Dustin O'Halloran

The pianist and composer’s slow drift across the globe perfectly matches his ever-evolving sound, for which he first won attention with Dēvics, the band he formed alongside Sara Lov, who released their debut album in 1996. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, then resident in Los Angeles, O’Halloran later moved to rural Northern Italy for seven years, then on to Berlin for a decade, before decamping to Reykjavík in 2018, from where he now splits his time with Los Angeles again. His work has meanwhile pursued a similarly adventurous route, advancing soon after the turn of the century from Dēvics’ hazy dream pop to a series of increasingly ambitious solo albums. He cultivated his talent young, teaching himself the piano at the age of seven and soon after began writing his own music inspired by the sounds emerging from his mother’s ballet lessons. Before long, the influence of the likes of Chopin, Arvo Pärt and Debussy was supplanted by a fondness for more esoteric acts – Cocteau Twins (whose Simon Raymonde would later sign him to his label, Bella Union), Gavin Bryars, Morton Feldman and Joy Division – and, by the time he was 19, he was writing songs for Dēvics with Lov, whom he met at Santa Monica College, where he was studying art. Though he was initially reluctant to share his piano compositions, it was their very Satie-esque simplicity that helped establish him – alongside Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Max Richter and Nils Frahm – as part of a musical environment in which he subsequently flourished and ultimately led to an award-winning career as a composer of film and TV scores, as well as multiple dance and art projects. That includes A Winged Victory For The Sullen, his critically acclaimed idiosyncratic, ambient two-man orchestral project with Stars Of The Lid’s Adam Wiltzie that has performed around the world. The three solo pieces O’Halloran composed for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette delivered his most significant breakthrough, laying the path for his work on Transparent, which won him an Emmy, and the film Lion that earned nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a Critics’ Choice Award. Whether it be in the understated elegance of his Piano Solos Vols 1 & 2, the deft electronic embellishing touches, or the imaginative, evocative arrangements characterising his (relatively) grander works, O’Halloran has constantly displayed a canny knack for unlocking familiar but often intimate sentiments. Signing to Deutsche Grammophon in 2019, he released his debut EP, Sundoor, the same year, which offers a 20-minute piece entitled “196 Hz”, adapted from a 2017 site-specific composition for cross-disciplinary American artist Slater Bradley’s Sundoor At World’s End.