Jocelyn Pook | Artist
Jocelyn Pook is an English composer and viola player born 1960 in Solihull, UK. She is is an award-winning composer and performer of neoclassical/new age music and is also known for her scores for many films, including Eyes Wide Shut, The Merchant of Venice and The Wife. After graduating in 1983 from London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she studied the viola and piano, Pool performed as a support player with pop-rock groups ABC and The Communards. She then broadened her musical horizons with contributions to Derek Jarman's 1986 film Caravaggio, and two years later wrote the score to the DV8 Physical Theatre production My Body, Your Body. Pook continued this balancing act into the next decade, writing for cinema and television productions including Jarman's Edward II, the BBC series Mad About Music, while concurrently working with pop acts ranging from Peter Gabriel to PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, via her Electra Strings project. In 1994, the Canadian dance company O Vertigo commissioned Pook to score their production Deluge; the music was released on album three years later under the title Flood. She also was chosen by filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to score what became his final picture, 1999's Eyes Wide Shut. Another solo album, Untold Things, followed in early 2001. Since that time Pook's compositions and recordings have been predominantly for film, including The Merchant of Venice (2005), Brick Lane (2007), The Staircase (2018) and The Wife (2018). Standout albums include her first three solo releases: Deluge (1997), Flood (1999) and Untold Things (2001), plus the film soundtracks Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and The Merchant of Venice (2005). Musically, Pook's work evokes haunting atmospheric moods, borrowing some of the textures and techniques of new age music but using it to set a decidedly more sombre and foreboding tone than most new age music. She also often incorporates middle-eastern and oriental folk influences in her work, and has collabrated with world-music artists including Natacha Atlas and Nitin Sawhney. Outside of her music, Pook is politically active in the struggle against emergent far-right nationalism. In 2019 she was commissioned by The Proms to write a new piece for Prom 49: The Lost Words. "You Need To Listen To Us" sets to music words from speeches by environmental activist Greta Thunberg.
Artist Website: jocelynpook.com
Featured Albums: Jocelyn Pook
Related Artists: Natacha Atlas, Tim Hecker, The Elektra Strings
