George Fenton

British composer George Fenton certainly has a magic touch when it comes to composing scores for motion pictures. He began composing in 1975, and soon penned music for such British theatre directors as Peter Gill, Howard Davies, Adrian Noble, and Richard Eyre. His efforts paid off in a big way, as he won respective BAFTA and Ivor Novello awards for his work. But his greatest accomplishments were yet to come. Starting in 1983, Fenton successfully made the transition from theatre to movies, receiving Oscar nominations (Best Musical Score) for the movies Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons, Cry Freedom, The Fisher King, and Dangerous Beauty (1998). Although he occasionally conducts concerts of his work, he spends most of his time composing for orchestra and lecturing at film festivals and colleges when time permits. Fenton also founded the Association of Professional Composers, and is a member of both the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Music.

from Wikipedia:

George Fenton (born 19 October 1950) is a British composer best known for his work writing film scores and music for television, although he also writes music for the theatre. His real name is George Howe but he is better known by his pseudonym of George Fenton.

Selected film and television credits

Fenton has composed the score for over seventy feature films. This is a small selection of his film and television credits.

You've Got MailHitchMemphis Belle84 Charing Cross RoadEntropyGandhiThe Wind That Shakes the BarleyThe History BoysDangerous LiaisonsThe Fisher KingThe Madness of King GeorgeShadowlandsGroundhog DayCry FreedomMrs Henderson PresentsLand and FreedomA Handful of DustWe're No AngelsClockwiseThe CrucibleBewitchedBergeracTalking HeadsThe Jewel in the CrownThe Blue PlanetPlanet EarthDangerous BeautyEver After: A Cinderella StoryIt's a Free World...Love and Death In Shanghai (TV movie)Fool's GoldLooking for EricLife (BBC TV series)The Bounty Hunter (2010)A Handful of Dust (1988)Frozen Planet: To the Ends of the Earth

For a comprehensive filmography see the George Fenton's Internet Movie Database (IMDb) entry link in External links.

Early career

Fenton was born George Richard Ian Howe in London, and attended St Edward's School in Oxford, starting in 1963. He has credited the school's Deputy Director of Music at the time, the late Peter Whitehouse, as an early influence. Fenton is now a Governor of the School.

Initially Fenton worked as an actor, getting an early break with a part in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. He had some minor success appearing in the film Private Road, the soap opera Emmerdale Farm and in Alan Bennett's first television play A Day Out directed by Stephen Frears and broadcast in 1972.

Often asked to play a musical instrument in productions, Fenton also tried his hand as a recording artist (taking the Beatles' Maxwell's Silver Hammer into the Swedish charts) and dabbled in band management, before deciding on an early career switch to composition. In 1974 he got his first major commission, as composer and musical director for Peter Gill's theatre production of Twelfth Night by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. This led to further work in British theatre, composing for productions at: The National Theatre, The Royal Exchange Theatre, The Royal Court, The Riverside Studios, and further compositions for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He was the founder and is a member of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA),

Television

In 1976, Fenton wrote his first television score, continuing his collaboration with Peter Gill, composing for Gill's production of Hitting Town written by Stephen Poliakoff.

By the late 1970s, Fenton was working regularly in television, becoming a popular choice for dozens of television productions, including Shoestring, a BBC police drama which ran for 21 episodes in 1979-1980.

He composed the music for all six of the Six Plays by Alan Bennett which were broadcast during 1978 and 1979. Their collaboration continued with the TV series Objects of Affection in 1982. A year later he composed the score of Bennett's TV film An Englishman Abroad (1983) which was directed by John Schlesinger. Fenton also composed for all of the episodes of Bennett's highly acclaimed Talking Heads series in 1987 and, a decade later, Talking Heads 2 in 1998.

Fenton also collaborated regularly with the director Stephen Frears, composing for his television productions of Bloody Kids (1979), Going Gently (1981), Saigon: Year of the Cat (1983), and Walter and June (1983).

By the mid 1980s, Fenton was composing for big budget TV series including the multi BAFTA winning The Jewel in the Crown (1984) and The Monocled Mutineer (1986).

Perhaps the TV series with which Fenton reached the widest audience was Bergerac which ran for ten years between 1981 and 1991, and for which Fenton composed the much-loved theme tune. He received his first major award for this, a BAFTA in 1982.

Television, wildlife

Fenton has composed for a number of notable wildlife television programmes, often for wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough. He started on the BBC's long running series Wildlife on One and Natural World, and continued with one-off specials such as Polar Bear.

Since 1990, he has written the music for a number of acclaimed big budget wildlife series:

The Trials of Life (1990)Life in the Freezer (1993)The Blue Planet (2001)Deep Blue (2003) (feature length version of The Blue Planet)Planet Earth (2006)Earth (2007) (feature length version of Planet Earth)Frozen Planet (2011)

His track record in this genre has placed him firmly as the BBC's composer of choice for its flagship wildlife documentaries.

Television, jingles

Fenton has composed the jingles or theme music to dozens of British television and radio programs, mostly for the BBC. Some of these are; the BBC's One O'Clock News, Six O'Clock News, and Nine O'Clock News, Newsnight and Newsnight Review, On the Record, Omnibus, Breakfast Time, BBC World Service Television News, Westminster - In The House, Reporting Scotland, London Plus, The Midday News and Telly Addicts.

Films

George Fenton is best known as a composer of film scores. He has written the music for over seventy feature films and has collaborated with some of the most influential film makers of the late 20th century.

Together with Michael Feast and David Dundas he co-wrote the music for Private Road (1971), a film he and Feast also starred in.

His transition from television to film scoring began in 1982 with Richard Attenborough's biopic Gandhi for which he was nominated — with his collaborator, Ravi Shankar — for the Original Music Score Academy Award.

Fenton has regularly written further film scores for Attenborough's movies including: Shadowlands, Cry Freedom, In Love and War, and Grey Owl.

His longstanding collaboration with Stephen Frears has not been limited to television productions. Fenton has scored four of Frear's feature films: Dangerous Liaisons, Hero, Mary Reilly, and Mrs Henderson Presents.

Fenton has scored more feature films for Ken Loach than for any other director; by March 2009, a total of ten. This started in 1994 with Ladybird, Ladybird; then, in chronological order: Land and Freedom, Carla's Song, My Name Is Joe, Bread and Roses, The Navigators, Sweet Sixteen, Ae Fond Kiss, The Wind That Shakes the Barley which won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and, most recently, It's a Free World....

Fenton has developed other long-standing collaborations with film makers, scoring several films each for directors as diverse as: Harold Ramis, Neil Jordan, Nora Ephron, Nicholas Hytner, Phil Joanou, and Andy Tennant. Other influential film makers with whom he has worked include: Terry Gilliam, Pedro Almodóvar, Alan Clarke, Michael Radford, Michael Caton-Jones, Wayne Wang, Richard Eyre, Christopher Hampton, and Charles Sturridge.

Misc.

Fenton founded the Association of Professional Composers which later amalgamated with the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and with the Composers' Guild of Great Britain to become the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Music and is a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music and the University of Nottingham.