Philip Sheppard is a composer, producer, virtuoso cellist, inventor, public speaker, philanthropist, professor at the Royal Academy of Music and a creative innovator who has worked with some of the biggest names in music, tech, sport and film.
Philip has composed more than 60 film, television and theatrical scores including the Star Wars Force Awakens behind the scenes Comic Con trailer which has over 11 million YouTube plays. In 2017, he had three films released, The Final Year, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, Legion of Brothers, which premiered at Sundance, and Chosen, starring Harvey Keitel. His other major film works include In the Shadow of the Moon (which received an International Film Critics Award nomination for Best Original Score for a Documentary and won numerous awards including the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary at Sundance), Meru (which won numerous awards including the Audience Award for Documentary at Sundance), Sergio (which was nominated for a Prime Time Emmy) Bobby Fischer Against the World, The Tillman Story and Love, Marilyn. Philip was inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a member of the Music Class of 2017.
Philip regularly writes and plays with Odesza, Pretty Lights and UNKLE and has been featured as a guest artist with rock and roll legends, including Scott Walker, Grace Jones, Jimmy Page, Jeff Buckley, David Bowie, Sia, Suzanne Vega and Jarvis Cocker. His latest album Somewhere Along the Edge was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in September 2016 and is his first studio album away from specific movie soundtracks for some time. Each track is dedicated to someone who lives fully at the edge of life -whether explorers, artists, travelers or thinkers. In 2017, Philip collaborated once again with Odesza on their third studio album, A Moment Apart, which was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Dance Recording for Line of Sight.
Philip has produced many large scale and complex live events. He was the music director for the London 2012 Handover sequence at the 2008 Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony. Philip composed and produced the music for the ceremony, including a new version of the UK National Anthem. He recorded and conducted the London Symphony Orchestra playing his Olympic sequence (entitled This Is London), and produced a new version of Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis performing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love for the culmination of the ceremony.
For the 2012 London Olympics, Philip conducted, rearranged and edited all 205 national anthems for the winners’ ceremonies. The national anthems were recorded with The London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The epic challenge took 52 recording hours. The anthems produced by Philip are to be used for the next 25 years of International Olympic Committee events. His portfolio also includes being music producer for the Tour de France, the Rugby World Cup, the COP21 Paris Climate Change Summit and New Year’s Eve celebrations at the world’s tallest building in Dubai.
His stageworks include Sacred Monsters for Sylvie Guillem and Akram Khan, In-I starring Khan and Juliette Binoche, One Drop for Cirque du Soleil and a radical reversion of Handel’s Sarabande in Black, which was performed live by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, for Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2007 Paris Fashion Week show, Sarabande. This score went on to become part of the Savage Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Philip, in collaboration with James Lavelle of UNKLE, co-produced Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick, a riveting audio-visual show set in Somerset House against iconic visuals from Stanley Kubrick’s various works.
Philip is a true technological innovator, pioneering the use of electronics in conjunction with classical music in his performances to audiences around the world. His unique approach to the creative process led to his invention of the game “Compose Yourself“, a revolutionary game that enables children to build their own symphonic works using a computer algorithm and an innovative deck of cards, leading to a front-page feature in the Wall Street Journal. “Compose Yourself” has also been recently featured by Time Magazine for Kids and Newsday.
Philip has delivered keynotes on creative innovation in conferences around the globe such as C2MTL, TTI Vanguard, and WHD.Global and for business giants such as Ernst & Young, Deloitte, YouTube, Facebook, Kyu Collective and Google. Philip speaks about the intersection of music and data, the innate musical ability within all of us, and other topics that connect music to creativity, tech and introspection.
Philip was honored with BBC’s Music Production of the Year for The Manchester Passion and was recently named as one of Origin Magazine’s “Top 100 Creatives in the U.S.” He is also the recipient of an RAM Fellowship, a lifetime achievement award from the Royal Academy of Music for his services to music and education.
