George Fenton
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George Fenton (born October 19, 1950) is a British composer best known for his work writing film scores and music for television. He was born George Howe in London. Some of his film score credits include:
- Gandhi
- Dangerous Liaisons
- The Fisher King
- The Madness of King George
- Shadowlands
- Groundhog Day
- Memphis Belle
- Bewitched
- Cry Freedom
- White Mischief
- Land and Freedom
- We're No Angels
- Clockwise
- The Crucible
- The Company Of Wolves
Early in his career Fenton worked as an actor but rapidly moved to music. In 1974 he got his first major commission, composing and musical directing for a theatre production of Twelfth Night by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. Twelfth Night led to further work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and with other British theatre productions.
By the late 1970’s Fenton was working regularly in television composing for the Six Plays by Alan Bennett and becoming a popular choice for dozens of television productions. He became more high profile winning, in 1982, the Best Original Television Music BAFTA for his work on Bergerac. A year later, in 1983, he was nominated with his collaborator Ravi Shankar for the Original Music Score Academy Award for his work on Richard Attenborough’s biopic Gandhi.
Fenton has regularly written further film scores for Attenborough's movies including; Shadowlands, In Love And War and Cry Freedom for which he received two Academy Award nominations in the Original Music Score and Best Song categories.
Fenton has developed other long standing collaborations with influential film makers, scoring several films each for directors as diverse as; Stephen Frears, Harold Ramis, Neil Jordan, Nora Ephron, Nicholas Hytner and eight films for Ken Loach.
His work on Stephen Frears’s production of Dangerous Liaisons and Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King led to two further Academy Award nominations, both in the Original Music Score category.
Other influential film makers with whom he has worked include; Pedro Almodóvar, Alan Clarke, Michael Radford, Michael Caton-Jones, and John Schlesinger.
Fenton has continued to work in television, working regularly with Alan Bennett including his Six Plays series and both Talking Heads series. His work in scoring for wildlife television programmes, often with wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough, has led to three BAFTA nominations in the Best Original Television Music category for the Trials of Life, Life in the Freezer, and winning this award for the third time for his work on The Blue Planet. He had earlier won the Best Original Television Music BAFTA in 1987 for The Monocled Mutineer and in 1982 for Bergerac. Other theme music he has written for British television and radio programmes include; the BBC's Nine O'Clock News, Newsnight, The Money Programme, On The Record, Omnibus, and Breakfast Time.
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 and 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.
Fenton has received many awards and nominations including; BAFTA awards, Emmy Awards, and Ivor Novello Awards. Despite five Academy Award nominations, including two in the same year in different categories, he has yet to win an Oscar.
External links
- British Film Institute, Film and TV credits (http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/873546/credits.html)
- Internet Movie Database (IMDb) entry (http://uk.imdb.com/name/nm0006070/)
- British Academy of Composers and Songwriters (http://www.britishacademy.com)
- The Gorfaine / Schwartz Agency PDF file (http://www.gsamusic.com/composers/Fenton.pdf)