Jon Opstad

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’s recent scoring work includes collaborating with acclaimed composer Max Richter on the score for 6-part FX/Disney Plus spy thriller The Veil, starring Elisabeth Moss, and scoring the 8-part Netflix sci-fi drama series Bodies, starring Stephen Graham - a project that was set across four time zones from 1890s period drama to 2050s dystopian future drama and featuring a score encompassing orchestral classical music and synthesised electronics. Other scoring work includes 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); documentary feature film Merkel (Netflix), for which he was nominated for a Music+Sound Award for best feature film composition; the 5-part BBC One period drama The Woman In White; the 10-part Amazon Prime dystopian sci-fi drama The Feed; two seasons of BBC Studios/UKTV drama series We Hunt Together; the powerful BBC feature documentary Surviving 9/11 (nominated for a Music+Sound Award for best television score); 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. In 2022 Jon was hired by Lucasfilm to work in an “additional music” role on Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Jon’s composition ‘Ignis IV’ was used as the score for the trailer for the Hollywood film Ad Astra, starring Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones in 2019, as well as being featured in a trailer for the Amazon Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power in 2022. “Ignis IV” is from the contemporary dance score Ignis, for which Jon was nominated for a British Composer Award in 2014.
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 of acoustic preparation and electronic processing techniques.
Jon’s music often combines his classical training with a progressive approach to electronic music.