Score-Core: Conductor And Composer Eímear Noone Levels Up At Harpa

“We like to be on the cutting edge, but we live in a place that’s so old. We live surrounded by history and living history,” says Eímear Noone, about her native Ireland. “And I feel like Iceland is like that.”

Acclaimed for her work on video game soundtracks, Eímear is soon heading to Reykjavík to conduct Video Games in Concert with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She’s positively buzzing about it. “This is all in my imagination,” she laughs. “I haven’t been there yet! But I have so many Icelandic colleagues that I know and love, I feel connected already.”

“I had Scarlett Johansson right behind me and I was absolutely screaming.”

These ties to the Icelandic music scene are definitely more than imaginary. Eímear is a longtime friend of composer Atli Örvarsson, and knows composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, the first Icelander to win an Academy Award for her work on the film Joker. Eímear was not only present at the 2020 ceremony, but was conducting the orchestra — making her the first woman to ever do so. “I was in the pit when she got her Oscar and I was screaming my head off,” she admits. “I had Scarlett Johansson right behind me and I was absolutely screaming – I may as well have been at a football match.”

No rain, no gain

The similarities between Iceland and Ireland’s creative spark extend beyond the industry, to the climate. “The feeling and the sound of the rainfall,” she explains, “It’s almost like it occupies your consciousness, and lets the subconscious come through. A bright day is good for orchestration and production and all the nuts and bolts, but a rainy day is great for the kernels, the ideas.”

Photo by Steve Humphreys

Like many of us kids kept cooped up in cold places, Eímear discovered her passion for video games at an early age. Unlike most of us, however, she found video game music to be a lasting source of inspiration — and specifically, the music of The Legend Of Zelda series. “It was listening to Koji Kondo reaching for the [sound of an] orchestra when the technology wasn’t there yet,” she recalls. “I think that’s why his Mario and Zelda themes are so lasting, and we’ve rearranged them in so many different ways.”

Little did Eímear know at the time, but she’d go on to compose music for Zelda series herself, and tour North America as the conductor of The Symphony of the Goddesses for the franchise’s 25th anniversary.

All together now

But Eímear’s work has other aspects, too. “I do everything and anything,” she says. “I score films and games, I do rock concerts, I do opera, ballet — everything. I have a terribly low boredom threshold!”

Composing for games offers more freedom than working in film, with a variety of different kinds of music required. “You could have a composer writing a sweeping orchestral score and then like a garage band bar music, or Jacuzzi jazz in a hotel,” she explains. “Recently, I got to write a piece of French chanson, and we weaved it into the score and really made it belong to the project.”

Despite her passions for all kinds of games and music, Eímear’s deepest motivation is her audience. They’re not (entirely) your typical season ticket-holders, aging anywhere from five to 80 years old. She finds it incredibly moving when she sees three generations of a family at a performance together, their reactions ranging from “I have never played a video game in my life, but this was really enjoyable” to “I came for the kids, but I cried during the Kingdom Hearts section!”

The audience isn’t dissimilar from Eímear’s own family. “This is where the kids play,” she laughs, pointing to the dub stage in her home studio. “With complete Dolby Atmos surround sound – I mean, come on!” This custom-made space was designed for mixing sound for the cinema, but it’s strewn with controllers and a Nintendo Switch. “I’ll play the odd bit of Fortnite with them in there,” she admits. “But I swear we do work in there. I swear the work gets done!”

Eímear conducts Video Games in Concert at the Iceland Symphony Orchestra on September 13 and 14. Get tickets here.