About
Award-winning composer and producer working at the intersection of film, television, and interactive media.
Paul Thomson's musical training began early — playing piano as a child and touring the world as a chorister with Worcester Cathedral Choir. While still at school he achieved the highest grades of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music across four instruments, created his first theatrical score for a piece by the acclaimed French playwright Henri Ghéon, and wrote the official fanfare for the 900th anniversary of the granting of Worcester's Royal Charter.
After studying with Elgar specialist and choral expert Dr Donald Hunt OBE, with Dr Wyndham Thomas at Bristol University and Professor Stephen Deutsch at Bournemouth, Paul obtained an MA in Music and moved to London, where he quickly established himself as a versatile composer and producer working with most of the major and large independent record labels.
His screen credits include the BAFTA-winning BBC Drama The Fades (co-produced with BBC America) — for which he won the RTS Award for Best Original Theme Music — the Slate Films/BFI production Half Of A Yellow Sun, BBC1 Drama The Interceptor, The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl for BBC Scotland, and the acclaimed RDF documentary The Genius of Charles Darwin. Further television work includes six series of ITV's Where The Heart Is and the Discovery Networks production Ways to Save the Planet — the most expensive production ever undertaken by Discovery, in association with Bank of America.
His music has also reached vast audiences through library and theme work for some of the world's highest-rated programmes, among them Britain's Got Talent, The Apprentice, I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and America's Got Talent.
In the games field Paul worked extensively with Media Molecule and Sony Computer Entertainment as lead composer on the LittleBigPlanet franchise. He has also created bespoke orchestral sounds for James Horner's score to Avatar and Hans Zimmer's score to Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, and composed and produced multiple albums for Hans Zimmer's Director's Cuts collaboration with Extreme Music and Sony ATV.
In 2008 he co-founded Spitfire Audio, which grew from providing exclusive composing tools to A-list film composers into the world's leading provider of orchestral sample libraries. Collaborators have included Hans Zimmer, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ólafur Arnalds, Roger Taylor of Queen, Eric Whitacre, BT, and — posthumously — the legendary explorer and musician David Fanshawe.