Harry Gregson - Williams page

'The circumstances for each score seem to always be so different for me that a pattern is yet to emerge.'

Personal quote

People associate Harry Gregson - Williams these days more with the A-list of Hollywood then rather being just another Media Ventures composer. And that is fine with me because he has proven himself to be quite the original and inventive composer. He stood along with John Powell on high success scores such as Antz, Chicken Run and Shrek. He created his own creative fun pallet with The Borrowers and Sinbad, is one of today's biggest stars and collaborated a lot with the highest people at Media Ventures. It seems that Harry Gregson - Williams is quite the inspiration and a composer with a lot of good ideas. And that he is proving in every genre available, animation, action, drama and the computer genre to be entirely complete. The effect is that he is along with Hans Zimmer the MV composer who doesn't sound MV at all!

Biography

Harry Gregson - Williams was born in England and was at his age an outstanding singer, he toured with the Choir of St. John's College Cambridge. He later enrolled in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Initially he taught music to children but later his musical career took a giant step forward. He started working with composer Stanley Myers as an ochestrator and soon became linked with another composer, Hans Zimmer. He became one of today's legendary known Media Ventures composers and collaborated with a lot of his fellow co members. His collaboration linked him with Hans Zimmer (Broken Arrow and The Prince of Egypt), Nick Glennie - Smith (The Rock), Trevor Rabin (Enemy of the State and Armageddon) and John Powell (Antz, Chicken Run and Shrek), undoubtedly his last collaboration is the most successful one. His own credit list include The Whole Wide World, The Borrowers, The Replacement Killers, The Match, King of the Jungle. He was also extremely busy on Spy Kids (along with a dozen of other composers) and scored Spy Game for director Tony Scott. And finally he scored his first computer projects in 2001 namely MGS2: Sons of Liberty and the sequel in 2004 namely MGS3: Snake Eater. More liberty and freedom came in 2002 with Passionada and fun scores as Sinbad, The Rundown, more dramatic ones with Veronica Guerin and the sequel (and including mass hit) Shrek 2. The sequel to Bridget Jones, Man on Fire and Team America: World Police prove that Harry Gregson - Williams' career is finally on the move. The latest are The Kingdom of Heaven, Domino (movies from Ridley & Tony Scott) and the fantasy The Chronicles of Narnia, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination (his first). With Number 23, Deja Vu, Shrek the Third and Prince Caspian, Gregson-Williams is busier then ever.

Composing is quite a lonely job. It can be, in terms of being stuck in a room.
(overall impression)

Someone pushed a review under my nose the other day of the Antz CD, which said, "Either this was the worst score CD ever to be released or it was one of the more interesting." The person who was reviewing it couldn’t work out which it was which is pretty fair, I'd say. It's kind of love it or hate it. It's a wide variety of stuff. That's why it was actually interesting.
(on Antz)

November 16, 1998

Maybe The Borrowers as I was able to be so joyful and noisy with a huge orchestra!!
(on the most fun soundtrack)

December 21, 2001

If we did it all again, I would probably try to be more assertive - and take a "less is more" approach.
(on Spy Game)

December 21, 2001

For instance in Shrek, I wrote the main "Fairy Tale" theme, but my favorite cue in the movie is "Ride of the Dragon "- John's cue, using my theme. And similarly the opening titles of Chicken Run, which I thought were brilliantly done - not my cue. My theme, but John wrestled with that cue for months. And it happens the other way around as well.
(on co composing)