BARRY, JOHN

One of the most important British film composers of all time, John Barry's body of work is simply astounding. In a career that spanned more than half a century, Barry composed some of the most popular soundtracks for British film and television, including eleven James Bond themes, winning numerous awards and accolades in the process. The son of a projectionist from York in the north of England, Barry was raised in a cinematic environment from a very young age and after a stint as an army trumpeter in Cyprus, he began to work back home in Britain for Jack Parnell and Ted Heath's Orchestra and after the subsequent formation of The John Barry Seven in 1957, he began to work in film and television. The highly evocative 'Zulu' soundtrack of 1964 is the work that brought him to the attention of a wider audience, shortly before the first James Bond theme that would turn him into a household name; here the music shifts between an overriding tension and the kind of military fanfares reserved for pitched skirmishes on battlefields, the orchestrates peaks and troughs sounding every bit as stirring as anything recorded in Hollywood.