- published: 16 Mar 2016
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Alexander Rudd (born 1981) is an English award-winning composer, songwriter and conductor working in film, television, theatre and the concert hall.
At the age of 16, Rudd won the National Young Composer of the Year Award. He is a Fulbright Scholar and studied at Trinity College of Music and the University of Southern California. In 2009, Rudd received a UK Film Council Award, enabling him to work and study in Los Angeles. His mentor is American composer and songwriter Randy Newman.
He was a student at Our Lady’s High School, Fulwood, Preston – although he also spent two years at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit Catholic boarding school in the north of England. From the age of sixteen he worked as a pianist and singer entertainer in bars and clubs working all over the UK. He studied composition at Trinity College of Music with Alwynne Pritchard who introduced him to the works of contemporary composers such as Xenakis, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Messiaen. In the evenings he worked as the resident Jazz singer and pianist at The Dorchester, Claridges and The Savoy in London. He also taught the piano and worked as a Musical Director at James Allen Girls School in Dulwich. During this time he met composer Howard Blake who encouraged him to pursue a career as a film composer.