Haukur Tómasson

Who is Haukur Tómasson?

Haukur Tómasson is an Icelandic composer. He has a Masters degree from the University of California, San Diego. He has also attended the Reykjavík College of Music, the Cologne University for Music and the Sweelinck Conservatory of Amsterdam.

His works include six orchestral pieces, three concertos and the chamber opera Gudruns 4th Song, for which he was awarded the 2004 Nordic Council Music Prize. His orchestral piece Strati won the Icelandic National Broadcasting System Music Prize in 1993. Other prizes include the 1996 Bröste Optimism Prize and the 1998 Icelandic Music Award for Gudrun's 4th Song. His composition Saga for ensemble won the State Radio's 70th anniversary competition in 2000.

His music is energetic, scintillating and vibrant, combining musical imagination and technical brilliance, with unusual instrumental combinations producing remarkable colourful and complex sounds. His earliest works used Fibonacci numbers to determine the intervals and durations. Later works such as Spiral, Strati and Offspring use a different approach based on his so-called "spiral technique". He also started to use Icelandic folk material in his compositions in the late 1990s.