Philip Sheppard is a composer specialising in film and television soundtracks, a solo cellist and professor at the Royal Academy of Music. His blog contains an ample and impressive biography, detailing the highlights of his long and distinguished career.
His early solo albums, ‘The Glass Cathedral’ and ‘The Diver in the Crypt’, featured new compositions devised for site-specific performances. The albums received rave reviews on release and are regularly played on Radio 3. The tracks feature a specially commissioned electric cello that has become a cornerstone of many of Philip’s compositions. The albums attracted the attention of Scott Walker, who invited him to play at his Southbank Centre Meltdown Festival. They collaborated again on Pulp’s album ‘We Love Life’ with Jarvis Cocker and after that on Walker’s critically acclaimed album ‘The Drift’. He has also arranged songs for Jarvis Cocker’s solo album ‘Jarvis’, David Bowie and Suzanne Vega.
Philip regularly collaborates with James Lavelle and UNKLE. They have recently written and produced the forthcoming album ’End Titles….Stories For Film’ (with Gavin Clark, Josh Homme, Chris Goss and Pablo Clements) following the success of the recent album ‘War Stories’.
His first orchestral soundtrack was commissioned for the documentary feature, ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’, which won major awards at the Boulder, Florida, Indianapolis and Sedona film festivals, as well as the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
In 2009 he recorded a score for Sergio directed by Greg Barker which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and will be broadcast on HBO and the BBC.
Philip was commissioned to write and produce the music for the Olympic Handover Ceremony, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This marked the point when the Olympic flag passed to London in preparation for the 2012 games. His composition ‘This is London’ performed by the London Symphony Orchestra acted as an overture to a new version of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love, featuring Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis - produced by Steve Robson, Page, Lewis and Philip. This was performed from the top of an unfolding London double decker bus.
Philip was also commissioned to arrange and direct a new arrangement of the British National Anthem for these events, which has subsequently been used by City Hall in London for its citizenship ceremonies. Philip has produced the music for two recent BBC TV live events; The Manchester Passion and The Liverpool Nativity. These have won numerous awards, including the BBC award for Best Music Production of the year, which was awarded to Philip, together with the writer Stephen Powell.
Philip has completed a suite for piano, strings and electronics that forms the soundtrack for Robert Winston’s new series, ‘Superdoctors’, shown on BBC1 in the Autumn.
Philip is also currently writing a set of pieces for Viol Consort, to be recorded by Fretwork and vocal consort Alamire which will form the soundtrack for Dr David Starkey’s forthcoming series on Henry VIII on Channel Four, broadcast to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry’s accession to the throne.
His piano composition ‘Crystallised Beauty’ has received over 100,000 hits on YouTube after being used as the soundtrack for the ITV Jane Austen Season trailers.
Philip is proud to have had a long and fruitful professional relationship with Akram Khan. He first joined Akram as an improvising cellist in the Kathak projects ‘Third Catalogue‘ and ‘Ronin’, collaborating with Hanif Kureishi and the AK Company for ‘The God of Small Tales’.
In 2006, Philip was commissioned to write ‘Sacred Monsters’ for Akram and Sylvie Guillem. He toured with the production until the Summer of 2007, his final performance being at the Herod Atticus Theatre in the shadow of the Parthenon.
In 2008 he wrote the score for In-I featuring Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan, with stage design by Anish Kapoor, and lighting by Michael Hulls.
His groundbreaking work for multitracked cellos, Rain Steam and Speed, was featured in Theatre de Complicite’s acclaimed The Elephant Vanishes - based on short stories by Haruki Murakami.
Philip has recently written concert works for Alexander McQueen, ShowStudio, Yves St Laurent and Nick Knight. His work Sarabande in Blackwas performed live by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields as the accompaniment to McQueen’s Paris Fashion week show. Philip improvised a live soundtrack for the 24 hour live transmission devised by ShowStudio for Yves St Laurent, and his concert work Victorian Waltz has recently been used as the soundtrack to a film shot by Nick Knight and Ruth Hogben. Cello and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, during which time he specialised in contemporary music. He worked closely with Hans Werner Henze, Sir Michael Tippett and Luciano Berio during this time as a founder member of The Kreutzer String Quartet.
Whilst a student, Philip made weekly appearances at The Spitz nightclub, playing entirely improvised concerts, sometimes featuring his Piano Quintet - formed with Keith Tippett. He collaborated with pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, who encouraged him to move away from a conventional musical environment, and pursue his composition.
He went on to pioneer electro-acoustic improvisation joining the Smith Quartet and appearing regularly with the London Sinfonietta. After completing a Fellowship, he was made a Professor at the Royal Academy of Music where he is now a Senior Lecturer.
As a member of the Composers Ensemble he joined Jeff Buckley onstage in the 1995 Meltdown festival, to play continuo cello for Jeff’s performance of Dido’s lament.
On Friday night, I went to see “Sacred Monsters”, a modern ballet with Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan… I met Philip Sheppard, the composer who did a real good score, mixing classical music with a string trio, a fantastic percussionist and indian music with a pakistani singer and another belgian female singer, making all kinds of sounds with her voice. He told me that Concerts in Chinagave him the desire to become a composer.
and Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers,
Man… you play a fat cello…
are far more revealing and infinitely more valuable.
Read Philip Sheppard’s blog at radiomovies.wordpress.com
This entry was written by , posted on February 27, 2009 at 12:17 pm, filed under Musicians and tagged Abdullah Ibrahim, Aelxander McQueen, Akram Khan, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Keidis, David Bowie, David Starkey, Greg Barker, Hanif Kureishi, Haruki Murakami, James Lavelle, Jarvis Cocker, Jean Michel-Jarre, Jeff Buckley, Jimmy Page, Julliette Binoche, Keith Tippet, Led Zeppelin, Leona Lewis, Nick Knight, Philip Sheppard, Pulp, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Scott Walker, Suzanne Vega, Sylvie Guillem, UNKLE, Yves St Laurent. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
