Jocelyn Pook

Jocelyn Pook (/ˈdʒɒslɪn ˈpʊk/, rhyming with "book") is a

Jocelyn Pook
composer who is known for her scores for many films, including
Born Birmingham,
Eyes Wide Shut, The Merchant of Venice and The Wife.
England
Occupation(s) Composer, viola
Education player
Pook graduated in 1983 from London's Guildhall School of Music
and Drama where she studied the viola with David Takeno and piano with Carola Grindea.

Career
Pook took part in the band ABC's Lexicon Of Love World Tour and appeared in the Julian Temple/ABC
movie Mantrap, continuing with a period of recording and performing with artists including Massive
Attack, PJ Harvey, Peter Gabriel and as a member of The Communards for their three-year life. She also
performed in this period as musician/actor with experimental theatre companies Impact Theatre Co-
operative and Lumiere & Son, as well as in several productions with The National Theatre.

As a composer her early works were mainly for dance and she wrote scores for DV8 Physical Theatre, O
Vertigo Danse, Wayne MacGregor, Phoenix Dance Company, Shobana Jeyasingh Dance[1] and more
recently Akram Khan Company and English National Ballet. She worked on several DV8 Physical Theatre
shows including Strange Fish which won a Prix Italia Award for Music.

Pook was a member of composer Jeremy Peyton Jones's post systems music ensemble Regular Music, and
recorded their albums for Rough Trade and Century XXI. She co-founded neoclassical chamber quartet
Electra Strings alongside Australian violinist Sonia Slany. The Electra Quartet recorded, arranged and
performed with many artists including Jools Holland,[2][3] Mark Knopfler,[4] The Stranglers,[5] The
Cranberries,[6] This Mortal Coil,[7] Nick Cave, Divine Comedy , Paul Weller,[8] Ryuichi Sakamoto,[9]
Michael Nyman and Laurie Anderson,[10][11] and in 1991 appeared in Derek Jarman's film Edward II.[6]

As a solo recording artist, Pook released several albums, including Deluge (Virgin Records 1997), Flood
(Virgin Records 1999) and Untold Things (RealWorld Records 2001 - 2013). These also featured several
singers she works regularly with, notably Melanie Pappenheim with whom she has collaborated with on
many projects.

Her career as a film composer took off when Stanley Kubrick heard her album Deluge and asked her to
score his film Eyes Wide Shut. The piece “Masked Ball”,[12] which incorporated a fragment of an Orthodox
Liturgy played backwards and lyrics sung (or chanted) in Romanian, underscored the masked ball
sequence.[13][14] Pook's score for Eyes Wide Shut received a Chicago Film Award and a Golden Globe
nomination.[15]
Pook's score to Michael Radford's film The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino featured countertenor
Andreas Scholl and was nominated for a Classical Brit Award.[16] Other notable film scores include Brick
Lane (Dir: Sarah Gavron), Heidi (Dir: Paul Marcus), Time Out (L’Emploi Du Temps, Dir: Laurent Cantet),
Julio Medem's Caótica Ana[17][18] and Room in Rome, and a piece for the soundtrack to Gangs of New
York directed by Martin Scorsese.

In 2018, she composed the soundtrack for The Wife[19] starring Glenn Close, Jonathan Pryce and Christian
Slater, which won the 2019 Music & Sound Award for Best Original Composition in a Feature Film.[20]

Pook was nominated for a BAFTA for her score for Channel 4's The Government Inspector[21] and, in
April 2018, she won a BAFTA for her music for the 2017 TV film version of King Charles III (Dir: Rupert
Gould).[22] She wrote the score for Netflix documentary series The Staircase directed by Jean-Xavier
Lestrade.[23]

Pook wrote several concert, music theatre and opera pieces as well as touring with "The Jocelyn Pook
Ensemble".

In 2002 she was commissioned by The Proms to write a piece for The King's Singers, "Mobile", in
collaboration with Andrew Motion. In 2003 she won a British Composer Award (currently named the Ivors
Composer Awards) for her music-theatre piece "Speaking in Tunes".[24] She was commissioned to write a
short opera, Ingerland,[25] for ROH2 (the contemporary producing arm of London's Royal Opera House)
which was performed in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio Theatre in June 2010.[26] In December
2012 her symphonic song cycle "Hearing Voices", exploring experiences of mental illness, featuring
Melanie Pappenheim with Charles Hazlewood conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra was premiered at
the Queen Elizabeth Hall.[27]

Pook won a second British Composer Award in 2012 for her soundtrack to Akram Khan's dance
production DESH.[28] In June 2014 she composed music for English National Ballet's Glastonbury Festival
debut on the Pyramid Stage, performing Akram Khan's First World War-themed Dust, broadcast on BBC2.
Her most recent ballet for English National Ballet, M-Dao choreographed by Yabin Wang, premiered in
2016 at Sadler's Wells.[29]

She won an Olivier Award in 2008 for the National Theatre's production of St Joan (Dir: Marianne
Elliot).[30] Other theatre work includes the 2014 play King Charles III by Mike Bartlett which premiered at
Almeida Theatre, transferred to West End's Wyndham's Theatre and then to Broadway, New York.[31]
Pook wrote the score for National Theatre of Scotland's award-winning Adam, which premiered at
Edinburgh International Festival in 2017 and featured a 120-strong, international digitally connected trans
choir.[32]

In 2019, Pook was commissioned by The Proms to write a new piece for Prom 49: The Lost Words. "You
Need To Listen To Us" sets words from speeches by environmental activist Greta Thunberg to music.[33]
She also composed the soundtrack for The Kingmaker, a documentary about the controversial political
career of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, directed by Lauren Greenfield.[34]

Politics
In November 2019, along with other public figures, Pook signed a letter supporting Labour Party leader
Jeremy Corbyn, describing him as "a beacon of hope in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism,
xenophobia and racism in much of the democratic world" and endorsed him in the 2019 UK general
election.[35]

Awards and honours

Music and Sound Award (Best Original Composition, 2019) for The Wife
Bafta (Original Music, 2018) for King Charles III
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
British Composer Award (Multi-Media, 2003) for Speaking in Tunes
ASCAP Award for Eyes Wide Shut

Discography

Studio albums
1997 – Deluge
1999 – Flood
2001 – Untold Things

Singles
1997 – "Blow The Wind" – Virgin Records
2003 – "Sacrum" (12 – inch) – Additive

Albums with ensembles

1997 – Meeting Electra – Electra Strings & Paul Clarvis (with Sonia Slany) – Village Life
97121 VL

Live theatre and dance

2018 – Memorial – For Chris Drummond, the director of 'Memorial'
2017 – Adam – For National Theatre of Scotland
2016 – Macbeth – For Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
2014 – King Charles III – For Almeida Theatre
2014 – Dust – For the dancework of the English National Ballet (choreographed by Akram
Khan)
2013 – Itmoi – For the dancework of the group Akram Khan
2013 – Bench – For MODERNE MEISJES
2011 – Desh – For the dancework of the group Akram Khan
 2006 – King John – For the Royal Shakespeare Company

Soundtracks (film and TV)

1994-6 – Blight – 14-minute short film by John Smith
1999 – Eyes Wide Shut – directed by Stanley Kubrick
2000 – My Khmer Heart (Breaking Hearts)
2000 – The Sight – directed by Paul Anderson
2000 – Enron advert, "Ode to Why Campaign"
2000 – Comment j'ai tué mon père (How I Killed My Father)
2001 – In a Land of Plenty – 10 episode BBC drama series produced by Sterling Pictures
and Talkback
2001 – Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures – documentary, director Jan Harlan
2001 – L'Emploi Du Temps (Time Out)
2002 – Addicted to the Stars
2002 – The Repentant (La Repentie)
2002 – La Guerre à Paris (The War in Paris)
2002 – Gangs of New York – directed by Martin Scorsese
2004 – The Merchant of Venice
2004 – Wild Side
2004 – Soupçons (The Staircase)
2004 – They Came Back
2005 – The Government Inspector
2005–2006 – Heidi
2007 – Brick Lane
2007 – Remnants of Everest: The 1996 Tragedy (US: Storm over Everest)
2009 – The People v. Leo Frank
2009 – Chaotic Ana
2009 – Going South
2010 – Room in Rome
2011 – Room 304
2012 – Augustine
2012 – Les Invisibles
2017 – King Charles III
2017 – The Wife
2019 – The Kingmaker
2023 – Tin&Tina

Various collaborations
1993 – Plus from US – various artists – Real World Records
1993 – Way Down Buffalo Hell – Jam Nation – ("Sleeping, She Moved Through The Fair") –
Real World Records
1996 – A Night in London – Mark Knopfler – Mercury Records
1997 – Friday the Thirteenth – The Stranglers – ("Waltz in Black", "Valley of the Birds",
"Daddy's Riding the Range", "Golden Brown", "No More Heroes")
 1999 – Liquid Sunshine – Keziah Jones – ("Hello Heavenly", "Runaway", "Teardrops Will
Fall") – Delabel
2000 – OVO (The soundtrack for the Millennium Dome Show of Cirque du Soleil) – Peter
Gabriel – ("Low Light", "The Time of the Turning", "The Weaver's Reel", "Downside Up",
"The Nest that Sailed the Sky") – Real World Records
2003 – Something Dangerous – Natacha Atlas – ("Adam's Lullaby") – Mantra Records
2008 – Ana Hina – Natacha Atlas – World Village[36]

References
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External links
Official website (http://www.jocelynpook.com/)
Jocelyn Pook (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0690772/) at IMDb

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