Jocelyn Pook

Jocelyn Pook (born 14 February 1960, Birmingham, England) is a British composer, pianist and viola player.

Biography

Jocelyn Pook’s distinctive style is a product of her diverse experiences in classical, commercial, and so-called world music. After graduating from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she performed with many pop artists including The Communards and Massive Attack, and formed Electra Strings for whom she wrote original material. She has worked extensively with eminent dance companies such as DV8 and Shobana Jeyasingh, and in 2002 she was commissioned by the BBC Proms to write a work for The King’s Singers in collaboration with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.

As one of the Leytonstone Contingent, Pook recorded on two occasions with pianist Jeremy Peyton Jones for Rough Trade and later for Century XXI. About a year later, she joined Anne Stephenson and Audrey Riley to accompany Virginia Astley both on stage and record. Session work followed and alternated with her co-founding of the Electra Strings with Australian violinist Sonia Slany and an album on the Village Life label. This neoclassical chamber quartet later transformed into the Brilliant Strings after she and Slany had gone their separate ways.

As a solo recording artist, Pook released several albums for the Virgin / Realworld labels. These included Deluge (1997), Flood (1999) and Untold Things. Her career as a film composer took flight when cuts from Flood album became used in Stanley Kubrick's film Eyes Wide Shut. The piece Masked Ball, which incorporates a fragment of an Orthodox Liturgy played backwards and lyrics sung (or chanted) in Romanian, underscored the infamous masked ball sequence.

Further scores have subsequently been contributed to several European films, notably 2004 film version of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Peter Kosminsky's film on David Kelly, The Government Inspector, "Brick Lane" and 2007's Chaotic_Ana.

Miscellaneous

In 1983 she appeared in the ABC movie Mantrap as one of many string players for the album The Lexicon of Love. Most of her sessions were for Indie bands throughout the 1980s.

Frequently works with vocalist Melanie Pappenheim, whom Jocelyn describes as her long-time musical collaborator. Melanie does the majority of vocal work on Jocelyn's music.

Career highlights

• 1997 - Blow the Wind: Pie Jesu, used by Orange in TV advertising campaign.
• 1999 - score for Eyes Wide Shut nominated for Golden Globe Award.
• 2001 - wrote score for Laurent Cantet’s film L'Emploi du temps.
• 2002 - Phantasmaton premiered by the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company.
• 2003 - Multimedia Award for Speaking in Tunes at the first British Composer Awards.
• 2004 - wrote score for Michael Radford’s film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice.
• 2008 - score for Saint Joan at The National Theatre won Olivier Award.
• 2008 - score for PBS Frontline episode Storm Over Everest.

Key works

• Blow the Wind: Pie Jesu (1994; mezzo-soprano, string quartet, tape)
• Portraits in Absentia (1999; answerphonemessage samples, orchestra)
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999; film score)
• Saints and Sinners (2000; Persian singer (Parvin Cox), chorus, ensemble)
• L’emploi du temps (2001; film score)
• Speaking in Tunes (2002; string quartet, tape)

Selected recordings

• Deluge - Venture CDVE 933
• Flood - Virgin 7243-8-48150-2-8
• Untold Things - Real World CDRW93

External links

• Official website
• Jocelyn Pook forum
• Jocelyn Pook's homepage at Chester Music