Composer Keeping account for posterity but rarely active on here. Please find me on IG instead.

Joined February 2013
BODIES on @netflix was a very interesting project to compose the score for. For a while I've wanted to put together a thread with some details on the approach to the music. It's taken me a while to get round to this (busy composing) but for those interested here we go...🧵
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The Firm - great film. One of the very best 90s thrillers. Tom Cruise in his prime, great Gene Hackman performance. First and best of the John Grisham adaptations. Also, stunningly good piano-only score by Dave Grusin.
4 SYDNEY POLLACK films, 1 choice. Which is your favourite of his?
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Yesterday I had the enormous privilege of recording at @AbbeyRoad with the totally unique, legendary Evan Parker. An experience I’ll treasure forever.
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Spent some time yesterday with a true musical legend, the incredible Evan Parker
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RIP Gene Hackman. Possibly my favourite actor
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Please support this incredibly important campaign. More than 1,000 musicians have come together to release Is This What You Want?, an album protesting the UK government’s proposed changes to copyright law. #IsThisWhatWeWant? isthiswhatwewant.com
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That Cynthia Erivo and Herbie Hancock duet at the Grammys ceremony was quite something
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A good result for everyone last night in the UK as AI bill allowing tech companies to basically pillage and destroy the future of the creative industries is knocked back.. Speech below is brilliant and sums up entire situation excellently if you have the time.. 👇
Baroness Kidron may have saved the UK's creative industries with her speech in the House of Lords today. She managed to get the House of Lords to approve her amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which among other things requires overseas gen AI companies to respect UK copyright law if they sell their products in the UK. (As a reminder, it is illegal to train commercial gen AI models on ©️ work without a licence in the UK.) What's astonishing is that her amendments passed despite @UKLabour reportedly being whipped to vote against them, and the Conservatives largely abstaining. Essentially, Labour voted against the amendments, and *everyone else who voted* voted to protect copyright holders. This should give you some sense of the strength of feeling over the government's plans to upend copyright law to favour AI companies. The bill still has to go through the Commons. But, as it stands, it would require generative AI companies selling their products in the UK to license any copyrighted training data they use. This is what standing up for the creative industries looks like. I strongly suggest you watch her entire speech. (If you want to read it instead, the link to the transcript is in the first reply ⬇️)
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Very pleased to hear my track “Diskmusik X” from my album Extensions: Music For Computer-Controlled Prepared Piano used so emotionally in the finale of new Apple TV drama Before, starring Billy Crystal Full album: open.spotify.com/album/09zEb… Thanks to @tiptoprecs @MannersMcDade
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Jazz and @ECMRecords fans - I’ve written an article for Universal Music’s website Everything Jazz on Jan Garbarek’s 1971 debut ECM album Afric Pepperbird and how it helped lay the groundwork for future ECM releases: everythingjazz.com/story/afr…
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@ethan_iverson wondering if you might find this of interest
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In Budapest yesterday, making some big strings sounds with the wonderful Budapest Art Orchestra and conductor Peter Pejtsik
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Did a good bit of lazy Sunday sorting of my @ECMRecords vinyl over the weekend. Most of these are ones that never made it to being reissued on CD. Some rarities in here.
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If you fed an AI algorithm the Beatles’ early catalog only up through “Revolver” and asked it to write more Beatles music, would it ever give you “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”?
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I made this carving out of wood for my wife's 18th birthday. A few weeks ago she turned 40!
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For those who are interested in such things, I’ve put some details on my current synth setup in my new studio over on my Instagram: instagram.com/p/DAa0GiRtWHn/…
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Delighted to be nominated in the @MASAwards for my title music for Bodies!
Replying to @MASAwards
#MASAwards Finalist (6/6): Bodies Titles Composer: @JonOpstad
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Pinch me. I just met my all-time musical hero. @herbiehancock
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It’s the last few days of voting for this year’s @WSAwards. If any of you are voting members and haven’t cast your votes yet then I would be very grateful if you might consider my work on BODIES and THE VEIL in the category of “Television Composer of the Year”. Thanks!
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