Natalie Holt

Natalie Holt is a British composer who has worked on numerous film and television projects. She trained at the Royal Academy of Music and then the National Film and Television School and had a career as a classical violist before becoming a film composer. Holt won an Ivor Novello award in 2015, was made an associate of the Royal Academy of Music in 2017, and was nominated for an Emmy award in 2017.

Composing

Whilst studying at the National Film and Television School Holt worked as an orchestrator and copyist on films including Matthew Vaughn's Stardust and Hannibal Rising. After graduating, she performed as a classical violist in a number of orchestras, while she began composing her own music for a number of short films, including the Royal Television Society award-winning "Friends Forever" (2008).

Her first mainstream breakthrough came in 2012 when she worked as part of Mearl Music for the composer Martin Phipps writing additional music for the BBC film Great Expectations, which was nominated for a BAFTA award for Best Score. She collaborated with Phipps again for the BBC drama The Honourable Woman for which they jointly won the 2015 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack.^[1]

Holt subsequently wrote the original scores for a number of other high-profile television dramas including the multiple BAFTA winning drama and Royal Television Society award winning score for Philippa Lowthorpe's drama series Three Girls, Adrian Shergold's BBC1 drama My Mother and Other Strangers, the final series of Wallander starring Kenneth Branagh, the BBC drama Redwater and the BBC television adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera's novel The Boy with the Topknot.

With Martin Phipps, she composed music for Victoria, the ITV drama starring Jenna Coleman, for which she was nominated for a Primetime EMMY in the category of "Outstanding Music Composition for a Series".

Holt has also composed music for a number of films including Saul Dibb's film adaptation of R.C. Sherriff's WW1 play Journey's End starring Sam Clafin and Asa Butterfield, for which she won Best Score at Beijing International Film Festival, additional music for Heyday Film's Paddington, a modernist score for the avant-garde Spanish feature film Animals (directed by Marcal Fores), additional music on the Hans Zimmer and Martin Phipp's score for the film Woman in Gold starring Helen Mirren, and the score for the first feature from Deborah Haywood, Pin Cushion, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.

She is currently working on the BBC's Press, a drama about the role of the media.

Performing

Holt played with many orchestras during her years as a musician, touring the world as a soloist, playing with the English Chamber Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall and performing at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

As a performer, Holt has worked with many contemporary artists including Alt-J, The Last Shadow Puppets, The Libertines, Nicola Benedetti, Lady Sovereign, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Take That songwriter Guy Chambers.

In 2007, she formed RaVen Quartet, a London-based string quartet that performed arrangements of rock tracks.^[2][3][4] The quartet performed with Madness during the 2012 London Olympics closing ceremony.^[5]

In the 2013 final of Britain's Got Talent, Holt was performing in the backing orchestra of finalists Richard and Adam. During their performance she walked on stage and threw eggs at the judge, Simon Cowell. She was protesting Cowell's "dreadful influence on the music business".^[6].

Other works

Holt has worked with Secret Cinema coordinating and arranging music for live film events including Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel and the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing.

She also worked alongside Goldie, Guy Chambers, Cerys Matthews, Lady Dynamite and Soweto Kinch to help young people from under-privileged backgrounds to write songs that were performed in front of Prince Harry at Buckingham Palace for a BBC television special.

She is currently collaborating with Nick Jenkins of Dragons' Den on a digital app designed to help children learn to read and play music.

Collaboration

Holt has worked with a number of high profile musicians and composers, including Martin Phipps on the score for the BBC/Netflix series The Honourable Woman, the Icelandic cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir on the film Journey's End and Hans Zimmer on the film Woman in Gold, for which Holt wrote additional music.

Awards

Holt has received numerous honours and awards, including the Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack in 2015 for her work on The Honourable Woman with Martin Phipps, an Emmy nomination for her work on the ITV period drama Victoria in 2017, a Royal Television Society award for Three Girls, and Best Score at Beijing International Film Festival for her score for the film Journey's End.

In 2017, Holt was made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music.