Jon Ekstrand is a Stockholm based Swedish film composer and artist. He began his career under the mentorship of acclaimed sound designer Owe Svensson, where he sharpened his skills at understanding the power of sound and its dramaturgic importance in helping a story realize its potential. In 1998, whilst attending Stockholm Film School, Ekstrand met Director Daniel Espinosa, in which the two formed a tight creative relationship which continues to this day.
Ekstrand and Espinosa have collaborated on seven films, including the hit trilogy Easy Money as well as Hollywood Studio Films Child 44, Life, and the Marvel film Morbius starring Jared Leto. The hybrid soundtrack is part synth, part symphony, and equal parts awesome, the result of which is a sound that can stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Batman Begins, and Oblivion.
Jon is also scoring the 2022 biopic feature Hilma,” by acclaimed director Lasse Hallström, about the life or revered abstract artist and spiritual pioneer Hilma af Klint. Jon has had a rich career within films, having worked the entire spectrum of the sound team –from boom operator, sound recordist, to sound designer and today as accoladed composer. Ekstrand is a self-confessed synthesizer addict, and generally starts building his scores around electro acoustic elements.
His scores range in genre from more minimal art house ambient to epic thriller dramas, where he has recorded with full orchestras at both Air Studios in London, Colombia Studios and Sony Studios in Los Angeles. To date, Ekstrand has scored over 30 films and TV series, has been nominated for Three Swedish Gullbaggage Awards, and in January 2020 was awarded The Danish Film Institutes Robert Award, for his 2019 score to the film Queen of Hearts. Ekstrand is passionate and actively engaged in expanding diversity within the film industry and is part of a composer’s mentorship program arranged through the Swedish collecting society STIM.
We have a very fun chat with Jon to learn about his career – starting in sound engineering, meeting Daniel in film school, the importance of live players, Borg McEnroe, and tackling his first comic book film.
