This hike in the Yorkshire Dales became a pilgrimage through death and bereavement, haunting figures emerging and vanishing through rock crevices, and mournful songs by composer Jocelyn Pook echoing from the crags.
KATE BASSETT, THE INDEPENDENT ONE OF THE HIGHS OF 2011 Read the review
Jocelyn created the score for Akram Khan's new project, entitled DESH (homeland), incorporating found audio material from field recordings taken in Bangladesh. With Akram Khan she visited the city of Dhaka and toured rural Bangladesh, gathering spoken word, song, the percussive sounds of industry in the city's shipyards and bells and hoots from the streets. DESH is the winner of an Olivier Award (Best Dance Production).
After five years of collaborations with artists like Sylvie Guillem, Juliette Binoche, Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley, Akram Khan’s artistic journey brings him back to a desire to reconnect with his own cultural roots by creating a new full length modern dance theatre solo inspired by his homeland of Bangladesh. This very personal work is to reflect on life in Bangladesh in a unique theatrical structure whereby Khan as the solo performer portrays many everyday characters familiar in daily Bangladeshi culture through his own body and voice. www.akramkhancompany.net
J O C E L Y N I S C U R R E N T L Y W O R K I N G O N . . .
Jocelyn will be participating in the Thames Pageant for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee to take place in June 2012. A new piece taking its inspiration from Handel's Water Music will be performed on a barge floating down the Thames. More information coming soon.
Jocelyn is working on the soundtrack for Augustine, a new feature film by Alice Winocour. Starring Vincent Lindon and Soko, Augustine depicts the romance between Professor Charcot and one of his patients affected by hysteria.
Jilted, 3 March, 8-9pm
How would one of the heroines of Dickens's novel Great Expectations describe her fate? Singers Melanie Pappenheim and Rebecca Askew provide the answers in a specially commissioned piece for the Bath LitFest with new music by Jocelyn, Orlando Gough and Michael Henry. www.bathlitfest.org.uk
When You're Gone, You're Gone (BBC Radio 3), January 2012
What happens when we die? For this poignant contemplation, Jocelyn interviewed experts, friends and passersby in the street about this great mystery, finding out about shared grief, the afterlife and not knowing. Orchestrated and arranged with new music composed by Jocelyn and performed by members of the Jocelyn Pook Ensemble including Melanie Pappenheim and Sophie Harris. www.justradio.ltd.uk
Room 304 Director Birgitte Stærmose
July 2011 (World Premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival)
July 2011 (Croatian Premiere at the Pula Film Festival)
October 2011 (Danish release)
Jocelyn composed the score for this new film by the award-winning Danish director.
In a Copenhagen hotel, disparate lives intersect through accident or fate: A stewardess desperate for intimacy. An immigrant obsessed with revenge. A hotel manager lost in despair. A wife abandoned by her husband. A receptionist with blood on his hands. People meet in the intimacy of hotel rooms, secrets are revealed and unexpected events merge into a dramatic tale of love and longing.
Ingerland Jocelyn Pook / ROH2
In June 2010, Ingerland, Jocelyn's first opera premiered at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio. Ingerland is a big, raw, energetic exploration of the world of the football crowd. Directed by Tony Guilfoyle, with evocative video imagery by Dragan Aleksic, the cast includes Tannishtha Chatterjee, Mike Henry, Jonathan Williams, Olivia Chaney, Mikhail Karikis, Melanie Pappenheim, George Ikediashi, and Lore Lixenberg. Ingerland was commissioned and produced by ROH2 as part of a triple programme of short contemporary operas written by artists with established reputations in non-operatic fields. www.roh.org.uk > Click here to see some images
Room in Rome Director Julio Medem
In May 2010, Julio Medem’s new feature film Room in Rome (Habitación en Roma) was released to critical acclaim and was accompanied by a soundtrack album. Both feature an original score by Jocelyn Pook including two new works, the stunning Libera Me (featuring the voices of Lore Lixenberg, Natacha Atlas and Parvin Cox) and the satirical piece Women’s Magazine Tango (Melanie Pappenheim, Lore Lixenberg). www.morenafilms.com
FissureLouise Ann Wilson / Artevents
May 2011
Jocelyn composed music for professional singers and local choirs for theatre-maker Louise Ann Wilson's Fissure - a unique theatrical experience in a remote Yorkshire Dale. Fissure maps a process of grief through the landscape. It takes visitors on a literal and metaphorical journey in which a beautiful, fractured stretch of land becomes both an embodiment of loss and separation, and a metaphor for the human brain and body – a body breaking down through illness and death, before transmuting into elements of air and light and wide horizons. Visitors journeyed for three days, exploring caves and taking part in a ten mile hike, as the work unfolded around them. www.artevents.info
music
film & TV
S E L E C T E D
A magnificent score written for [Eyes Wide Shut] by Jocelyn Pook.
It is one of the most varied and compelling in all Kubrick’s work.
THE ECONOMIST
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Director Stanley Kubrick
Starring Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman.
Music by Jocelyn Pook: Naval Officer, The Dream, Masked Ball, Migrations
Soundtrack released by Warner Sunset / Reprise ASCAP Award winner; nominated for CFCA Award, Golden Globe and OFCS Award
Brick Lane (2007)
Director Sarah Gavron
Starring Tannishtha Chatterjee
Music Jocelyn Pook
Soundtrack released by Universal Classics ASCAP Award winner
The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Director Michael Redford
Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins
Soundtrack released by Decca Soundtrack received Classical BRIT Award nomination
The Staircase (Soupçons, 2004)
Director
François-Xavier de Lestrade
A gripping courtroom thriller, offering a rare and revealing inside look at a high-profile murder trial. In 2001, author Michael Peterson was arraigned for the murder of his wife Kathleen, whose body was discovered lying in a pool of blood on the stairway of their home. Granted unusual access to Peterson's lawyers, home and immediate family, de Lestrade's cameras capture the defence team as it considers its strategic options. The Staircase is an engrossing look at contemporary American justice that features more twists than a legal bestseller.
Gangs of New York (2003)
Director Martin Scorsese
Jocelyn Pook contributed one piece: Dionysus
Soundtrack released by Universal International
Time Out (L'Emploi du Temps, 2001)
Director Laurent Cantet
Producer Caroline Benjo, Haut et Court production co.
Winner of
Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival
A R C H I V E
Room in Rome (Habitación en Roma, 2010)
Director Julio Medem
Starring Elena Anaya, Natasha Yarovenko
To order the soundtrack from Karonte Distribuciones, please email exports@karonte.com
The People v. Leo Frank (2009)
Director Ben Loeterman
Starring Will Janowitz, Seth Gilliam, Jayson Warner Smith
In 1913 Atlanta, a child worker is found dead in the basement of the National Pencil Company. The police soon focus on Mary Phagan's boss, a Jewish engineer recently arrived from New York - Leo Frank. Frank's murder trial becomes a free-for-all of racial stereotypes and contradictions. The People v Leo Frank weaves first-rate drama with recollections, commentary, and a rich trove of archival images.
Chaotic Ana (Caótica Ana, 2009)
Director Julio Medem
Starring Manuela Vellés, Charlotte Rampling, Bebe
To order the soundtrack from Karonte Distribuciones, please email exports@karonte.com
Going South (Plein Sud, 2009)
Director Sebastien Lifshitz
Starring Léa Seydoux, Nicole Garcia, Yannick Renier
Remnants of Everest: The 1996 Tragedy (in USA: Storm over Everest, 2007)
Director David Breashears
As darkness fell on May 10, 1996, a fast moving storm of unimaginable ferocity trapped three climbing teams high on the slopes of Mount Everest. The climbers, exhausted from their summit climb, were soon lost in darkness, in a fierce blizzard, far from the safety of High Camp at 26,000 feet. This film tells the story of the five climbers who perished in that storm, marking the worst climbing tragedy in Mount Everest's history. But more remarkably, it is the story of eleven climbers caught in the storm and the eyewitness accounts of their astonishing survival in the world's most unforgiving environment.
Heidi (2005)
Director Paul Marcus
Starring Max von Sydow, Emma Bolger, Diana Rigg, Geraldin Chaplin, Robert Bathurst
The Government Inspector (2005)
Director Peter Kosminsky
Mark Rylance plays the role of Dr. David Kelly Music received BAFTA TV Award nomination
Wild Side (2004)
Director Sebastien Lifshitz
Original music by Jocelyn Pook
Label Naive NV 801611
The War in Paris (La Guerre à Paris, 2002)
Director Yolande Zauberman Hachette
Premiere production co.
Addicted to the Stars (2002)
Director Mike Radford
Part of a group of 10 minute film projects shown together as a feature called 10 minutes Older
The Repentant (La Repentie, 2002)
Director Laeticia Mason
Starring Isabelle Adjani
Producer Michelle Halberstadt, ARP
production co.
Stanley Kubrick
Documentary (2001)
A Life In Pictures
A film by Jan Harlan
In a Land of Plenty (2001)
10-part BBC drama, co-written with Harvey Brough
Talkback Production Company
How I Killed My Father (Comment j'ai tué
mon père, 2000)
Director Anne Fontaine
Producer Philip Carcassone, Cine B production co.
The Sight (2000)
Director Paul Anderson
Producer Jeremy Bolt, Impact Production co
A paranormal-based US TV movie
Enron advert (2000)
First campaign of 'Ode to Why'
Breaking Hearts (My Khmer Heart, 2000)
Director Peter Kosminsky
Contributed one piece, Butterfly Song United Productions
Blight (1994-6)
Director John Smith
Blight was made in collaboration with the film maker John Smith for the BBC series Sound On Film. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. The film is constructed from images and sounds of demolition and road building in conjunction with the spoken words of residents - the musical qualities of the speech fragments and natural sounds form the basis of the score.
Blight won 11 International Awards including Best European Short Film at the Cork International Film Festival 1997, and the Gold Plaque for Best Experimental Film at the Chicago International Film Festival, USA 1997.
albums
S O L O A L B U M S
Jocelyn Pook is what you might call a thoroughly Post-Modern composer... [she] delights in breaching the boundaries between high art and popular culture. Her work glides effortlessly between classical, pop and world music, and incorporates elements of dance, film and theatre.
THE TIMES
Untold Things is one of those albums whose Middle Eastern and ancient world inflections entwine majestically with classical and contemporary moodscapes, and as a whole, making this timeless music to dream to.
WAX
Untold
Things (2001)
RealWorld Records
Flood (1999)
Virgin Records
Deluge (1997)
Virgin Records
S O U N D T R A C K A L B U M S
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Director Stanley Kubrick
Starring Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman.
Music by Jocelyn Pook: Naval Officer, The Dream, Masked Ball, Migrations
Soundtrack released by Warner Sunset / Reprise ASCAP Award winner; nominated for CFCA Award, Golden Globe and OFCS Award
Brick Lane (2007)
Director Sarah Gavron
Starring Tannishtha Chatterjee
Music Jocelyn Pook
Soundtrack released by Universal Classics ASCAP Award winner
The Merchant of Venice (2004)
Director Michael Redford
Starring Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons, Joseph Fiennes, Lynn Collins
Soundtrack released by Decca Soundtrack received Classical BRIT Award nomination
Gangs of New York (2003)
Director Martin Scorsese
Jocelyn Pook contributed one piece: Dionysus
Soundtrack released by Universal International
Time Out (L'Emploi du Temps, 2001)
Director Laurent Cantet
Producer Caroline Benjo, Haut et Court production co.
Winner of
Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival
Room in Rome (Habitación en Roma, 2010)
Director Julio Medem
Starring Elena Anaya, Natasha Yarovenko
To order the soundtrack from Karonte Distribuciones, please email exports@karonte.com
Chaotic Ana (Caótica Ana, 2009)
Director Julio Medem
Starring Manuela Vellés, Charlotte Rampling, Bebe
To order the soundtrack from Karonte Distribuciones, please email exports@karonte.com
Heidi (2005)
Director Paul Marcus
Starring Max von Sydow, Emma Bolger, Diana Rigg, Geraldin Chaplin, Robert Bathurst
C O L L A B O R A T I O N S & S T R I N G A R R A N G E M E N T S
Something Dangerous (2003)
Natacha Atlas
Adam's Lullaby
MANTRA
OVO The Millennium
Show (2000)
Peter Gabriel - Low Light, The Time of the Turning, The Weaver's
Reel, Downside Up, The Nest that Sailed the Sky
Real World Records RWPGO1
Liquid Sunshine - Keziah Jones (1999)
Hello Heavenly, Runaway,Teardrops Will Fall Delabel
Friday the Thirteenth -
The Stranglers (1997)
Waltz in Black,Valley of the Birds, Daddy's Riding the Range, Golden
Brown, No More Heroes
Eagle Records
Jam Nation (1993)
Way Down Buffalo Hell - Sleeping , She Moved Through The Fair
Real World Records
Jam Nation - Plus
from Us (1993)
Real World Records
live music, dance & theatre
L I V E M U S I C
A dizzying diversity of styles and musics. TOM SERVICE, THE GUARDIAN
The Jocelyn Pook Ensemble's wide ranging repertoire features music from her album Untold Things, as well as selections from some of her film and television scores. Notoriously difficult to classify, these works contain a fusion of times and cultures - mixing strings and vocals from a classical tradition with medieval instruments, talking drums and found sounds (Yemenite chants, birdsong, children's playground chatter). Jocelyn brings together singers from different backgrounds - mixing foreign languages with invented words as well as voices running backwards - to create an eclectic soundscape.
Adding to the sense of disorientation, Jocelyn has collaborated with visual artist Dragan Aleksic to incorporate a strong visual element to the performances. For a concert in Venice, Aleksic created Tides - a multi-layer video projection mixing previously shot footage with the live transmission of a burning wax effigy of the composer, installed outside the theatre. Sound and visuals combined to create an experience that has been described as mysterious, beautiful and haunting.
Jocelyn began her career in experimental theatre and dance, both as a performer with Impact Theatre Co-operative and Lumière and Son and then as a composer with DV8 Physical Theatre and O Vertigo Danse. She has since worked with a number of artists and companies including: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, Phoenix Dance Company, Pete Brooks, Bobby Baker, Jane Dudley, Gillian Lacey, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Wayne MacGregor (for his BBC2 short film, Horizone). In 2003 she received a British Composer Award (Multi-Media) for the music-theatre piece Speaking in Tunes, a collaboration with visual artist Dragan Aleksic and director Graeme Miller. In 2008 Jocelyn received a further accolade, winning an Olivier Award (Best Music and Sound Design) for the critically acclaimed National Theatre production of St Joan, starring Anne-Marie Duff.
biography
Special Mention of the Jury, Karlovy Vary Film Festival (Best Music, 2011) for Room 304
Olivier Award (Best Music and Sound Design, 2008) for St Joan ASCAP Award for Brick Lane BAFTA TV Award nomination (Best Original TV Music, 2006) for The Government Inspector Classical BRIT Award nomination (Soundtrack Composer, 2005) for The Merchant of Venice British Composer Award (Multi-Media, 2003) for Speaking in Tunes ASCAP Award for Eyes Wide Shut CFCA Award nomination (Best Original Score, 2000) for Eyes Wide Shut Golden Globe nomination (Best Original Score - Motion Picture, 2000) for Eyes Wide Shut OFCS Award nomination (Best Original Score, 2000) for Eyes Wide Shut
A composer of imagination and ingenuity.
THE WIRE
Pook is acquiring a cult following.
THE INDEPENDENT
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.
Jocelyn graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1983, where she studied the viola. She then 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. 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 Mobile was 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.
To download a longer biography, please click here.
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