Dan Jones read music at Oxford University where he graduated with first class honours. He received the Ralph Vaughan Williams Electro-Acoustic Scholarship 1995 which he spent at the Centro Richerche Musicali in Rome.
Having accumulated an extensive list of television and theatre credits since the mid-1990s, Dan has more recently emerged as one of Britain’s most admired and sought-after film composers. His score for Max, Menno Meyjes’ controversial first feature about the early years of Hitler, starring John Cusack and Noah Taylor, received the 2004 Ivor Novello Award for ‘Best Score for a Feature Film’. Other film credits include Francesca Joseph’s Four Last Songs and Tomorrow La Scala! (BBC Films), which was selected for the Un-Certain Regard slot at Cannes 2002. His most recent film credit is Tom Roberts’ In Tranzit, starring Thomas Kretschmann and John Malcovich.
Dan’s television drama credits include Dead Set, E4’s high-profile horror drama based on Big Brother; the 6-part comedy-horror BBC series Strange and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Twockers. He has worked on many distinguished documentary films, including two recent and much talked-about contributions by filmmaker Tom Roberts to WGBH Boston’s Frontline series: In the Company of Soldiers and The Insurgency. In 2002 Dan was chosen with fellow composer Ben Salisbury to write the music for Sir David Attenborough’s 10 x 1-hour BBC series The Life of Mammals - the score being recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Dan works extensively in theatre, recent credits including A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Dundee Rep (2006); Bath Theatre Royal’s touring production of So Long Life by Peter Nichols; and Harold Pinter’s Betrayal at the Northcott, Exeter. He has composed for dance, including a commission from the Rambert Dance Company. Credits in the rock music world include the string arrangements for Alpha’s second album, The Impossible Thrill, on the Virgin label, and for a recent collaboration with Jarvis Cocker.
In the last few years Dan has collaborated fruitfully with visual artists. In 2006 he was chosen as the composer for Listening Posts, a permanent installation at Cork harbour in Ireland, devised by the artists Daphne Wright and Johnny Hanrahan, which celebrates Irish emigrants. With the sculptor Luke Jerram he created Sky Orchestra an idea that involves floating balloons across cities (it has so far been done in Bristol, 2003, and Birmingham, 2004), which broadcast serene music and sound-design by Dan from on-board speakers to the surprised (and entranced) citizens below.