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Thursday May 18th 2023 @ 7pm BST

Music Composer Tim Atack.

Tim Atack’s feature credits include Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s film Cemetery Junction for Sony Pictures and Ricky’s 2009 The Invention of Lying for Warners. Re-Uniting The Rubins, a Brit rom com for Balagan Productions and Dead Cert, a thriller for Raw Films/Black & Blue Films. He also scored the Channel 4 documentary Graffiti Wars: Directed by Jane Preston and produced by Twofour Broadcast and a number of projects to coincide with the 2012 Olympics including ‘The Race that shocked the world’ and ‘Victoria Pendleton (Cycling’s golden girl)’.

He wrote the music for the BBC’s spectacular production of Krakatoa – The Last Days, directed by Sam Miller and Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Brian Percival, for the BBC1’s award winning contemporary ‘Shakespeare Retold’ series, produced by Diederick Santer and starring Sarah Parish, Damian Lewis and Billie Piper. His other recent tv drama credits include ITV’s Quite Ugly One Morning starring James Nesbitt, directed by Sam Miller for producer Murray Ferguson and Clerkenwell Films; and the BBC’s live production of The Quatermass Experiment, for which Tim provided a totally ‘live as it happens’ score for the re-make of this seminal cult work starring Jason Flemyng, Indira Varma and David Tennant. His drama comedy credits include Tiger Aspect’s series Roman’s Empire for BBC2.

The song Kissing You, which Tim co-wrote and produced with Des’ree, played an important musical thematic role throughout Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie Romeo & Juliet (20th Century Fox). In addition to being a featured song, an instrumental version was also used throughout the movie most notably in the Balcony scene. The film premiered at no. 1 at the US box office and was a huge international hit. The soundtrack album has sold in excess of 5 million copies worldwide and was number 1 in many countries.

Tim started in the business as the drummer in a band called Child and they had several chart singles before breaking up in 1980. He then decided to concentrate on playing keyboards and began working as a freelance musician and programmer for various artistes. It was during this period that he also worked on developing his skills as a composer and record producer.

In the early 90’s he toured and recorded with Oleta Adams and Des’ree, becoming the latter’s Musical Director in 1995. He did three world tours with her in two years, promoting the I Ain’t Movin album, which sold 1.7 million copies worldwide. It was while they were performing in Australia that they co-wrote Kissing You which Baz Luhrmann heard and requested for Romeo & Juliet.

In 1998 Tim co-wrote, recorded and produced a number of tracks for Des’ree’s album Supernatural, sales of which now exceed 2m copies. In the second half of 1998 he worked with Des’ree as keyboard player and Musical Director promoting this album on her world tour. He has also played on live dates with Michael Kamen and Bryan Ferry.