Jodie Landau

Composer, Vocalist, Percussionist

photo by Hörður Sveinsson

About

Jodie Landau is a composer, vocalist, and percussionist and is a member of the renowned Icelandic record label Bedroom Community, the acclaimed modern music collective, Wild Up, and the Grammy-winning vocal band Roomful of Teeth. His music combines elements of chamber music, rock, and jazz for live performance, film, theater, opera, and dance.

Landau has performed with groups such as the NY Philharmonic, Vinny Golia Large Ensemble,  Formalist String Quartet, Los Angeles Master Chorale & LA Master Chorale Chamber Singers. In addition to his own music, Jodie performs works by and with Ellen Reid, Christopher Rountree, Marc Lowenstein, Andrew Tholl, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Nico Muhly, Daníel Bjarnason, Jherek Bischoff, Emily Hall, and more.

In Fall 2013, Jodie was the multi-percussionist in The Industry’s invisible opera for wireless headphones, “Invisible Cities” at Union Station. In Spring 2014, Jodie composed a live score for Ate9 dANCEcOMPANY’s “mouth to mouth” performed by Wild Up.

And in Summer 2014, Jodie and Wild Up traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to collaborate on a concert and recording with Graduale Nobili, the Icelandic choir that recorded and toured with Bjork for her Biophillia project, and recorded at Greenhouse Studios with Valgeir Sigurðsson, the founder of Bedroom Community.

In June 2015, Jodie sang on tour with Ballet National de Marseille and ICKamsterdam performing the premiere of Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten’s “Extremalism” with music by Valgeir Sigurðsson. The work premiered at the Holland Festival and Montpellier Danse.

2016-2017 Jodie joined Bedroom Community for their Whale Watching Tour across Europe, including a performance with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with an additional US show at Walt Disney Concert Hall as part of the LA Phil's Reykjavik Festival.

Jodie performed the role of Jay in Vagleir Sigurðsson's opera "We Are In Time" with the Scottish Ensemble throughout Scotland.

Videos

The Last of Longridge was shot in Jodie’s childhood home in the week prior to moving out in the summer of 2021. This visual album features Jodie’s original compositions, and arrangements/covers of music by Jherek Bischoff, Emily Hall, Joanna Newsom, Sasha Siem, & Father John Misty.

homunculus suite by Jodie Landau

mantra by Emily Hall

Silence / Tug of War by Sasha Siem

the taste of the room by Jodie Landau

stay going nowhere by Jodie Landau

an invitation (day) by Jodie Landau

an invitation (night) by Jodie Landau

The Nest by Jherek Bischoff

a ballad for you dear by Jodie Landau

I Went to the Store One Day by Father John Misty

music mix & edit –  Jherek Bischoff + Jodie Landau

recording engineer – Bradley Butterworth + Jherek Bischoff

video – Brian Hashimoto + Gema Galiana

video edit & color – Brian Hashimoto + Laura Sofía Pérez

 

featuring:

voice/piano – Jodie Landau

bass/ukulele – Jherek Bischoff

drums – Henry Kwapis

harp – Liza Wallace + Alison Bjorkedal

vibraphone – Sidney Hopson

clarinet/bass clarinet – Brian Walsh

violin – Adrianne Pope, Mona Tian, Kate Outterbridge

viola – Andrew McIntosh

cello – Derek Stein

choir – Kelci Hahn, Molly Pease, Anna Schubert, Kalean Ung Breen, Grace Newberry, Joanna Lynn-Jacobs, Angelica Rowell, Elisa Rosin, Sharon Chohi Kim, Victoria Fox, David Castillo, Alexander Lloyd Blake

special thanks to Valgeir Sigurðsson + Greenhouse Studios

Jodie Landau + Wild Up /as I wait for the lion (official video)
direction and concept by Samantha Shay
filmed by Vvictoria Sendra
performed by Jodie Landau + Samantha Shay
edited by Victoria Sendra + Samantha Shay + Jodie Landau
produced by Samantha Shay + Gerri Ravyn Stanfield

recording featured on Jodie Landau / Wild Up’s “you of all things” released by Bedroom Community

Albums

Jodie Landau / wild Up
you of all things

Released October 2, 2015 on Bedroom Community

Reviews

Out now on the Icelandic artist-run label Bedroom Community Records, You of All Things, is radiantly lovely in every detail, but perhaps the loveliest of all is Landau's astonishing vocal performance. As the music demands, it rises to something like a bellow, then sinks back to the airiest whisper, and even as it approaches silence remains impressively nuanced and controlled—it loves the microphone, and the mic plainly reciprocates.

— Daniel Johnson, WQXR — Q2 Music Album of the Week  view article

Jodie Landau’s compositions create the path the listener is on. His works, and voice, seduce us with the charm of an old flame laying next to us in bed, the past forgotten and all that matters is where we are now. His tracks have an immediacy that occurs organically, building on ideas that all resolve one another in the end and the results are, like the ending of von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, heavenly. The listener is transported by this album to another world, one unscarred by the harsh realities of the day. It uses music in the way that people have hoped to use it—as pure escapism from the world. The album is a labor of love from everyone involved and in this regard, the case could be made that you of all things has a political statement: what the world needs now is love, sweet love. And what the classical world needs now is Landau, sweet Landau to show it.

— Jackson Cooper, I Care if You Listen  view article

Jacob Cooper
Terrain

ft. Jodie Landau, Theo Bleckmann, & Ashley Bathgate
Released July 10, 2020 via New Amsterdam Records

Review

In a collaboration with the stunning singers Theo Bleckmann and Jodie Landau, the sharp young composer processes poems and strings into surprisingly magnetic meditations on time. [...]

For its magnetic middle, Expiation sounds like Animal Collective circa Strawberry Jam, when skywriting vocals crisscrossed intricate layers of surrealist sequences. The piece’s climax is a proper dance number, with hypnotic harmonies webbing a throbbing beat to Landau’s half-yelled pleas for empathy. ‘Each tongue troubles its dark canker,’ he repeats, demanding that the past be reconsidered for the continually changing present.

— Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork  view article

Ellen Reid & Jodie Landau
Go Tell It

Featured in the movie Buster’s Mal Heart
Released in 2017 via Lakeshore Records

Upcoming Events

Past Events

April 9, 2014

Vinny Golia Large Ensemble

at REDCAT

April 5 & 12, 2014

The Industry’s IN C

at the Hammer Museum

October – November 2013

Invisible Cities by Christopher Cerrone

Union Station, Los Angeles

January 13, 2013

ACE Jazz Collective

Art Share LA

July 19, 2012

ACE Jazz Collective

at Blue Whale

April 27, 2011

Jodie Landau Ensemble

at California Institute of the Arts

June 11, 2010

Jodie Landau Ensemble

at Jensen’s Rec Center

Contact