While known by some for his producing, programming, and writing work in the pop and electronic realms, English musician Henry Jackman is best known for his output as a film composer. Although Jackman was nominated for a BAFTA Award in 2014 for the biopic Captain Phillips, he is most associated with the action and animation genres. His alternately whimsical and dramatic, rousing scores have included such global box-office hits as Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Captain Civil War (2016), and Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019).
Born in Hillingdon of suburban London into a family of music-industry professionals, Henry Jackman’s father, Andrew Pryce Jackman, was a keyboardist and arranger who worked with the likes of Yes, Barbra Streisand, and Nanci Griffith. His uncle Gregg Jackman is a sound engineer and producer for artists such as Barclay James Harvest, Seal, and Enya, and his grandfather Bill Jackman played woodwinds for, among others, the King’s Singers. Jackman himself grew up with formal music study, culminating at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School, Eton, and Oxford University in the ‘90s, a period that also found the young musician inspired by the underground rave scene. He soon found work as a producer or programmer for musicians as diverse as Mike Oldfield, Coolio, Alphaville, and the Art of Noise, and he released his own ambient electronic work in the 2000s. His first solo album, Utopia, was issued by West One in 2003. It was followed by 2005’s Transfiguration and 2007’s Acoustica, both on KPM. Jackman’s voyage in film music took off when Hans Zimmer offered him work assisting on scores (programming, additional music) at his post-production company in Los Angeles. After contributing to movies such as The Da Vinci Code (2006), Kung Fu Panda (2008), and The Dark Knight (2008), Jackman earned his first main-composer credit on a feature-length film with the 2009 animated picture Monsters vs. Aliens. Able to work with both symphonic and electronic palettes, Jackman accumulated composing credits at a fast pace, including, among others Gulliver’s Travels (2010), Winnie the Pooh (2011), and comic-book franchise entry First Class (2011). Among his scores to hit theaters in 2012 was the animated comedy Wreck-It Ralph, and his 2013 credits included Captain Phillips, a Tom Hanks biographical thriller that earned Jackman a BAFTA nomination for Best Film Music.
The year 2014 saw the release of no less than three blockbuster movies featuring Jackman’s Big Hero 6, Captain The Winter Soldier, and The Secret Service, which he co-wrote with Matthew Margeson. Pixels followed in 2015, and Captain Civil War hit theaters in 2016. That year, Jackman also scored his first complete video game, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, though he’d been contributing tracks, themes, and sound effects to games dating back to the late Commodore 64 era in the early ‘90s. Uncharted 4 earned Jackman a second BAFTA nomination, this time for a Games Award for Best Music. He returned with The Lost Legacy in 2017, a year that also brought the feature films Skull Island, Welcome to the Jungle, and The Golden Circle, the latter another collaboration with Margeson. Scores for the franchise installments The Predator and Ralph Breaks the Internet arrived the following year. His 2019 film projects included Pokémon Detective Pikachu and The Next Level. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi