Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story: "It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension." Radio drama includes plays specifically written for radio, docudrama, dramatized works of fiction, as well as plays originally written for the theatre, including musical theatre, and opera.
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.
George Richard Ian Howe, known professionally as George Fenton, is an English composer. Best known for his work writing film scores and music for television, he has received five Academy Award nominations, several Ivor Novello, BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and BMI Awards, and a Classic BRIT. He is one of 18 songwriters and composers to have been made a Fellow of the Ivors Academy.
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter, author and podcaster. He is the co-presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Screenshot with Ellen E. Jones, and co-presenter of the film-review podcast Kermode & Mayo's Take alongside long-time collaborator Simon Mayo. He is a regular contributor to The Observer, for whom he was chief film critic between September 2013 and September 2023. He is the author of several books on film and music, including It's Only A Movie, Hatchet Job, How Does It Feel? and The Movie Doctors. He has also written three volumes for the BFI's Modern Classics series, on The Exorcist, The Shawshank Redemption and Silent Running. Since the late 1980's he has contributed to the BFI's film magazine Sight & Sound and its predecessor The Monthly Film Bulletin, and since January 2016 he has presented a monthly live show, MK3D, at the BFI South Bank. It is the BFI's longest running live show.
Carl Davis was an American-born British conductor and composer. He wrote music for more than 100 television programmes (notably the landmark ITV series World At War and BBC's Pride and Prejudice, created new scores for concert and cinema performances of vintage silent movies and composed many film, ballet and concert scores that were performed worldwide, including the Liverpool Oratorio in 1991. Davis's publisher was Faber Music.
Howard Lindsay Goodall is an English composer of musicals, choral music and music for television. He also presents music-based programmes for television and radio, for which he has won many awards. In May 2008, he was named as a presenter and "Composer-in-Residence" with the UK radio channel Classic FM. In May 2009, he was named "Composer of the Year" at the Classic BRIT Awards.
Nitin Sawhney is a British musician, producer and composer. A recipient of the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017, among multiple international awards throughout his career. Sawhney's work combines Asian and other worldwide influences with elements of electronica and often explores themes such as multiculturalism, politics, and spirituality. Sawhney is also active in the promotion of arts and cultural matters, is chair of the PRS Foundation, sits on the board of trustees of theatre company Complicité, and is a patron of numerous film festivals, venues, and educational institutions. In 2021 he was an ambassador for the Royal Albert Hall.
John Harle is an English saxophonist, composer, educator and record producer. He is an Ivor Novello Award winner and has been the recipient of two Royal Television Society awards.
Maldwyn "Mal" Pope is a Welsh musician and composer, who is notable for his contribution to music theatre portraying Welsh national identities and themes. He lives in the village of Mumbles, Swansea. He is known for singing both the Welsh and English language versions of the Fireman Sam theme.
Murray Jonathan Gold is an English composer for stage, film, and television and a dramatist for both theatre and radio. He is best known as the musical director and composer of the music for Doctor Who from its revival in 2005 until 2017. In 2023, he was announced to be returning to the series. Gold's other television work includes Queer as Folk, Last Tango in Halifax and Gentleman Jack. He has been nominated for five BAFTAs.
The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy, formerly called the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, since 1956.
The Dodge Brothers are a British skiffle band from Southampton playing Americana, rockabilly, bluegrass, folk, country and blues music. The band includes film critic and BBC television presenter Mark Kermode, along with Mike and Alex Hammond and Aly Hirji.
Underground is a 1928 British sound drama film directed by Anthony Asquith and starring Brian Aherne, Elissa Landi, Cyril McLaglen, and Norah Baring. While the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film examines the lives of ordinary Londoners and the romance between them, set on and around the London Underground.
Michael Price is an English composer and pianist. Prior to establishing himself as a composer, he held a number of roles within the TV & film music field such as producer, arranger and music editor, much of which whilst working alongside acclaimed film score composer Michael Kamen.
Shirley Joy Thompson is an English composer, conductor, and violinist of Jamaican descent. Her output as a composer encompasses symphonies, ballets, operas, concertos, and other works for ensembles, as well as music for TV, film, and theatre. Her New Nation Rising, A 21st Century Symphony was composed in 2002 and debuted in 2004. Also an academic, she is currently Professor of Music at the University of Westminster. In the 2019 New Year Honours she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Music.
Michael Eaton MBE is an English playwright and scriptwriter. He is best known for his television docudrama scripts, including Shipman, Why Lockerbie, and Shoot to Kill, and for writing the feature film Fellow Traveller (1989), which won best screenplay in the British Film Awards. In recent years, he has become known for stage plays and his radio dramas for the BBC.
Ludwig Blattner was a German-born inventor, film producer, director and studio owner in the United Kingdom, and developer of one of the earliest magnetic sound recording devices.
Stuart Hancock is a British composer of film, TV and concert music. Hancock is known for having composed the original soundtracks to series 2 of the BBC fantasy series Atlantis, the animated TV adaptation of We're Going On A Bear Hunt and the Netflix comedy horror Crazyhead. He won the BASCA British Composer Award in 2015 for his community song-cycle, Snapshot Songs.
Christopher Whelen was an English composer, conductor and playwright, best known for his radio and television operas. Because much of his work was written for specific theatre productions in the 1950s, or directly for broadcast in the 1960s to the 1980s, little of it survives today, though a number of his scores and related papers have been deposited in the British Library.
Lee Orville Erwin was an American theatre organist who played an important part in a revival of interest in the silent film era. His career began as an organist accompanying first-run silent films in the 1920s. He received classical training in Cincinnati and France, and then began a career as organist and arranger for radio, significantly at WLW and CBS Radio, the latter in association with Arthur Godfrey, that lasted through the mid-1960s. When his radio career ended he was commissioned to provide complete new scores for silent films exceeding seventy in number, and in this capacity and as an organist for silent film tours and exhibitions he received widespread critical acclaim. Erwin was active into his early 90s.
