James Hannay

So I finally moved from the old studio in March of this year into a beautiful new space at the end of the garden that i had custom designed. It took a while…it went from

to

With a bit of these in the build.

I have started collaborating with this incredible company Celestial that make spectacular creative light displays from drones. http://celestial.show/about/

I teamed up with my pal and synth wiz Jonjo Grisdale (last seen providing keys for the final Pink Floyd concert at a charity gig in 2007!) to provide the music for their featurette. Hopefully the start of many more collaborations.

Hello again.

Safe to say it’s been some time since i have posted. 2 Years! There’s a pretty obvious reason: our industry was crippled during the pandemic -so there was little work out there. And a less obvious reason. My website got lost in the cloud for 6 months without access. I won’t go into why – way too dull and infuriating- but after much huffing and puffing from me – someone at the hosting company managed to scoop it from the ether!

This notwithstanding, I have also been super busy in this period. I can safely say that i have done more composing and learning in the last 18 months years than in any other period in my life. Plus a few other life events to mention. In short since the first lockdown:

I built and equipped a new studio

Had my first child, Henry- 7 months old.

Did 6 x 3 month online music courses with Berklee Online…including two piano courses and orchestration course and a mixing course

Started regular work with 2 very exciting new brands and wrote the music for two short films

Had 20 odd tracks written and accepted by a Lift Music library in Brighton

And last but not least, I scored my first feature film. Burn It Down! which premiered at the London Film Festival last week.

I will do a separate post for a couple of those events so there is a bit of a chronological logbook for them and a couple of pics to boot.

Meet my new acquisition- A Yamaha C2 from 2012. I’ve had my eye on it for some time and now it’s mine. It’s a real beauty and has an absolutely gorgeous tone. Safe to say it’ll be a cornerstone of my compositions going forward. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

I have been busy with a couple of projects in the past couple of months. One that I am particularly proud to have been a part of. The excellent BBC documentary about Anna Campbell, a young British woman who went to fight for the Kurdish Liberation army and was tragically killed by a Turkish airstrike. It is directed and produced by the brilliant double Bafta winner Marina Parker and aired on BBC2 in early July. It’s still on iplayer see below link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006h6x

I co-composed the music with First Dates composer Miguel D’Oliveira, and feel honoured to share a billing with a class act like him.

The programme received wall-to-wall great reviews from all the major newspapers. Do check it out. And you can specifically find my music for it in my portfolio page.

‘Superb’ – 5* The Telegraph

‘The heartbreaking story behind a young woman’s decision to join a Kurdish Militia’ 5* -The Financial Times

‘Searing eloquence of a father who lost his daughter to a foreign war’ 5* -The Daily Mail

‘A powerful portrait of a father grieving for the girl he lost to war ‘ 4* -The Guardian

‘An excruciating swirl of pride, loss and guilt’ 4* -The Times

‘A devastating tale of a revolutionary who died fighting for her cause’ 4*-The i

Since December I have been having a really interesting time making music for the new mindfulness app – Unmind. It’s not your traditional scoring experience – it’s primarily making music to help guided meditation, sleep and relaxation. But it’s amazing to be able to take a deep dive into the sonic landscape of textures, pads and ambience. Check out the website….http://home.unmind.com/

Having worked flat-out on the Nansen Awards last month I have finally been putting together some showreels. The main one is front and centre of the Home page. But there are other more specific ones in the Showreels drop-down of the Watch section. Namely

World Music scores

Scores co-composed with the superb Indian percussionist/composer Sarathy who, by the way, has just released The Guardian’s contemporary classical album of the month – http://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/nov/08/sarathy-korwar-upaj-collective-my-east-is-your-west-review-seamless-genre-fusion.

Film/TV scores for stuff that i have done for pitches/auditions/coursework

Advertising Showreel

Do go and check them out!

I recently completed all the music for the UNHCR Nansen Awards 2018 in Geneva. A typically starry event took place last month for 900 guests with Cate Blanchett hosting. It was honour to be soundtracking the heroic efforts of those up for the award, this year won by Dr Atar from Sudan who singlehandedly is running three hospitals out there.

You can see the other two videos in the Watch section of the website

The BBC documentary Ugly Me- about Body Dysmorphia – produced and directed by double Bafta winner Marina Parker – is now out on iplayer. And is being transmitted on BBC1 at 10.45 on Tues 12 June. It was a pleasure to work with someone so respected in the documentary world. I scored the opening scenes…and you can see the results here….