George Fenton is one of 18 songwriters and composers to have been made a Fellow of the Ivors Academy.
26 Facts About George Fenton
2.
George Fenton has frequently collaborated with the directors Richard Attenborough, Nora Ephron, Alastair Fothergill, Stephen Frears, Nicholas Hytner, Ken Loach, Andy Tennant, Neil Jordan and Terry Gilliam.
3.
George Fenton was born in 1949 in Bromley, Kent, one of five siblings.
4.
George Fenton was educated at Carn Brea School and St Edward's School, Oxford.
5.
George Fenton began learning the guitar at the age of 8 and at St Edwards studied the organ with Peter Whitehouse.
6.
George Fenton did not attend music college but continued to study with Pete Whitehouse and subsequently with the ethnomusicologist and composer, John Leach.
7.
In 1974, Fenton received his first major commission, as composer and musical director for Peter Gill's theatre production of Twelfth Night by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
8.
George Fenton continued to collaborate regularly with Peter Gill and worked in regional theatre as well as for the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre.
9.
In 1992, George Fenton was credited with the Sound Track to the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Disneyland, Paris.
10.
George Fenton has composed for a number of notable wildlife television programmes, often collaborating with the wildlife broadcaster David Attenborough and the nature documentary filmmaker Alastair Fothergill.
11.
George Fenton started on the BBC's long-running series Wildlife on One and Natural World.
12.
In 2022 George Fenton partnered up with Alastair Fothergill and David Attenborough again, this time for BBC One's Wild Isles series.
13.
George Fenton has composed the jingles or theme music to dozens of British television and radio programs, including Shoestring, Bergerac, One O'Clock News, Six O'Clock News and Nine O'Clock News, Newsnight and Newsnight Review, On the Record, Omnibus, BBC Breakfast Time, BBC World News, Reporting Scotland, London Plus, Telly Addicts, Daily Politics, and BBC Radio 4's PM programme.
14.
George Fenton has written the music for over one hundred feature films.
15.
George Fenton wrote another four film scores for Attenborough's films: Cry Freedom, Shadowlands, In Love and War and Grey Owl.
16.
George Fenton has frequently worked with the theatre and film director Nicholas Hytner, writing the score for all six of the movies that Hytner has directed.
17.
The latter three of these allowed George Fenton to collaborate again with their writer Alan Bennett.
18.
George Fenton has scored four of Frear's feature films: Dangerous Liaisons, Hero, Mary Reilly and Mrs Henderson Presents.
19.
George Fenton worked with the director Neil Jordan, scoring The Company of Wolves, High Spirits and We're No Angels.
20.
George Fenton has scored more feature films for Ken Loach than for any other filmmaker, by 2023, a total of 18.
21.
George Fenton has developed other long-standing collaborations with filmmakers, scoring several films each for directors as diverse as Harold Ramis, Nora Ephron, Phil Joanou and Andy Tennant, including Multiplicity, Groundhog Day, Mixed Nuts, You've Got Mail, Final Analysis, The Fisher King, Heaven's Prisoners, Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Sweet Home Alabama, Anna and the King, Hitch, Bewitched and The Secret: Dare to Dream and Andy Tennant's new thriller Unit 234.
22.
George Fenton won an Ivor Novello Award, BAFTA and Emmy Award for Best Television Score for The Blue Planet and, in October 2002, he created "The Blue Planet in Concert" which was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
23.
George Fenton subsequently created Planet Earth In Concert and Frozen Planet In Concert and took these concerts to venues such as Hollywood Bowl, Sydney Opera House, Wembley Arena and the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam.
24.
George Fenton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to music.
25.
George Fenton is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and is a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music and the University of Nottingham.
26.
Available digitally and on CD and vinyl, it has solo piano arrangements by Chamberlain of many of George Fenton's scores including The Blue Planet, Dangerous Liaisons, The Lady in the Van and Groundhog Day.