Adrian Sutton

Olivier Award-winning composer Adrian Sutton is the man behind the music for the critically acclaimed productions of War Horse, Coram Boy, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. His score for War Horse has been described as "an orchestral cinematic epic". Adrian studied a BMus degree at Goldsmiths.

"Goldsmiths was a very special place to study music, and for me that was all down to the Electronic Music Studio. It was precisely because the College had a Fairlight CMI that it was my first (and only) choice when I came to apply for universities. That was certainly a risky strategy, but it paid off!

What I realised in subsequent years was that the studio element, combined with the rigorously academic nature of the degree and its strong focus on 20th-century music, gave me the perfect foundation for my career. To this day, those two elements underpin what I do; I would never have achieved what I have without the simultaneous strands of a) mastery of studio technology and b) exposure to and absorption of 20th-century musical literature.

I’ve previously provided music for adverts and worked with the satirist Chris Morris on the sound design for Brass Eye, but these days I’m mostly involved in music for theatre. My score for War Horse is the best-known, and has been Olivier nominated, but other productions for the National Theatre include Coram Boy (for which I also received an Olivier nod), and Revengers Tragedy. My latest work was the score for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a stage adaptation of the popular novel, for which I won an Olivier Award."