About
James Hannigan is a BAFTA Award-winning composer known for his memorable, narrative-driven scores across games, television, 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. | LISTEN
An IFMCA (International Film Music Critics Association) Award-winner for EA's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and a Webby People’s Voice Award recipient, with five additional BAFTA nominations, his work in full-cast audio drama includes The Sandman Acts I–III (with a cast including James McAvoy and Michael Sheen - Amazon’s best-selling Audible Original to date), Kingdom Come (DC) and the Audie Award-winning Alien series - along with themes for the newly recorded Discworld and the Harry Potter audiobooks read by Stephen Fry. | NEWS
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. He has recorded with ensembles including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra, at studios such as Abbey Road, AIR and Skywalker Sound. His scores have featured performances from Regé-Jean Page (for The Sandman: The Song of Orpheus), Zsolt-Tihamér Visontay, Tony Hinnigan (Titanic, Braveheart), Miranda Keys, Pete Lockett, Miriam Stockley (Adiemus), and others.
His television work includes music for Primeval (BBC America), while music from his back catalogue has been featured across 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). 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.