The Past Pushes Back - Alex Heffes

Alex Heffes is a British film composer (born September 2, 1971 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire). His film scores include the BAFTA-winning Touching the Void, and Oscar-winning movies One Day in September and Last King of Scotland.

He graduated from Oxford University with first class honours and started his professional life playing keyboards and writing and arranging for commercials and TV (his band is featured playing in jazz club scenes in the film Circus). This led to him becoming assistant to composer Simon Boswell with whom he scored over 20 movies including A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cousin Bette. He also collaborated on Elton John’s score to Women Talking Dirty and with members of Blur.

Since then he has gone on to become a successful movie composer, notably scoring many of Kevin Macdonald’s films. He travelled to Uganda to produce the soundtrack to The Last King of Scotland. He has proved successful in a variety of different genres including Steve Coogan’s The Parole Officer, Out of Reach with Steven Segal and Trauma (2004 film) starring Colin Firth and Mena Suvari.

He has been nominated for BAFTA and Ivor Novello Awards.

He always conducts his own orchestral scores. Concert commissions include pieces for the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Oman, the Sangat Music Festval in Mumbai and the Birmingham Schools percussion Ensemble. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.