ABSTRACT
Trevor Jones’s background and early musical and filmic training have had a long and profound influence on his career in screen composition. He grew up in the inner-city District Six area of Cape Town, learned piano on his grandmother’s instrument, and came to the UK having won a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music. After finishing at the Academy Jones went to the University of York, where he developed a broader knowledge of music and engaged with the institution’s electronic studios, fostering a keen interest in technology that has permeated his career. On graduating, he attended the National Film School (now the National Film and Television School) where he simultaneously attended the film-making course and delivered the first classes in film composition. In this dual role he worked with other film-makers on a number of short pictures, notably scoring the George Lucas-backed Black Angel (1980), which was created as the pre-film short for the UK opening of The Empire Strikes Back and the Academy Award-winning The Dollar Bottom (1981). These early experiences demonstrate the influence of Jones’s diverse musical training and the start of a process through which he began to find his own filmic ‘voice’.
