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The Musical Life of Deserts

22 January 2013

Filed Under:

Composition
Music

TV composer Stuart Fox, who graduated from RWCMD with a Masters degree in 2008, spent a large part of last year writing the score for a new six-part series Deserts and Life which is broadcast on Eden TV in the UK this month.  The series, which is also being aired internationally, explores the world’s largest deserts, their wildlife and people that call them their home.

Stuart told us a little bit about the experience of creating music to span the continents:

“Although some of the music is, of course, realised electronically, you can also hear a lot of real instruments across the series. I had great fun playing bamboo flutes amongst other things for the Gobi Programme and for South America I used flutes, guitars, banjo and cuatro. The Australia programme features some amazing violin solos performed by Laurence Kempton (Welsh National Opera), who I was lucky enough to work with. The same episode also features a custom flute tap instrument I designed especially for this project, and some didgeridoo – great fun!”

Stuart has had a fascination with the relationship between music, image and story for as long as he can remember. He played themes from movies by ear on the piano from an early age, began writing incidental music for theatre in his early teens.

At undergraduate and postgraduate level at RWCMD, Stuart specialised in studying and composing film and TV music, working with student film makers and on lower budget professional productions and getting a feel for working with picture, both creatively and technically.

His previous TV work includes 40 minutes of music for an episode of the Megastructures programme on the construction of the London Olympic Stadium, which available to watch here.

For more examples of Stuart’s work visit www.goodsounds.co.uk