John Lunn - Composer Profile

John is probably best known currently for scoring the hugely successful flagship ITV/Carnival Films drama, Downton Abbey, for which he was awarded an EMMY AWARD 2012. Having won a best TV score RTS Award 2010, as well as having been nominated for both a BAFTA and Ivor Novello award for his evocative score for Sky's Going Postal, and having received nominations for a BAFTA Award for Best Original Score for his wonderful music to the BBC Dickens adaptation, Little Dorrit, John Lunn’s music possesses a wonderfully unique voice that spans the spectrum of musical styles. Classically trained yet contemporary in attitude, he combines a highly intelligent and sensitive approach, with a sound that always hits at the emotional heart of a piece. Along with the highest production values, and a continual desire to discover new colours and sounds, it is not hard to see why John is continuously in such high demand.

John is currently scoring the highly anticipated BBC drama, Burton And Taylor starring Dominic West and Helena Bonham-Carter as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, having just completed the BBC’s The White Queen, based on the bestselling Phillipa Gregory novels, and the BBC’s reimagining of the Hitchcock classic, The Lady Vanishes. Other recent works, as well as having included scoring Mob Films adaptation of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal for Sky1, and the much acclaimed 2012 new year's BBC/Masterpiece Dickens centenary adaptation of The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, also include a compelling 14 part re-imagining of another Dickens' classic, Little Dorrit for the BBC, (for which John also received an EMMY nomination), as well as a wonderfully innovative and cutting edge score for the BBC's tense Company Pictures drama, The Silence, the ITV fantasy horror, Marchlands, and a wonderfully chilling one off Xmas special feature adaptation of MR James' classic ghost story, Turn of the Screw for the BBC, starring John Hurt.

Earlier television credits have ranged from the BBC’s flagship productions of Cambridge Spies (FIPA Gold Award 2003), Lorna Doone, Madame Bovary and Murder Rooms, to the Channel Four/Company series North Square, World Productions 12 part series Outlaws, Scottish Television’s thriller Sirens, and the Ska Films/Ginger production, Lock Stock…. His score to Getting Hurt, the BBC Screen Two Film, won the Royal Television Society’s award for Best Original Music. His music to Bad Blood was also nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. John scored the critically acclaimed BBC series Bleak House (RTS Awards 2006 - nomination for Best Score and Best Title Music), 20,000 Streets Under The Sky, Hotel Babylon for Carnival Films / BBC (for which he was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award), and the ITV biopic based on the moors murderers, See No Evil, as well as Sorted for the BBC. He scored The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard for the BBC, starring Jane Horrocks, and the Bafta award winning Victoria Wood penned drama, Housewife 49 for ITV, along with Frankenstein for Impossible Pictures, and The Shadow In The North for the BBC. He went on to score Torn for Jeremy Gwilt and TXTV, series 2 of the acclaimed Jimmy McGovern scripted, The Street for Granada, and then completed Hotel Babylon (Series 4) for Carnival/BBC. Further credits include Criminal Justice for the BBC, which went on to be an RTS Award Winner 2008 for Best Original Score, Harley Street for Carnival Productions/ITV1, Identity, a 6 part thriller for ITV, and Material Girl for Carnival/BBC.

John’s film scores include the IMAX film Giant Screen Bugs, narrated by Dame Judi Dench for Principal Films and has just completed the music to Unconditional for Stone City Films. Other film credits include the FilmFour/Shane Meadows feature, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (Kathy Burke, Robert Carlyle, Rhys Ifans), Get Real, directed by Simon Shore, winner of the Audience Award, Edinburgh and Dinard International Festivals, and The Wisdom Of Crocodiles, directed by Po Chih Leong for Zenith Films. He also scored the IMAX film, Legend of the Loch for director Mike Slee.

Other major credits include the music for Second Sight, directed by Charles Beeson for 20/20 TV/BBC, the original series of 2000 Acres of Sky as well as Hamish MacBeth for BBC/Zenith and the Carlton/Zenith series Bodyguards. For his score to Back Up, The Guardian wrote ‘..cracking stuff, pure Bernard Hermann, and more sheer menace than anything you’ve heard...’. He wrote the music for Ghostbusters of East Finchley (BBC2), a jazz score for the YTV/Zenith series Finney (directed by David Hayman), and a largely period score for the Last Machine, a five part documentary drama for BBC/Illumination, presented by Terry Gilliam.

John’s earlier credits include Cormorant, a BBC Screen Two Film starring Ralph Fiennes, the Prairie Pictures feature The Life Of Stuff, directed by Simon Donald and produced by Linda Myles, The Gift, a BBC Screenplay production, Beatrix, a BBC drama starring Helena Bonham-Carter, Second Thoughts, written by Anthony Minghella and starring Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones, and After The Dance for the BBC’s Performance series. Amongst John’s classical works, his violin concerto was premiered by Clio Gould and the London Sinfonietta at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and his two operas, Misper and Zoe (filmed and broadcast by Channel 4 in 2001) were written for Glydenbourne. He wrote the opera, Mathematics Of a Kiss with Anthony Minghella and Orlando Gough for the English National Opera. In 2005 John was commissioned by Glynedbourne Opera to write, Tangier Tattoo, an opera to be directed by Stephen Langridge.

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