Composers
Jocelyn Pook
© Hugo Glendinning
Born: 1960
Brief Biography: Jocelyn Pook’s distinctive style is a product of her diverse experiences in classical, commercial and world music. After graduating from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she performed with many pop artists including The Communards and Massive Attack, and formed Electra Strings for whom she wrote original material. She has worked extensively with eminent dance companies such as DV8 and Shobana Jeyasingh, and in 2002 she was commissioned by the BBC Proms to write a work for The King’s Singers in collaboration with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Notable film credits include Michael Radford’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice and Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut.
For a complete biography, click here.
Key Works:- Blow the Wind: Pie Jesu
(1994: mezzo-soprano, string quartet, tape) - Portraits in Absentia
(1999; answerphone message samples, orchestra) - Eyes Wide Shut
(1999; film score) - Saints and Sinners
(2000; Persian singer, chorus, ensemble) - L’emploi du temps (2001; film score)
- Speaking in Tunes (2002; string quartet, tape)
| Career Highlights:- 1997 Blow the Wind / Pie Jesu, used by Orange in TV advertising campaign
- 1999 score for Eyes Wide Shut nominated for Golden Globe Award
- 2001 wrote score for Laurent Cantet’s film L’emploi du temps
- 2002 Phantasmaton premiered by the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company
- 2003 Multimedia Award for Speaking in Tunes at the first British Composer Awards
- 2004 wrote score for Michael Radford’s film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice
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Full Biography:
Jocelyn Pook composes music for film, television, theatre, dance and the concert platform. Since graduating in 1983 from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied the viola, she has also toured and recorded extensively with many leading names in rock, pop and classical music, both as a soloist and with her ensemble the Electra Strings. She has collaborated with a diverse range of artists, including The Communards, Laurie Anderson, Massive Attack, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel.
Her original scores for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Laurent Cantet’s Time Out (L’emploi du temps) have established her as a highly original composer of screen music. Dionysus, the first track on Untold Things, her most recent CD, features in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. During the last two years has scored several French feature films including Comment j’ai tue mon pere, directed by Anne Fontaine and La Repentie, directed by Laetitia Masson.
Jocelyn co-wrote with Harvey Brough the music for the recent BBC2 10-part drama series In A Land of Plenty. For S4C, she wrote the music for Saints and Sinners, a 6-part documentary series about the history of the papacy, shown in more than twenty countries.
Her 1994 piece Blow the Wind / Pie Jesu, a setting of Kathleen Ferrier’s Blow the Wind Southerly against the contemporary voice of Melanie Pappenheim, became a crossover hit when it was used by Orange for their TV advertising campaign in 1997.
The Jocelyn Pook Ensemble has presented performances of repertoire from Untold Things and from her film scores in Germany, France and Italy, touring the UK on the Contemporary Music Network in 2001. Her most recent music-theatre works, Speaking in Tunes and Portraits in Absentia, have also been toured in the UK.
Recent notable commissions for dance include Phantasmatron for the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company and Requiem for Darsan Singh Buller performed by the Phoenix Dance Company.
"It is with this solo project (Deluge) that she shows her mettle as a composer of imagination and ingenuity" The Wire
"Jocelyn Pook has sampled the thoughts of those evicted and combined them with the sounds of destruction to ingenious and powerful effect" Time Out (on Blight)
"Pook is acquiring a cult following" The Independent
"Few directors are as involved and invested in the musical details of their films as was the late genius Stanley Kubrick ... specially commissioned works that shine for their originality and eclecticism ... minimalist, exotic, rich and soul-stirring." Billboard
On Eyes Wide Shut
"Kubrick may have been her Pygmalian, but there's much more to Pook than that, so it's worth keeping your ears open." La Sicilia
'The heightened sense of menace reaches its climax with the intensely spooky music of Jocelyn Pook' James Verniere, Boston Herald
'The film is enhanced by Jocelyn Pook's wonderful score' - Gene Shalit, NBC News
'A magical score by Jocleyn Pook' David Hunter, The Hollywood Reporter
External Websites
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