Composers
George Fenton
|
Born: 1950
George Fenton was educated at St Edwards Oxford and studied with Janos Lehar in London. He began writing professionally in the theatre in 1974 for the Royal Shakespeare Company, The National Theatre and Riverside Studios
His film scores include: Gandhi, The Company of Wolves, Cry Freedom, Dangerous Liaisons, The Fisher King, Groundhog Day, The Madness of King George, You’ve got Mail, Ever After, Sweet Home Alabama, Memphis Belle, Stage Beauty, Hitch, Fools Gold and One Life. His long term collaboration with Director, Ken Loach began in 1994 and includes scores for Ladybird, Ladybird, Land and Freedom, Sweet Sixteen, My Name is Joe, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Looking for Eric and Route Irish.
TV work includes: The Jewel in the Crown, The History Man, The Monocled Mutineer, the Alan Bennett series of plays Talking Heads and Telling Tales, Out, Fox, Beyond the Clouds and many well known theme tunes including Shoestring, Bergerac, Telly Addicts, On the Record, Newsnight and most recently, The Daily Politics Show.
He has worked extensively with the BBC Natural History Unit with scores for series such as, Life in the Freezer, Trials of Life, The Natural World and Life and for the Planet Series; Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet. Blue Planet, won Ivor Novello, BAFTA and Emmy awards for Best Television Score and Planet Earth was awarded an Emmy and Classical Brit. He was made a Fellow of BASCA in 2007. It was his 7th Ivor Novello Award.
Following the series enormous success George Fenton created concert versions to picture of Blue Planet and Planet Earth, which have been performed by many of the world's leading orchestras. This year he premiered Frozen Planet at the Hollywood Bowl with the LA Philharmonic and with The Philharmonia Orchestra toured the UK with Planet Earth. Feature film versions of Blue Planet and Planet Earth were released as Deep Blue and Earth and these scores were recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic; the Orchestra’s first film soundtrack recordings.
As well as his many Ivors and Baftas, Fenton has been nominated five times for an Academy Award and twice for a Grammy. He was awarded the Nina Rota prize at Venice and a Lifetime Achievement award by the Royal Television Society.
He has recently written the score for ‘The Angels’ Share” which won the jury prize at Cannes and the music for the National Theatre’s production, Collaborators.
In 2011 the Dallas Symphony Orchestra commissioned and premiered a new piece for orchestra, “From a Disappearing World”. There were also performances of “Five Parts of the Dance” (for trumpet) and the String Quartet “Hymn” written with Alan Bennett, He is currently writing a new musical.
He holds a Special Professorship at Nottingham University and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Music.
|
|
|
|