About
Jon Opstad is a London-based composer, working across film, television, contemporary dance and concert music. His music often combines contemporary classical elements with electronics, merging acoustic instrumentation with both modern and vintage electronic instruments and techniques.
Jon recently scored the hit 8-part Netflix drama series Bodies, starring Stephen Graham & Shira Haas. With a narrative spread across four time periods, from the 1890s to the 2050s, Jon’s wide-ranging score combined live orchestra with electronics, analogue synthesisers, guitars, vocals and soloists. Other recent work includes scoring the 10-part Amazon Prime dystopian sci-fi drama The Feed, starring David Thewlis, Michelle Fairley, Guy Burnet & Nina Toussaint-White; the 5-part BBC period drama The Woman In White, starring Jessie Buckley, Dougray Scott, Charles Dance & Art Malik; two seasons of BBC Studios/UKTV drama series We Hunt Together; the powerful BBC feature documentary Surviving 9/11 from Bafta-winning director Arthur Cary; the hit Netflix documentary series Trainwreck: Woodstock ‘99; and since early 2018 being the composer for the major Ubisoft video game Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, taking the place of original composers Ben Frost and Paul Haslinger.
Other television scores include two episodes of Charlie Brooker’s cult dystopian Netflix/Channel 4 series Black Mirror (White Bear, and the feature-length special White Christmas starring Jon Hamm); the second series of ITV thriller Safe House, starring Stephen Moyer; 5-part BBC thriller Thirteen, starring Jodie Comer; the acclaimed BAFTA-winning Channel 4 docudrama The Murder Detectives; BAFTA-winning BBC single drama Don’t Take My Baby from writer Jack Thorne; BAFTA-nominated TV movie Cyberbully starring Maisie Williams; Channel 4’s The Watchman, starring Stephen Graham; and the Savile episode of Louis Theroux’s hard-hitting documentary series for BBC Two.
In 2022 Jon was hired by Lucasfilm to work in an “additional music” role on the major new Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi, working with composer Natalie Holt.
Jon’s composition ‘Ignis IV’ was used as the score for the trailer for the major Hollywood film Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones in 2019, as well as being featured in a trailer for major Amazon Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power in 2022.
Jon studied music at Cambridge University and film music at the National Film & Television School. After graduating he began his career by working extensively as an additional music composer, programmer and orchestrator for a range of composers including Jocelyn Pook, Max Richter, Martin Phipps, Ruth Barrett, Sheridan Tongue and Richard Thomas, across many film, television and stage projects. Jon was also additional music composer for the Oscar-nominated film Theeb.
Jon’s music often combines his classical training with a progressive approach to electronic music, as shown recently in his score for Bodies.
Jon’s composition “Blue Sky, White Clouds”, for string quintet and piano, was released on Deutsche Grammophon in 2020 as part of their Project XII series of works by different composers. In 2022 he released the album Extensions: Music for Computer-Controlled Prepared Piano, an album of compositions entirely recorded with a Yamaha U3 Disklavier (an upright piano that can be controlled via computer) using a mixture or acoustic preparation and electronic processing techniques.
Jon contributed synthesiser parts and string arranging to the track ‘Smoke’ from singer-songwriter Tracey Thorn’s acclaimed 2018 album Record.
Jon was nominated for a British Composer Award in 2014, in the Stage Works category, for his score for contemporary dance work Ignis, combining solo violin with electronics. He was the winner of the 2011 Presteigne Festival competition for composers. Radio broadcasts of his music include BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction, In Tune and Unclassified programmes, as well as New Sounds on New York radio station WNYC, for which Jon was interviewed discussing his music in 2015.
Jon works from his studio in north London.