Henning Lohner

Henning Lohner is a German-American composer, media artist and film maker. He is known for his many years of work in film music for Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions, and for the media art project Active Images, which he created in 1988.

Following his studies in music, Romance studies and art history, Iannis Xenakis became his life-long mentor. From 1984 to 1989 Henning Lohner was assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen. There followed work for Louis Malle, Giorgio Strehler, Steve Reich and, from 1989, Frank Zappa, in whose productions The Yellow Shark (1993) and Civilization Phaze III (1994) he played a key role. He went on to create a portrait of Zappa in the biographical art film Peefeeyatko (1991), for which Zappa himself wrote the music.

In 1982 Henning Lohner met John Cage; from 1987 their collaboration culminated in the feature film One¹¹, which was completed shortly before John Cage’s death in August 1992.

Henning Lohner’s documentary film Ninth November Night about the artist Gottfried Helnwein and his installation in memory of the Reichskristallnacht of 1938, featuring Sean Penn and Maximilian Schell, was shortlisted for the Oscars in the Best Documentary Short category.

Henning Lohner is one of the most renowned German film composers. He has written music for numerous international films, among them the animated film Lauras Stern (Laura’s Star), Werner Herzog’s Incident at Loch Ness and Hideo Nakata’s Ring 2, and has won many awards for his work. Since 2014, his signature music has introduced all broadcasts of the ARD Tagesschau in German-speaking countries.

Henning Lohner’s media art project Active Images has been shown worldwide, including at the Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Venice Biennale, the Kunsthalle Emden, in Kuala Lumpur and in Tokyo. In 2021 his works featured as part of the Gerhard Richter exhibition Atlas in the Max Liebermann Haus in Berlin.

In 1988 he began an artistic partnership with the award-winning cinematographer Van Carlson under the name Lohner Carlson. Since Carlson’s death in 2011 Henning Lohner has continued their work. Collaboration with the composer and artist John Cage was especially formative for this creative duo.