The Music Sculptors: Music for TV. Film. Commercials

Mark Sayer-Wade
Mark is one of the most successful composers and producers of his generation.

Mark began his career aged 16 at Morgan Recording Studio in London before signing a major recording contract with EMI in 1984. He wrote his first TV commercial in 1985 and, since founding The Music Sculptors in 1988, has composed and produced the music for:

Over 120 TV commercials including Blockbuster, French Connection and Diet Coke
6 feature film scores including Steven Seagal's Belly of the Beast, Working Title's Double Bill and The Criminal for Palm Pictures
68 episodes of prime time TV drama for Where The Heart Is and A&E
65 episodes of series animation for Tractor Tom and Aaagh! It's The Mr. Hell Show plus the BAFTA award winning animation First Snow of Winter
Over 60 documentaries including the BBC hit series Who Do You Think You Are, Trouble At The Top and Cutting Edge
Over 50 ident packages including BBC, Sky and Nickleodeon

During his career he has also recorded many of the leading names in the music industry including David Bowie, Sir Elton John, Iron Maiden, Bono, The Cure, Dr John, Madness, Black Sabbath, Courtney Pine, Tom Jones, The London Symphony Orchestra, The Royal Philharmonic, The English Chamber Orchestra and recorded and produced the massive BBC single Perfect Day.

Jon Paxman
Jon graduated from the Royal College of Music in 1999 with a Masters in Composing for Screen. In 2002, having scored two feature films and over a dozen film shorts, Jon joined The Music Sculptors and has since worked as a music arranger on a wide variety of television and film productions.

TV arranging credits include the three-part BBC drama "Superstorm", around forty episodes of the animation series "Tractor Tom" (CITV), Melvyn Bragg's "Travels in Written Britain", two series of "Britain's Finest" (C5) and four series of the BBC’s "Who do you think you are?" Feature-film arranging credits include "Sixty Six" (Working Title), "Belly of the Beast" (Millennium Films) and "Double Bill" (Working Title/Universal).

Jon has also co-written adverts with Mark Sayer-Wade for Lux, Barclays Bank, Paulton's Park and Hallmark, and has composed music for the Audi Channel.

Having studied musicology, Jon also writes about music history and practice. He is one of the contributing authors to European Film Music (pub: Ashgate), with an analysis of the music of Zbigniew Preisner, and is nearing completion of a substantial music history reference book (pub: Music Sales) due out in 2008.

Paul Cuddeford
Paul began his career in music as an assistant engineer at Ridge Farm studios working with the likes of Prefab Sprout, Status Quo, Thomas Dolby and That Petrol Emotion. During Paul's time there Rick Dufay (ex-Aerosmith) recorded an album and subsequently he joined Rick’s band as a guitarist. Paul then moved to Los Angeles and for two years performed in and around California.

Upon returning to London he began working as a session guitarist for a variety of performers including Tom Jones, Ian Hunter (Mott the Hoople), Sophie Ellis Bextor, Natalie Imbruglia, Robin Gibb and McFly. Paul also works as a composer and arranger with credits including DVLA and Skip commercials and The Michael Jackson trial for Sky. His co-writer and arranger relationship with The Music Sculptors continues to provide Paul with a varied wealth of experience in sound-to-picture, record production and music design for the web.

Sacha Puttnam
Sacha graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston with an honours degree in composition and studied conducting and composition for a further four years at the Moscow Conservartory. From there he worked as orchestrator to Michael Kamen ('Die Hard', 'Lethal Weapon', 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' and 'Band of Brothers'.)

He has scored four feature films, a list of award winning shorts, documentaries, radio dramas and commercials. His collaborations with Hybrid, Bush and DJ Chris Coco have notched up multi-platinum sales worldwide and his work is featured on a number of compilations from Ministry of Sound, Hed Candi, EMI, Nip/Tuck and many more.

Simon Ellis
Simon began his musical career as writer, keyboardist and programmer in the band Ellis, Beggs and Howard enjoying considerable touring and recording success in Europe in the late 80’s. When the group disbanded in 1990 Simon capitalised on his touring experience and became Tour Musical Director for a variety of bands including, East 17, Belinda Carlisle, D:Rream, the Spice Girls and S Club 7. After ten years of working with other peoples’ songs he decided in 2000 it was time to return to his true passion, song writing. Within a year he had UK No.1, US No.5 and Ivor Novello Nomination for S Club 7’s "Never Had A Dream Come True" and a UK No.1, ITV Record of the Year and Brit Award for S Club 7's "Don't Stop Movin".

Simon remains one of the UK's most talented song writers with further hits for Steps, Hearsay, Javine, John Farnham, Randy Crawford and Emma Bunton and is currently producing various album projects for Sony BMG. In addition to his song writing Simon has also enjoyed great success in the sound-to-picture industry working with The Music Sculptors on a diverse range of projects from programming on the 3-part drama series "Superstorm" for the BBC to co-writing on a Lux commercial for JWT New York.

Julian Kershaw
Having graduated from The Royal College of Music Julian initially toured the world with various orchestras as a bassoon player before moving on to a career in orchestration. He first worked as a musical assistant to Carl Davis, Christopher Palmer and Maurice Jarre (working on'Napoleon', 'Mad Max III' and 'Passage to India') before becoming a film score orchestrator in 1996. Since then he has worked on an endless stream of film and TV projects including ‘Notting Hill', '13 Days', 'From Hell' and the 'Blue Planet' and 'Bleak House' series for the BBC. His most recent credits include ‘The Last King of Scotland', 'Hannibal Rising' and 'Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix'.

He has also worked on live and album projects as both orchestrator and conductor for a variety of artists including Dave Stewart, Elvis Costello, Vanessa Mae, Bond, Richard Ashcroft, Kasabian and Paul McCartney. His longstanding relationship with The Music Sculptors has led to orchestrating the score for the Blockbuster Video and Zurich Assurance commercials and various tracks on the 'Swingin' With The Big Band' album. He also orchestrated and conducted the BBC children’s animation 'Second Star To The Left' and most recently was their conductor for the orchestral recordings at Abbey Road for the BBC's 3-part drama 'Superstorm'.

David Butterworth
Realising early on that his teenage ambition to replace Tony Banks as Genesis' progtastic keyboard player was doomed for failure, David's career in commercial music began after graduating from Bristol University in 1999 with an MA in Composition. Initially, he gained valuable industry experience working as a music copyist on productions including 'Shadow Of The Vampire'. After recording his own orchestral music with the City of Prague Philharmonic in 2001 he was asked to orchestrate the score for the feature film 'Phoenix Blue' and in the process discovered he enjoyed working on other people's tunes almost as much as writing his own.

Having found his niche he has since worked on numerous scores for film and television productions, advertising campaign jingles and idents, and tracks recorded by classical crossover, pop and jazz artists. Recent credits include incidental music for the BBC's 'Sports Personality Of The Year 2006' show, and the scores for 'Robin Hood - Series 1', 'Mr Bean's Holiday' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum'.

David's long-standing collaboration with The Music Sculptors began when he was asked to arrange the orchestral elements on tracks for Claire Sweeney's album 'Claire'. Since then he has worked regularly with Mark, arranging cues on his scores for the feature films 'Belly Of The Beast' and 'Double Bill', and the music for the award-winning FCUK advert 'Fashion vs Style'.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew is a composer, orchestrator and jazz pianist, and writes in film, music theatre, jazz and classical spheres. Something of a glutton for punishment, Andrew has completed a PhD in Composition (Southampton University 2004, studying with Michael Finnissy), a Masters in Composition for the Screen (Royal College of Music, 1999) and a BA in Music (York, 1998).

Andrew has released two CDs with 33jazz record label, including the satirical jazz musical 'Jazzed Tales' (33WM138), and 'Preludes and Suites' (33WM140), which features the jazz ballet 'Kinderspiele'. Recent performances include Cheltenham Jazz Festival (May 2007), the musical 'A Face In The Crowd' at Greenwich Theatre (Feb 2007), his ballet suite 'Fantine' (Turner Sims Concert Hall Southampton, Feb 2007) and 'Jazzed Tales' also at Greenwich Theatre (May 2006).

Recent work as an orchestrator includes the Harry Escott/ Molly Nyman score to the Michael Winterbottom film 'A Mighty Heart' (starring Angelina Jolie), and the recent BBC series 'Superstorm' for The Music Sculptors.