Johnny Klimek (born 18 August 1962) is an Australian

musician A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...

music producer A record producer or music producer is a music creating project's overall supervisor whose responsibilities can involve a range of creative and technical leadership roles. Typically the job involves hands-on oversight of recording sessions; ensu ...

, and

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

, best known for his innovative work in the underground electronica music scene and for his

film score A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

Life and career

Klimek was born in

Melbourne, Australia Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung/ or ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second most-populous city in Australia, after Sydney. The city's name generally refers to a metropolitan area also known ...

. His mother, Luisa née Cester (born 29 January 1916 in

Pasiano di Pordenone Pasiano di Pordenone (; ) is a (municipality) in the Province of Pordenone, Regional decentralization entity of Pordenone, in the Italy, Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located about northwest of Trieste and about south of Pordenone. ...

) was a daughter of the couple Eugenia and Ernesto Cester. In the summer of 1940, she left

Friuli-Venezia Giulia Friuli-Venezia Giulia () is one of the 20 regions of Italy and one of five autonomous regions with special statute. The regional capital is Trieste on the Gulf of Trieste, a bay of the Adriatic Sea. Friuli-Venezia Giulia has an area of and a ...

for Australia. After the Second World War, she married Alfons Klimek (died 1998) and gave birth to eight children: Eugenia, Lydia, Naomi (born 1953), Greta, Alfons junior, Robert, and twins Jayney and Johnny (born August 1962). Her sister, Fanny Cester, emigrated to Australia in 1937 and married racing cyclist Nino Borsari in 1940. The Klimek family lived in various Melbourne suburbs including

Kew Kew () is a district in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Its population at the 2011 census was 11,436. Kew is the location of the Royal Botanic Gardens ("Kew Gardens"), now a World Heritage Site, which includes Kew Palace. Kew is ...

, Oakleigh and, from 1969, Clayton. Klimek's younger cousins,

Nic Nic is a gender-neutral given name, often short for Nicole, Nicholas, Nicola, or Dominic. It is also a component of Irish-language female surnames. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Nic Dalton (born 1964), Australian musician * Nic En ...

and Chris Cester, were founding mainstays of Australian hard rocker band, Jet (2001–12). Johnny worked in a number of local garage bands before emigrating to

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

in 1983, where he started the

pop rock Pop rock (also typeset as pop/rock) is a fusion genre and form of rock music characterized by a strong commercial appeal, with more emphasis on professional songwriting and recording craft, and less emphasis on attitude than standard rock musi ...

band

The Other Ones The Other Ones was an American rock band formed in 1998 by former Grateful Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, along with part-time Grateful Dead collaborator Bruce Hornsby. In 2000, Bill Kreutzmann, another Grateful Dead alumnu ...

with his sister Jayney and brother Alf. He became active in the Berlin underground

trance Trance is a state of semi-consciousness in which a person is not self-aware and is either altogether unresponsive to external stimuli (but nevertheless capable of pursuing and realizing an aim) or is selectively responsive in following the dir ...

/ ambient/

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...

scene, and collaborated with Paul Browse of the band

Clock DVA Clock DVA are a musical group from Sheffield, England, whose style has touched on industrial music, industrial, post-punk, and Electronic body music, EBM. They formed in 1978 by Adi Newton (born Gary Coates) and Steven "Judd" Turner. Along with ...

on a short-lived musical project, ''Effective Force.'' He served as the bass player for singer

Nina Hagen Catharina "Nina" Hagen (; born 11 March 1955) is a German singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her theatrical vocals and rise to prominence during the punk and Neue Deutsche Welle movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She is ...

's 1996 tour. Klimek has produced numerous film scores with composer Reinhold Heil, beginning with the 1997 film '' Winter Sleepers''. Since then, they have become regular collaborators of its director,

Tom Tykwer Tom Tykwer (; born 23 May 1965) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, and composer. He is best known internationally for directing the thriller films ''Run Lola Run'' (1998), ''Heaven (2002 film), Heaven'' (2002), ''Perfume: The Sto ...

, and have provided the score to almost all of his films since, including the score to Perfume, Story Of A Murderer. Klimek, Heil, and Tykwer were nominated for a

Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score The Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score is a Golden Globe Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), an organization of journalists who cover the United States film industry, but are affiliated with publications out ...

for their critically acclaimed score to the latter's 2012

epic Epic commonly refers to: * Epic poetry, a long narrative poem celebrating heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation * Epic film, a genre of film defined by the spectacular presentation of human drama on a grandiose scale Epic(s) ...

science fiction film Science fiction (or sci-fi) is a film genre that uses Speculative fiction, speculative, fictional science-based depictions of phenomena that are not fully accepted by mainstream science, such as Extraterrestrial life in fiction, extraterrestria ...

'' Cloud Atlas.'' He has also worked on television series such as ''

Without a Trace ''Without a Trace'' is an American police procedural drama television series created by Hank Steinberg that aired on CBS from September 26, 2002, to May 19, 2009 with the total of seven seasons and 160 episodes. The series focuses the cases of ...

, Deadwood, The Newsroom,'' and '' Sense8,'' thriller films such as '' Run Lola Run'' and '' One Hour Photo,'' horror films such as '' Land of the Dead'' and ''Blood & Chocolate'', and action films like ''Killer Elite'' and ''

I, Frankenstein ''I, Frankenstein'' is a 2014 American science fantasy action film written and directed by Stuart Beattie, based on the digital-only graphic novel by Kevin Grevioux. An international co-production between the United States and Australia, the fi ...

''. He has won 5 ASCAP Awards, and has been nominated for 2

Saturn Awards The Saturn Awards are American awards presented annually by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. The awards were created to honor science fiction, fantasy, and horror in film, but have since grown to reward other films bel ...

, and for 1

Primetime Emmy Award The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Owned and operated by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the P ...

Filmography

Feature films

Television

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Klimek, Johnny 1962 births ASCAP composers and authors Australian composers Australian film score composers Australian male composers Australian record producers Living people Australian male film score composers Male television composers Musicians from Melbourne