Most people probably had never heard of Jóhann Jóhannsson before he won the Golden Globe this past January for his score to The Theory of Everything. But the Icelandic composer - who now lives in Berlin - has been known in the new music scene for some time now: we heard first heard him in 2012, when he and the Wordless Music Orchestra performed The Miners' Hymns, a collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. Jóhannsson writes a blend of acoustic and electronic music, which Jóhannsson himself plays from his laptop. 

Last Tuesday, Jóhannsson joined the string quartet ACME and vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth for the world premiere of his Drone Mass, a major work commissioned by ACME for its tenth anniversary. Billed as "a contemporary oratorio," Jóhannsson says that he wrote Drone Mass using mysterious ancient Egyptian texts made up of a meaningless series of vowels.

The performance took place at the Met Museum's Temple of Dendur, which has emerged over the past few seasons as one of NYC's essential concert venues. The majestic, cavernous space isn't always the most friendly from an acoustic standpoint, such as Vijay Iyer's show there a couple of weeks ago. But, for this music - loosely defined as sacred music - the resonant, church-like room proved to be ideal.