Writing music professionally since 2007 and and winning the Best Composer category at RTS Bristol 2023 (also nominated in 2021 and 2019). I work from Stokes Croft in Bristol, where I compose for various media projects including title themes, documentaries, short films, ads, and animation with Aardman. My primary motivation is storytelling, and I work in a variety of genres to best support the narrative of the project, though my background is in classical music and experimental rock. Alongside playing piano, guitars, drums and trombone, I compose using the most modern digital sample/synthesis equipment, alongside analogue modular synth and live recording where possible. I have worked as a music editor with composers Neil Davidge and David Poore on high budget dramas. I hold a 1st class degree in commercial music composition.
I have an additional understanding of music for media from my career outside composing. Working as a dubbing mixer and dubbing editor/sound designer, I have years of experience of TV (Countryfile, Gardeners World, One Born Every Minute, Simply Nigella, and numerous BBC Studios and BBC NHU documentaries as well as on many commercial projects for Aardman). Before this, I worked as a boom op on TV dramas and feature films including Downton Abbey, I Give It A Year, and Belle. This expertise across all areas of soundtrack production, as well as being around editing suites on a daily basis, gives me a rounded knowledge of how a whole soundtrack comes together, and where how and why to use music to effectively tell a story.
In 2016 Aardman commissioned a piece of music for a new showreel to honour 40 years of creativity
The film shows the history of the company from the very early animations, so I open with a mid-70s stylophone sound, before transitioning into an epic sweeping orchestral piece that scores the more cinematic clips of the modern feature films.