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Neville MacKenzie Farmer, FRSA (born 17 January 1960) is a British music, television and film producer, scriptwriter and director, a composer, performer, author, print and social media journalist and music industry commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce and a Member of the British Association of Journalists.
Neville Farmer was born in Hampstead, London to Anthony MacKenzie Farmer and Elizabeth Susette Birch. He has a sister, Siân and was schooled and grew up in the English West Midlands town of Kidderminster, where he developed a passion for performing music and theatre.
In his teens, he sang lead with a post-punk band, Dead Ringer and The Clones, establishing a reputation for theatrics that led them to perform at various colleges, universities and Birmingham clubs as well as being voted one of the top three midlands bands of 1977 on BBC Radio Birmingham. The band also supported Page and Plant.
At 19, he returned to London to begin a career in journalism at Haymarket Publishing, rising to the position of Editor of New Hi-Fi Sound at 22, before moving into music journalism and broadcasting with Music Week, Studio Week and BBC Radio London.
His TV and music production work began in 1989, when he both scripted and announced the first World Music Awards from Monte Carlo, a large and prestigious event that honours both performers and music industry achievers. For the next 14 years he served as executive musical director to Pilot Film and Television,Pilot Film and Television Productions a London-based production company that creates and distributes multiple-award-winning independent television programs, including Lonely Planet , Globe Trekker , Planet Food and Treks in a Wild World , for whom he produced over 100 episodes. This led to the successful Globe Trekker CD series, [1] a collection of numerous CDs available worldwide. Each CD features contributions from numerous artists, including Emmy Award winner Martyn Swain, Roger Waters' producer Ian Ritchie, Golden Globes four-times nominee Daniel Pemberton, multi-award winning Nainita Desai and Grammy Award nominated Simon Emmerson.
Neville Farmer earned his expertise in combining different musical cultures through some years working for Peter Gabriel's Real World Group, which publishes some of his music. His other musical collaborations have included Robert Plant, [2] XTC, Nigel Kennedy, Andy Fairweather Low, Kevin Brown, Dave Edmunds, John Otway, Robbie Blunt, Deni Bonet, [3] Ayub Ogada, Douglas Pashley, Richard Horowitz, Richard Niles, Mo Foster, Ian Carr, [4] and Karl Wallinger.
In 2012, he co-composed and produced the motion picture soundtrack of the multi-award-winning Western movie, West Of Thunder for the Sunka Wakan Dragonfly Film Studio. And in 2013, he co-composed the soundtrack of Wounded: The Battle Back Home: Angela Peacock’s Story for MSNBC. [5] This subsequently led to his producing Kevin Brown's 13th album, Grit in 2014/2015. [6]
As a film and television producer, writer and director, Neville Farmer has credits on films and series broadcast in over 50 countries. He was Series Producer of Globe Trekker's 9th and 10th series, both of which won the Canadian Television Award for Excellence In Programming. He was Series Producer of Planet Food's 2nd series for The Food Network and BBC2, as well as Edit Producer on series 1 and Producer of the Southern China and Malaysia shows, which he also scripted.
Between 1995 and 2000, He directed over 20 short films for The Sundance Channel, including “24 Frame News” and “Anatomy of A Scene” interviews with directors and screenwriters such as Ken Russell, Kim Longinotto, Nick Hornby and Marc Forster.
He has been Series Producer for a wide range of independent productions, including “Paranormal Egypt” for The History Channel [7] and “Adventure Golf” for The Discovery Channel. He wrote, produced and directed “Lighting Up Lives” a short film for Sunderland AFC's World Cup bid [8] and music videos for the Australian blues guitarist, Gwyn Ashton. He was Edit Producer of the 2014 ITN Production, Virgin Killer (Channel 4 UK) Campus Killer (A&E (TV channel) USA), He has also co-written screenplays, Messiah with Irish/American director, Marion Comer and The Inventor with American film producer/director, Jody Bar-Lev.
In 2014, the actor and impresario Richard Strange asked Neville to co-produce and direct a film of Strange's multi-media theatrical tribute to William S Burroughs, “Language Is a Virus From Outer Space”. The film won a Portobello Film Festival Award and was selected for screening at the 25th Anniversary of The Wire Magazine by Editor Chris Bohn at the Iklectik Art Lab in London.
Most recently, Neville produced and directed short film Festival Oaxaca as the first in a series of short films about the culture of mezcal in Mexico. Among the five nominations the film has received at film festivals across the USA, Neville won a Best Director award in the 2023 Jersey Shore Film Festival and Best Edited Film at the Winter 2024 San Diego Film Awards.
Farmer's theatrical work has included both writing and producing the play "The Devil's Interval" about the composer, George Frideric Handel and rock guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. The play subsequently featured in the Long Island City Open Studios theater festival in Queens in 2012. He wrote the comedy "Murder for Dummies" in 2021 for the Bath Theatrical Costume Company. He was also invited to produce the music for the London stage show, "Stormforce", [9] by Rophn Vianney in 2006, which successfully blended Irish and African rhythms, and the musical "Strange Kind of Hero" (originally titled "Blinded by the Light") about Paul of Tarsus, by Sue Pomeroy and Chris Eaton and performed at London’s famous Roundhouse venue.
As a writer on music and the music industry, Farmer has been employed by Beatles producer, Sir George Martin, Peter Gabriel, Andy Partridge, the Bert Kaempfert Organisation, Abbey Road Studios and international publications such as Billboard , Music Week , Pro Sound News and Mix Magazine . His books include the history of German composer, Bert Kaempfert for the Songwriters Hall of Fame Museum in New York, and XTC – Song Stories, [10] the story of the music of British cult band XTC, for Disney's Hyperion Books. He has written on many subjects, including history, architecture, politics, food, horticulture, travel and religion. [11]
Jerrald King Goldsmith was an American composer known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for five films in the Star Trek franchise and three in the Rambo franchise, as well as for films including Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Omen, Alien, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Medicine Man, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, and The Mummy. He also composed the fanfares accompanying the production logos used by multiple major film studios, and music for the Disney attraction Soarin'.
James Roy Horner was an American film composer. He worked on over 160 film and television productions between 1978 and 2015. He was known for the integration of choral and electronic elements alongside traditional orchestrations, and for his use of motifs associated with Celtic music.
David Arnold is an English film composer whose credits include scoring five James Bond films, as well as Stargate (1994), Independence Day (1996), Godzilla (1998) and the television series Little Britain and Sherlock. For Independence Day, he received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television, and for Sherlock, he and co-composer Michael Price won a Creative Arts Emmy for the score of "His Last Vow", the final episode in the third series. Arnold scored the BBC / Amazon Prime series Good Omens (2019) adapted by Neil Gaiman from his book Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett. Arnold is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
Marc Shaiman is an American composer and lyricist for films, television, and theatre, best known for his collaborations with lyricist and director Scott Wittman, actor Billy Crystal, and director Rob Reiner. Shaiman has received numerous accolades including two Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Tony Award. He has also received seven Academy Awards nominations.
Globe Trekker is a British adventure tourism television series produced by Pilot Productions. The English series was inspired by the Lonely Planet travelbooks and began airing in 1994. Globe Trekker is broadcast in over 40 countries across six continents. The programme won over 20 international awards, including six American Cable Ace awards.
David Norman Yazbek is an American writer, musician, composer, and lyricist. He wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals The Full Monty (2000), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (2005), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (2010), The Band's Visit (2017), and Tootsie (2019).
Adam Michael Shankman is an American film director, producer, writer, dancer, author, actor, and choreographer. He was a permanent judge on seasons 6–7 of the television program So You Think You Can Dance. He began his professional career in musical theater, and was a dancer in music videos for Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson. Shankman has choreographed dozens of films and directed several feature-length films, including A Walk to Remember, Bringing Down the House, The Pacifier, and the musicals Hairspray and Disenchanted.
Alexandros Panayi, is a Greek-Cypriot singer, composer, lyricist, producer, vocal coach, and vocal arranger. He is best known for having represented Cyprus at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995 and 2000.
John Frederick "Jack" Lenz is a Canadian composer. He has written, performed, and produced music for film, television, and theatre, along with working on non-soundtrack album ventures. He is also the founder of Live Unity Enterprises, an organization devoted to the production of music for the Baháʼí community.
Robert Kraft is an American songwriter, film composer, recording artist and record producer. As president of Fox Music from 1994 to 2012, he supervised the music for more than 300 Fox feature films, as well as dozens of TV shows. He co-produced the 2016 Score: A Film Music Documentary about film composers and the evolution of Hollywood film music.
Michael Blieden Wolff is an American jazz pianist, composer, and actor. He was the bandleader on The Arsenio Hall Show (1989–94).
Reinhold Heil is a German musician, producer, and film and television composer. He initially achieved success in Germany as a member of the post-punk and Neue Deutsche Welle groups Nina Hagen Band, Spliff and Nena, and later as a music producer.
Alex Timbers is an American writer and director and the recipient of Tony, Golden Globe, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and London Evening Standard Awards, as well as two OBIE and Lucile Lortel Awards. He also received the 2019 Drama League Founder's Award for Excellence in Directing and the 2016 Jerome Robbins Award for Directing. He was nominated for a 2020 Grammy Award. For his work on Moulin Rouge! The Musical, Timbers won a 2021 Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical.
William Goodchild is a composer, orchestrator and conductor who produces music for film, television and the concert hall.
Lonnie Park is an American record producer, composer and musician based in Freeville, New York. In addition to TV, film score, and Billboard charting appearances, his catalog of works includes decades of multi-genre work from jazz, new age, children, world, gospel, country, and folk, to progressive metal. Lonnie's work has received three Grammy Awards and four Grammy Nominations, the Global Peace Song Award, Global Music Award, multiple SAMMY Awards, and the United Nations Action Award.
Bob Thiele Jr. is an American composer, musician and music producer of German descent who has contributed to many artists and TV shows. He is the son of producer Bob Thiele and singer Jane Harvey.
Richard Keith Berman is an American television producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work as the executive producer of several of the Star Trek television series: Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, as well as several of the Star Trek films, and for ultimately succeeding Gene Roddenberry as head of the Star Trek franchise until the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005.
Neil Davidge is an English record producer, songwriter, film score composer, musician, and occasional backing vocalist. Once an associate of dance producers DNA, he is best known as the long-term co-writer and producer for the music production outfit Massive Attack. In 1997, he also produced the Sunna album One Minute Science. During that time he has established a career as a film score composer including projects such as Push, Bullet Boy, Trouble the Water, and additional music for Clash of the Titans.
Fred Mollin is an American and Canadian record producer, musician, film and TV composer, music director, music supervisor, and songwriter. He has produced records for Jimmy Webb, Johnny Mathis, Billy Ray Cyrus, Lamont Dozier and America, and has composed music for Beverly Hills, 90210, Friday the 13th, Forever Knight, Hard Copy, and many more. Mollin rose to prominence early in his career by co-producing Dan Hill's international hit record, "Sometimes When We Touch", in 1977.
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