Henning Sommerro

Henning Sommerro has had flourishing careers in classical music (mostly as a film and theater composer), pop, and folk. He is also an important educator. Sommerro has a substantial recording catalog dating back to the 1970s when he made several hit recordings with the folk group Vårsøg. In 2024, People of the Book, a set of three Sommerro compositions, was recorded by the Trondheimsolisten.

Sommerro was born on May 3, 1952, in Surnadal, on Norway's west coast, near the tip of a fjord. He grew up on his family's farm and came to music relatively late, taking up piano and organ at age 16 at the Trondheim Conservatory of Music. For much of his life, he has been based in Trondheim. From 1974 to 1976, he served as a church organist in two Norwegian villages. He played in a rock band called The Tramps (later Mad Movies) and then, in 1977, joined the folk group Vårsøg, which had a hit that year with a recording of the same name based on a Norwegian poem. Meanwhile, Sommerro deepened his classical education with two years of study of organ and composition in Basel, Switzerland. Returning to Norway, he became the director of the local Teatret Vårt regional theater, and in 1985, he moved to Trondheim's Trøndelag Theater. He also served as a music consultant for Norwegian Radio.

Sommerro has written music for more than 140 theater productions and films dating back to the late '70s. Among these was a 1988 remake of the 1969 film An-Magritt; for that score, Sommerro was nominated for a Nordic Council Music Prize. He made several more albums with Vårsøg and, in 1992, released the album Vårsøg with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. He has also performed on keyboards with a wide range of Norwegian pop and folk groups. He also recorded with folk musician Aly Bain on the 1996 album Follow the Moonstone. Sommerro joined the faculty at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in 1990, and since that time, he has also written more extended classical works, often showing folk influences. These include the Partisan Requiem (2001) and a Magnificat (2009). Sommerro has often collaborated with the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and the Trondheimsolisten chamber group. The former recorded Borders, a group of three related Sommerro works, in 2023. The following year, the Trondheimsolisten issued People of the Book, a set of three works taking the major religions of the Middle East as themes. ~ James Manheim, Rovi