Harry Gregson-Williams is a composer, orchestrator, conductor, and music producer. Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams earned a music scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge at the age of 7 and subsequently gained a coveted spot at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama from which he recently received an Honorary Fellowship. He started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers, and then went on to compose his first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and friendship with composer Hans Zimmer resulted in Gregson-Williams providing music for such films as The Rock, Armageddon and The Prince of Egypt and helped launch his career in Hollywood. He has also been a regular and valued mentor at the Sundance Composers Lab working directly with talented emerging composers from all over the world.
He was the composer on all four installments of the blockbuster Shrek franchise; garnered a BAFTA nomination for the score for the first Shrek; and received Golden Globe and Grammy Award nominations for his score to Andrew Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. His other recent scores include Blackhat for Michael Mann, Monkey Kingdom for Disney Nature and Miss You Already for director Catherine Hardwicke, The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington, Total Recall starring Colin Farrell and Kate Beckinsale, music for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, the animated film from Aardman, Arthur Christmas, and the action thriller Cowboys & Aliens directed by Jon Favreau as well as the unique documentary Life in a Day.
Gregson-Williams’ prolific output has also seen him scoring Mike Newell’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; X-Men Origins: Wolverine; Adamson’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Mr Pip; Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven; Beeban Kidron’s Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; Aardman’s animated smash Chicken Run; Return to Sender and Smilla’s Sense of Snow, both for director Bille August; Antoine Fuqua’s The Replacement Killers; and the first computer generated animation from Dreamworks, Antz.
Gregson-Williams has scored three of the five games in the highly successful Metal Gear Solid franchise for Konami and recently scored Call of Duty for Activision which became the top selling video game of 2014 and which earned him various music gaming awards.
Prominent works as a Composer
- 2015 – The Martian (post-production)
- 2014 – Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – Video Game
- 2010 – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
- 2010 – Shrek Forever After
- 2009 – X-Men Origins: Wolverine
- 2008 – The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Awards
- 2013 – BMI Film & TV Award – Film Music “Total Recall”
- 2010 – BMI Film & TV Award – Film Music “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”
- 2009:
- BMI Film & TV Award – Film Music “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”
- Brooklyn International Film Festival – Best Producer “Em”
- 2006 – Golden Globes, USA – Best Original Score – Motion Picture (nominated) & Hollywood Film Awards (won) “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
- 2005 – Satellite Awards “Kingdom of Heaven”
- 2001 – ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards & BMI Film & TV Award “Chicken Run”
- 1999 – ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards & BMI Film & TV Award “Antz”
