David Arnold

One of the most popular and successful of young British composers, DAVID ARNOLD was born in Luton, England, and now lives and works in London. He composed the score to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Made in Dagenham and Morning Glory.

With much of his youth spent playing clarinet, guitar and keyboards in school bands, orchestras, nightclubs, pubs and concert halls, Arnold's interests began to move away from writing and performing, to writing, arranging and producing. While growing up in Luton, an industrial town about 30 miles north of London, he met fellow film enthusiast Danny Cannon, and together they decided to make films.

In a few years, they made numerous short films and Cannon proceeded to attend England's prestigious National Film and Television School, where Arnold continued to score the student films that Cannon made. Their graduation film, Strangers, attracted much interest from the professional film community. Arnold had written, orchestrated and conducted the score the same way he had done for 23 other short films, finding his way through the process by doing, rather than by being taught.

It was the interest in Strangers that enabled Cannon to land his first professional directing job, The Young Americans, starring Harvey Keitel and Viggo Mortensen. Cannon convinced the producers to let Arnold score the movie, and with a small budget and one day of recording time, the score to The Young Americans was created.

For the end credits of the movie, Arnold enlisted Icelandic singer Björk to co-write and sing “Play Dead.” Hailed by NME and Melody Maker as their “single of the week,” “Play Dead” garnered sales and critical appreciation in equal measure. Time Out's review of Arnold's score for The Young Americans included the comment “At last! This is what music soundtracks should sound like.”

It was soon after that Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who were writing and producing the sci-fi epic Stargate, heard some music from The Young Americans and offered Arnold the chance to score their movie. The success of the film and music announced Arnold on the world stage as a contemporary film composer with style, wit, versatility and an unabashed love of the lush, romantic, ridiculous, energetic and thrilling.
Since then, David Arnold has become one of the British film industry's most talented and respected players, switching seamlessly from the orchestral grandeur of movies such as Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996)—for which he received a Grammy Award—to more scaled down, urban grooves and beats on films such as Shaft (2000), Enough (2002), Changing Lanes (2002) and 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003).

Also, and perhaps more significantly, Arnold is the man who has successfully taken over John Barry as the composer of the world famous James Bond movies, having written music for Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999) and Die Another Day (2002).

Away from the film world, Arnold maintains a career as a successful record producer and songwriter, having worked with a wide range of contemporary artists including k.d. lang, Pulp, Chrissie Hynde, Iggy Pop, Garbage, David McAlmont, Martina TopleyBird, Natasha Bedingfield, Aimee Mann, George Michael and Damien Rice.

©2011 Universal Pictures, Relativity Media, A Working Title Production, Big Talk Picture