MEDIA Composition

TV

My TV composing credits include additional music for Danny Boyle’s Pistol (2022), scoring Channel 5 drama series Cold Call (2019), Extreme Diet Hotel (Channel 4, 2018) and adverts for clients including National Lottery and Bird’s Eye. Although I work across many styles as the project dictates, I specialise in augmenting live acoustic instruments with contemporary sampling and niche electronics, as can be heard on my work for Cold Call in particular.

I also arranged, recorded and produced the brass and drum parts for this National Lottery advert celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Here’s some production music I’ve written for the good folk at Felt:

‘Turn It Up’ (nu-jazz/soul, with vocals)
’Call to the Source’ (afrobeat-inspired instrumental)
‘Double Down’ (afrobeat-inspired instrumental)

And here are some bits of media-focused music I’ve worked on over the past few years:

And here’s a track that I wrote in collaboration with a planetary system 600 light years away (via the brilliant astronomer Matt Russo’s fantastic work, introduced to me by Chris Lintott).

And here’s a track I wrote during the mad 24 hr live show that I did with Robin Ince in December 2020. The track was created, mixed and released during the show, and is entirely made from samples of the show itself, and of contributions sent in by livestream audience members. It has the rather unusual line up of comedians Stewart Lee (as Father Christmas) and Robin Ince, astronaut Chris Hadfield and writer/actor Mark Gatiss.

Here’s a track I wrote and produced with the phenomenal Brass for Africa band for the opening of the amazing Mustardseed School in Kampala, Uganda. It features musicians from Brass for Africa, MCS in Oxford and Hackney Colliery Band, all recorded and produced in lockdown 2021.

Theatre

I love to compose for the theatre, too.

Here’s parts of the score I wrote for First Impressions at Theatre Royal, Margate back in 2010. For this show I went to Margate to sample local sounds and worked them into some incidental music which combined elements of the Margate of the 1840s with the Margate of 2010.

Much of the work I’ve done for theatre has been for kids.

In 2020, I composed two songs for Wilton’s Music Hall’s ‘Songs for the Hall’ project, in collaboration with Snape Maltings. Alas the pandemic put paid to the festival going ahead, but I really enjoyed writing them, so here they are, in demo form - apologies for my dodgy singing, but these were only ever meant to be demos for the schools!

In 2014 I composed and produced the music and sound design for The Santa Claus Science Experiment, a musical theatre piece combining comedy, science, animation and more which ran at the Bloomsbury Theatre from 2013-14. It was my first foray into writing for musical theatre and I loved it. We never fully recorded this music, but I intend to do so and put up here at some stage soon.

In 2015 I composed and produced the music for my new show Annabelle's Skirtingboard Adventure (which I made with all round good egg Howard Read, based on his brilliant concept) which has toured arts centres around the UK and had a critically-acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2015 (see Theatre and Comedy for more details).

You can listen to some of my silly songs from the show here:

Musical Direction and Supervision

I often work as a Musical Director or Supervisor.

In 2019 I MDed and orchestrated A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe. This was a really lovely job, and I had a great summer working with a brilliant band and incredible cast in this uniquely amazing building. It was great to get back to working in theatre, and I’m hoping to be doing a lot more theatre work in the coming years.

I have MDed all of Robin Ince and Brian Cox’s various shows for many years, including performances in the Royal Albert Hall (Space Shambles in 2018, and forthcoming Sea Shambles in 2020), Hammersmith Apollo (Compendium of Reason, 2012-present) and Robin’s various incarnations of Nine Lessons and Carols for Curious People (2010-present).

I was Musical Supervisor for On Mass at the Roundhouse in November 2017 and 2015, featuring Angelique Kidjo in 2017, and Jamie Cullum and Tim Exile in 2015. Both instalments had musicians from around the world taking part, with 250 musicians from the UK, Faroe Islands, Brazil and India in 2017, and 150 musicians from the UK, Ukraine, Nigeria and South Africa in 2015,

In 2014 I was Musical Director for Puffball at the Roundhouse and on tour.

Here is the complete live streams of On Mass from November 2017 and 2015. There were some properly memorable moments both times, and if you look closely, you might be able to see me running around trying to co-ordinate everything.

Arranging

I have arranged, directed and performed music for artists including Billy Bragg, Sam Smith (the singer bloke, not the bloke who runs the chain of cheap and cheerful pubs in London), Roni Size, Scroobius Pip, Jim Bob, Sophie Ellis Bextor and many more. 

In 2019 I was Orchestrator for A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe (which I also MDed - see above).

I also once performed my arrangement of Eric Idle's amazing tune 'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' with Eric and a ridiculous cast of backing singers on stage at the Hammersmith Apollo. That was quite a treat. I even got the arrangement signed, and I never get anything signed.

As well as lots of arranging (often to commission) with HCB and associated projects (including commissions by Sky Arts, BBC 4, the Imperial War Museum and the London 2012 Olympic Closing Ceremony), I also arrange for the Bollywood Brass Band, particularly for their '100 Years of Bollywood Music' tour in 2013-15.

I was musical director and co-arranger of the music for Puffball at the Roundhouse in 2014, which was fun and used a lot of interesting electronic textures.