Film and TV

Andrew Powell’s first experience of writing film music came when he was still at school, where he wrote and recorded the score for Gamma Ray Absorption - a short film made by the school’s head of physics Mike Smith (who went on to make science programmes for BBC TV). Whilst at Cambridge he scored a couple of films for friends who were students at the Royal College of Art’s film school. As a “session” player in London after leaving Cambridge he worked on several films (together with his friend Francis Monkman) for the composer Stanley Myers - Francis and he would often improvise “cues” for these films (Conduct Unbecoming, King Queen Knave, etc.) - Stanley then asked him to produce the soundtrack for the Joseph Strick film Janice, for which he improvised some John Cage-style “prepared piano” music...He produced several more film soundtracks for Myers, sometimes writing orchestral cues when Stanley ran short of time: among them The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz & Caravan to Vaccares. The composer Georges Garvarentz asked him to orchestrate the score for the film Triumphs of a Man called Horse in 1982, which provided further useful experience in this field.

His first full length feature film was Richard Donner’s Ladyhawke, with Michelle Pfeiffer, Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer and Leo McKern: rather a large budget film for a first solo outing. Unusually for a composer, he was invited to assist at the “dubbing” sessions - and thus had a hand in one of the film’s Oscar nominations - for Best Sound. The score won an honours nomination for best score from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. He went on to score Dan Petrie’s Rocket Gibraltar - one of Burt Lancaster’s last films, and Macauley Culkin’s first, it also starred Sinead Cusack, Patricia Clarkson & Kevin Spacey.

Major Films:
Ladyhawke
Rocket Gibraltar
Closed Circuit

Andrew has also contributed music to the following films & T.V. series:

Janice (Joseph Strick,) The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Richard Dreyfuss, dir. Ted Kotcheff,) Caravan to Vaccares (Charlotte Rampling) , Alma - a Show Biz ans Ende (Helmut Berger), Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (Richard Harris), Ice Dance, Conduct Unbecoming, Anschi och Michael, Stealing Sinatra, Luifel en Luifel, Analogy, Here’s Looking at You, Amores de Mercato, Best of Friends, The Model Agent, Pussel, André Heller’s Feuertheater,  Derrick, Tatort, Thuis, Terra X, Krimistunde, Feux de L’Amour, Chiquititas Sin Fin, Patriarche, Wedi 7 and Journalisten. He was awarded the ITVA Videopreis Deutschland for the music he wrote for the multi-media show Keravision for Villeroy und Boch at their headquarters - a castle in Mettlach, Germany.