Lorne Balfe was born in Scotland, and it is evident that he was musically gifted from a young age. He had some early exposure to music and musicians, with there conveniently being a residential recording studio in his childhood home! He started composing professionally as a boy, and he performed as a percussionist with the Edinburgh Symphony Orchestra. He undertook his formal musical education in Edinburgh before moving to the USA to seek film scoring opportunities there. His film scoring career was then fairly typical for most film composers, initially supporting other more experienced composers and writing additional music for their films. He became a member of Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, and further broadened his experience, supporting Henning Lohner and Hans Zimmer on films such as "Mimic 3: Sentinel", "Incident at Loch Ness", "Hellraiser: Deader", "Laura's Star", "The Da Vinci Code", "The Holiday" and some of the films from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise.
Throughout this period Balfe was learning his trade from the aforementioned composers, and others such as Julian Nott, Steve Jablonsky, Rupert Gregson-Williams, Ramin Djawadi, James Newton Howard, John Powell and Henry Jackman, whilst also having some level of contact with filmmakers and directors such as Michael Bay, Guy Ritchie, Christopher Nolan, Ron Howard and Gore Verbinski. It wasn't long before Balfe was credited as co-composer with Zimmer on the likes of "Megamind" for Tom McGrath and "The Dilemma" for Ron Howard, and he was recognised as sole composer for films such as Christopher McQuarrie's "Mission Impossible: Fallout", "Black Widow", "Jungleland", "Military Wives", "The Tomorrow War", "The Lego Batman Movie" and oscar-nominated "The Florida Project". A measure of his success with the 6th Mission Impossible film "Fallout" has resulted in him being announced as the score composer for the next 2 Mission Impossible films!
While the focus for many credit lists tends to be on films with their larger budget and timescales, Balfe has also been warmly associated with a number of television series including some early work on Scottish Soap "River City", "The Last Detective" with Peter Davidson and "William and Mary" with Martin Clunes and Julie Graham. More recently he has also scored "Marcella", co-composing Season 2 of Royal biopic "The Crown", 2 Seasons of "Genius" and psychological drama "The Cry" starring Jenna Coleman. The recent BBC co-production version of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" has given the composer plenty of scope with a wide-ranging and complex fantasy series, and he seems to be repeating the trick on "Pennyworth", "Dopesick" and "The Wheel of Time" all with completely different sound worlds. Lorne Balfe is now firmly established as a top-class score composer for film and television, and we will no doubt hear more from him and about him in the years to come. The composer's own official website is at LorneBalfe.com where you can hear some of his work, and his Lorne Balfe youtube channel has many more examples.
We have reviewed the double album released for His Dark Materials, Series 2, and at the current time Series 3 is in post-production, and expected to be broadcast later in 2022.
Lorne Balfe has also had a significant involvement with the composition of Video Game Music. He was one of several composers including Zimmer with credits on "Crysis 2", and he also scored various titles in the "Skylanders", "Assassin's Creed III" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" game series. He also scored the game "FIFA 19"
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