SingleRelease date:
23.01.2026
Margaret Hermant, Fabien Leseure, Budapest Art Orchestra
Smile
Smile is the first single from Freedom, Margaret Hermant’s debut album of original compositions, to be released on April 17 on Neue Meister. Centered around the harp, the album grew from a long-standing creative desire, shaped through live performance and deeply connected to her artistic language. Smile is an invitation, an ode to kindness and to the quiet, invisible forces we choose to protect in order to remain open and alive. For Margaret Hermant, it represents a form of resistance: a simple, essential gesture that carries both intimacy and collective resonance. The piece was written and recorded at home, in their studio, with Fabien Leseure. Like much of the album, it emerged from instinctive compositional gestures, rooted in immediacy, sometimes preserving the very first recorded take — where the initial impulse often holds a particular magic. Being able to work alongside Fabien Leseure has been a real gift. He he is a central collaborator on Freedom, contributing to composition, production, recording, and ongoing artistic support.
Margaret Hermant
Throughout her career, she has collaborated with a wide range of acclaimed artists, including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Adam Wiltzie, Dustin O’Halloran, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Stars of the Lid, Joep Beving, Christina Vantzou, and Rutger Hoedemaekers. These collaborations have played a significant role in shaping and expanding today’s post-classical and cinematic music landscape.
Alongside her collaborative work, Margaret Hermant has developed a strong personal voice as a composer and sound artist. Her practice spans film scores, theatre productions, art installations, and dance performances, and is rooted in a sensitive exploration of timbre, space, and atmosphere. Her compositions often revolve around harp and violin, blending acoustic writing with subtle electronic processing. She regularly works in close collaboration with sound engineer and producer Fabien Leseure, exploring the fusion of organic instrumental textures with contemporary sound design.
With her first full-length album Freedom on Neue Meister, Margaret Hermant unveils a deeply cinematic post-classical work centered on the interplay between harp and electronics. The album unfolds like a series of visual scenes, where acoustic motifs drift through layered electronic textures, blurring the line between composition, ambient music, and atmosphere. Entirely composed and produced by Hermant in close collaboration with Fabien Leseure, the record reflects their shared approach to sound as narrative — sculpting space, tension, and silence with a distinctly filmic sensibility. Balancing intimacy and expansiveness, the album positions her harp at the heart of a contemporary, emotionally driven sonic language.
In 2021, she released her debut track Under on Deutsche Grammophon, featured in the Project XI compilation. The following year, she composed Lightwell for Mari Samuelsen’s album Lys. From 2023 onward, she increasingly focused on film scoring and screen composition, and in 2024 joined the agency Strike a Score, through which she has since composed music for numerous audiovisual projects.
As an interpreter and co-writer, Margaret Hermant has also contributed extensively to the film industry, performing harp and violin on soundtracks for films such as Lion (Garth Davis), No Man’s Land (Oded Ruskin), The Princess (Ed Perkins), Entrapped (Baltasar Kormákur), Le Fidèle (Michaël R. Roskam), Bitter Flowers (Olivier Meys), and The Water Man (David Oyelowo).
Her discography includes notable releases with Echo Collective, among them 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann by Jóhann Jóhannsson (Deutsche Grammophon) and The See Within by Echo Collective (7K!).
Blending classical instrumentation with contemporary and experimental approaches, Margaret Hermant’s work is distinguished by its sensitivity, versatility, and narrative depth. Bridging concert music, film music, and interdisciplinary creation, she has established herself as a singular voice within today’s post-classical, cinematic, and ambient music landscape.More releases
