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)
- DESH (2012; dance)
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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:
Best known for her score for Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Jocelyn Pook is an award-winning composer who writes music for film, television, theatre, dance and the concert platform.
After graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied the viola, Jocelyn embarked on a period of touring and recording with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson and PJ Harvey and as a member of the Communards. She has also toured extensively with The Jocelyn Pook Ensemble, performing repertoire from her albums and music from her film scores. For her music-theatre piece Speaking in Tunes she won a British Composer Award and, for the National Theatre's production of St Joan, she won an Olivier Award. In 2012, Jocelyn collaborated with singer Melanie Pappenheim and director Emma Bernard on Hearing Voices, which was performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conducted by Charles Hazlewood. Also that year, Jocelyn was one of the composers commissioned to write music for the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant in honour of the Diamond Jubilee of of Elizabeth II. The piece, entitled The New Water Music, was inspired by George Frederic Handel's Water Music and contained movements by several modern British composers.
Jocelyn has worked with a variety of acclaimed choreographers including, most recently, Akram Khan Company on the contemporary solo work DESH. Jocelyn has established an international reputation as a highly original composer of screen music following her score for Eyes Wide Shut, which won a Chicago Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination. Other film scores include: The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino (Dir: Michael Radford), Time Out (L'Emploi du Temps, Dir: Laurent Cantet) and Brick Lane (Dir: Sarah Gavron). She also contributed a piece to the soundtrack of Gangs of New York (Dir: Martin Scorsese).
Jocelyn has composed scores for television shows and commercials, and was nominated for a BAFTA for Channel 4's The Government Inspector (Dir: Peter Kosminsky). With a blossoming reputation as a composer of electro-acoustic works and music for the concert platform, Jocelyn continues to celebrate the diversity of the human voice. Her work Mobilewas a commission from the BBC Proms and The King's Singers and is a collaboration with the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Portraits in Absentia was commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and is a collage of sound, voice, music and words woven from the messages left on her answerphone. Ingerland, Jocelyn's first contemporary opera, was commissioned and produced by ROH2 and performed in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre in June 2010 to wide acclaim. Jocelyn has chaired and been a judge on various panels including the British Composer Awards, Ivor Novello Awards and BBC Proms Young Composers Competition.
External Websites
Composer News
- iTMOi world premiere
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Following the success of their award-winning collaboration DESH, Jocelyn Pook is working with Akram Khan again for a new production, iTMOi (in the mind of igor). Pook and fellow composers Nitin Sawhney and Ben Frost have created an original score to commemorate the centenary of Igor Stravinsky’s seminal ballet The Rite of Spring, which will be performed exactly 100 years after the original, riotous premiere in Paris. Jocelyn's music features singers Melanie Pappenheim and Tanja Tzarovska.
The Rite of Spring caused uproar when it opened at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, due to the avant-garde nature of Stravinsky’s music, Vaslav Nijinsky’s anarchic choreography and Nicholas Roerich’s vibrant costumes and stage designs. The work depicts a pagan ritual – an imaginary ancient tribe sacrifices a young virgin to appease the god of spring, by forcing her to dance herself to death.
iTMOi forms part of a Stravinsky-led trilogy of works at Sadler’s Wells entitled A String of Rites. The piece receives its world premiere on 14 May at MC2: Grenoble in France, where Khan is an Associate Artist in a special co-operation with Sadler’s Wells.
iTMOi Tour
14-18 May 2013: Grenoble, France (World Premiere)
21-22 May 2013: Châlons-en-Champagne, France
25 May 2013: Geneva, Switzerland
28 May-1 June 2013: London, UK (UK Premiere)
14-16 June 2013: La Réunion Island, France
24-26 June 2013: Paris, France
3 July 2013: Zagreb, Croatia
12-13 July 2013: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
20, 22 July 2013: Vienna, Austria
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