About
James Hannigan is a BAFTA Award-winning composer known for evocative, narrative-driven scores across games, television, best-selling audio drama and other media. His AAA game credits include entries in the Harry Potter, Dead Space, RuneScape, Warhammer, Evil Genius, FIFA, F1, Transformers, Theme Park, The Lord of the Rings, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Command & Conquer series, among others, and his work has received a further five BAFTA nominations. | LISTEN
An IFMCA Award winner for EA’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and a Webby People’s Voice Award recipient for The Sandman: Act II – featuring “The Song of Orpheus” sung by Regé-Jean Page – he has scored full-cast audio dramas including The Sandman (Amazon’s best-selling Audible Original to date), Kingdom Come for DC and the Audie Award-winning Alien series, along with themes for the newly recorded Discworld and Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry. (continued below)
Hannigan’s music – including the parodic Red Alert 3 Theme: Soviet March, RuneScape Theme and other tracks – has been streamed hundreds of millions of times and performed in concerts worldwide. With his scores often combining traditional techniques, sound design and experimental production, he has recorded with ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of London and the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, at Abbey Road, AIR and Skywalker Sound. | NEWS
His television work includes music for Primeval (BBC America), while music from his back catalogue has been heard in a wide range of shows, including Top Gear, The Grand Tour, Emily in Paris, Saturday Night Live, and many more.
Beginning his career at Electronic Arts in the 1990s, scoring titles such as the award-winning Theme Park World and several EA Sports games, he quickly established a reputation for his emotionally driven music and early innovation in interactive audio - going on to projects including Freelancer, Privateer 2: The Darkening (featuring Christopher Walken, Clive Owen and John Hurt), Catwoman, Warhammer: Shadow of the Horned Rat, Space Hulk and Grand Prix 4 - as well as the BAFTA-nominated Evil Genius and Republic: The Revolution - designed by Demis Hassabis (later of Google DeepMind). An occasional sound designer, his early credits also include sound design for films such as the Golden Reel-nominated Lost in Space (New Line Cinema).
A small number of his tracks can also be heard in the Terraria and Super Smash Bros. franchises, and he has scored a number of popular mobile and handheld titles, including Nintendo’s Art Academy and, recently, Call of Antia. Other recent projects include Rebellion's Evil Genius 2, and Steelrising. He is represented worldwide by COOL Music.
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A conference founder and a writer of words as well as music, he has appeared on the cover of DEVELOP magazine, written for Classic FM and Pixel Addict, and contributed to academic works such as Tim Summers’ Understanding Video Game Music (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is co-founder of Screen Art Connect events, formerly held at London’s Southbank Centre in partnership with PlayStation, BAFTA, the Ivors Academy, PRS for Music, Classic FM, Music Week and Electronic Arts, and writes on topics ranging from vintage arcade machines to the implications of AI music.
A fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a longstanding BAFTA member, Hannigan has been featured in BAFTA’s Conversations with Composers series held at the Royal Albert Hall, interviewed by BBC Radio, Classic FM, Sky TV, IGN, Forbes and MusicRadar, and has spoken at institutions and events including the Royal College of Music, the School of Sound, EIGF, Musicworks, Ludomusicology and the DEVELOP Conference.