Dominik Scherrer

An extremely fresh, innovative and resourceful composer, Anglo-Swiss musician Dominik Scherrer has emerged as one of the most talented score composers of his generation.

His music can be heard on some of the finest dramas made in recent years, earning him two Ivor Novello Awards, a Primetime Emmy nomination, and a further four Ivor Novello nominations. 

Dominik’s recent projects include the BBC/PBS series Miss Austen starring Keeley Hawes, the crime thriller Protection, produced by New Pictures for ITV, both series of the BBC/HBO thriller The Tourist, written by Harry and Jack Williams and starring Jamie Dornan, the BBC One series Boat Story, No Escape for Paramount+, both series of Baptiste produced by Two Brothers Pictures, Mammoth Screen’s The Serpent, starring Jenna Coleman and Tahar Rahim and The City & The City directed by Tom Shankland.

Born into a musical family in Zurich, Switzerland, Dominik moved to London aged 19 where he has resided since. Amongst his first works as a composer, were two operas for the screen. The second, ‘Hell for Leather’, premiered at Sundance Festival, featured in the notorious Young British Artist exhibition ‘Sensation’ at the Brooklyn Museum, and went on to win ten international awards.

Dominik started scoring independent feature films, such as apocalyptic The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz by Ben Hopkins, the comedy Scenes of a Sexual Nature starring Ewan McGregor, and Appetite. Dominik’s title song, featuring Ute Lemper, reached number two in the UK classical charts. He wrote the score to five Italian feature films for directors Anna Negri and Alina Marazzi.

Scores for acclaimed British drama series followed. Six seasons of Agatha Christie’s Marple and five seasons of the Victorian crime drama Ripper Street, earning him his first Ivor Novello.

He is a frequent collaborator of director Aisling Walsh, scoring her Bafta nominated An Inspector Calls, the Bafta winning Elizabeth is Missing, and Miss Austen.

Dominik received a second Ivor Novello Award for the supernatural thriller Requiem, on which he collaborated with Natasha Khan, aka Bat for Lashes. The Guardian wrote: “The music and sound effects constitute a revelation: why, when it can be done this well, was it ever done otherwise?”

His collaboration with the writers Harry Williams and Jack Williams began with the global hit The Missing. Dominik’s score received a Primetime Emmy nomination. Further scores for the Williams brothers were for The Widow, The Tourist and Boat Story.

Sight & Sound praised Dominik’s unique soundtrack to the Netflix series The Serpent: “Dominik Scherrer’s marvellous score, a riot of analogue synths and percussion drawing on exploitation movie soundtracks of yore to intoxicating effect.” The soundtrack was Ivor Novello and Camille Award nominated.

Dominik also composes performance music for the theatre as well as sound design and music for fine art, notably for artist Suki Chan.