Matt Dunkley

Matt Dunkley is the UK’s, and indeed one of the world’s, leading orchestrators, arrangers and conductors, who has also managed to develop a successful parallel career as a talented film, TV and theatre composer.

He has worked on numerous films and television shows, including; Blitz, The End, Atlas, Barbie, Life on Our Planet, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Succession, Top Gun: Maverick, Enola Holmes 2, Andor (series 1 & 2), Carmen, Amsterdam, Don’t Look Up, Rebecca, No Time To Die, Judy, Stan & Ollie, Vice, Black Swan, Inception, Loving Vincent, Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Fallout, Noah, The Great Gatsby, World War Z, Moulin Rouge, Batman: The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, Pirates of the Caribbean 3&4: On Stranger Tides /At Worlds End, Ray, Kung Fu Panda 2 &3, The Incredible Hulk, Love Actually, The Road, The Quiet American, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, The Bone Collector, Iron Man, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, World Trade Center, The Assassination of Jesse James, and video games including Gotham Knights, Halo 4, Beyond: Two Souls and Halo 5.

Matt has worked with pop/rock acts such as Billie Eilish (his co-arrangement of her Bond song No Time To Die reaching number 1 in the UK Charts), U2, Sam Smith, Massive Attack, Rufus Wainwright, Radiohead, Patti Smith, Tom Jones, Elliot Smith, Badly Drawn Boy, Dido, Jamelia, Nick Cave, The Pet Shop Boys, Editors, Catatonia, Lianne La Havas, Emeli Sandé and Goldie as well as classical artists, Kronos Quartet, Jose Carreras, Luciano Pavarotti, Russell Watson, Vanessa Mae and Il Divo.

He has conducted all of the UK’s top orchestras, including The London Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, The London Sinfonietta, The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Scottish National Orchestra, The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The Chamber Orchestra of London and The London Contemporary Orchestra, as well as international ensembles such as The Los Angeles Philharmonic (at The Hollywood Bowl), The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (at the Sydney Opera House), The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, The Hong Kong Philharmonic, The Brussels Philharmonic, The Czech Symphony Orchestra, The Norwegian National Ballet Orchestra, The NRK Symphony Orchestra (Oslo), The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, The Mons Orchestra (Brussels), The North West Symphony (Seattle), The Babelsberg Film Orchestra (Berlin) and numerous top studio orchestras and choirs in London, New York and Los Angeles.

Matt has scored feature films including: The Four Musketeers, directed by Pierre Aknine and starring Emmanuelle Béart and the action thriller Storm Force (Windkracht 10), directed by Hans Herbots. He has also scored a number of network series for British Television including Spirit Warriors, I Saw You, Rescue Me, Safe as Houses and Number 13, as well as music for major adverts and production libraries.

Matt was asked to become musical director for the Judy Garland film biopic Judy, working very closely with the film’s star Renée Zellweger, and arranging and conducting all the musical numbers in the movie. Renée’s  performance went on to win her a Golden Globe, Bafta and Oscar.

For the theatre, he wrote and arranged all the music for the ground-breaking arena version of Peter Pan: The Neverending Story, that opened in Brussels December 2012, before embarking on theatre and arena tours of Europe and the Middle East, and he has also written Flanders Fields and Cinderella for theatrical productions in Belgium, Singapore and the Middle East. Upcoming productions include composing a musical based on the hugely popular Chinese video game Honor of Kings, to tour China next year. In the summer of 2018 Matt conducted the premiere of The Hamlet Complex for the Norwegian National Ballet in Oslo, directed by the acclaimed choreographer Alan Lucien Oyen.

Matt’s first solo album, Six Cycles, reached the Top 20 in the UK Classical Charts and was featured as part of a contemporary dance work, Meta, by Charlotte Edmonds for the Royal Ballet Covent Garden in London, and as part of the score for the French movie La Fete Des Meres. Music from Matt’s second solo album, Cycles 7-16, has been used in the Michael Moore documentary Fahrenheit 11/9.

Matt studied trumpet and piano at the London College of Music and then went on to work with world-renowned film orchestrator Christopher Palmer. This led to him working with the award-winning Scottish film composer, Craig Armstrong, for over 20 years. Since 2009 Matt has orchestrated and conducted exclusively for Golden Globe and Ivor Novello nominated composer Clint Mansell, and for the last 19 years Matt has also orchestrated and conducted for the superstar Indian composer, and Bafta, Golden Globe, double Grammy and two-time Oscar winning, A.R. Rahman. Furthermore he regularly works with many of the most exciting names in film composition today – including Nicholas Britell, Hans Zimmer, Marco Beltrami and Ramin Djawadi.