 9/11 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) |
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The Feed (Original Television Soundtrack) |
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Bodies (Soundtrack from the Netflix Series) |
|
The Veil (Original Soundtrack) |
|
Max Richter is a German-born British composer and pianist. He works within postminimalist and contemporary classical styles. Richter is classically trained, having graduated in composition from the University of Edinburgh, the Royal Academy of Music in London, and studied with Luciano Berio in Italy.
Patrick Doyle is a Scottish composer and occasional actor best known for his film scores. During his 50-year career in film, television and theatre, he has composed the scores for over 60 feature films. A longtime collaborator of actor-director Kenneth Branagh, Doyle is known for his work on films such as Henry V, Sense and Sensibility, Hamlet, Carlito's Way, Quest for Camelot, and Gosford Park, as well as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Thor, Brave, Cinderella,Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile.
Laura Anne Karpman is an American composer, whose work has included music for film, television, video games, theater, and the concert hall. She has won five Emmy Awards for her work. Karpman was trained at the Juilliard School, where she played jazz by day and honed her skills scatting in bars at night.
Black Mirror is a British anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker. The series explores various genres, with most episodes set in near-future dystopias containing sci-fi technology—a type of speculative fiction. The series is inspired by The Twilight Zone and uses the themes of technology and media to comment on contemporary social issues. Most episodes are written by Brooker with heavy involvement by the executive producer Annabel Jones.
Juan Cristóbal Tapia de Veer is a Chilean-born Canadian film and television score composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is best known for his score of the British TV series Utopia, for which he won a Royal Television Society award in the best original score category in 2013, and Channel 4's National Treasure, which earned him a BAFTA in 2017. He has received awards from the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada in 2013 and 2017.
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"Fifteen Million Merits" is the second episode of the first series of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by the series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and his wife Konnie Huq and directed by Euros Lyn. It first aired on Channel 4 on 11 December 2011.
"White Christmas" is a 2014 Christmas special of the British science fiction anthology series Black Mirror. It was written by series creator and showrunner Charlie Brooker and directed by Carl Tibbetts, first airing on Channel 4 on 16 December 2014. Agreed as a one-off special after Channel 4 rejected potential series three scripts, the episode was the last to air before the programme moved to the streaming platform Netflix.
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"Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)" is a 1964 R&B song written by Jeannie Seely, Randy Newman, Judith Arbuckle and Pat Sheeran. It was recorded by Irma Thomas and released as a single the same year, with "Time Is on My Side" as the B-side. The song is about a woman who stays in a relationship with a man despite his bad behavior.
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