Chris Warner is a composer, sound designer, arranger and orchestrator with a passion for telling stories through music and sound. He is equally at home working in the theatre as he is in the recording studio, from small scale rural touring theatre projects and educational media work to major TV series and large scale theatrical productions.

Aurora Storm

A new album collaboration with synthmeister Gavin Harrison and featuring the vocals of Sarah Ozelle. Available now on Spotify and Apple Music.

Within the world of music for media, Chris is published by Audio Network, industry-leading producers of high quality production music for television, film and advertising. His compositions have been recorded at Abbey Road (comprising a range of hybrid-orchestral and chamber music albums) and mixed by music industry legends such as Haydn Bendall (Kate Bush, Pet Shop Boys, Massive Attack Katie Melua, Leona Lewis) and Rob Kelly (DJ Yoda, John Altman, James Seymour Brett).

Dystopian Dreams

Check out Chris’ 2022 album and collaboration with Rob Kelly.
Available now on Spotify and Apple Music

*At East Connection Studios in Budapest - Autumn 2021*
Chris produced and arranged the string recordings for the 2022 ITV Drama ‘The Ipcress File’

Wonders Of The Cosmos

Full album now available on Spotify.
Featuring Grace Davidson (The Hobbit, The Sixteen, Max Richter) recorded on location at Ely Cathedral and Abbey Road.

““It’s a lovely idea...Chris Warner’s music is played on bass, fiddle, guitar and clarinet by the cast, sometimes picking up on Grahame’s words sometimes fresh, sometimes a bit rappy.””

— Libby Purves - Theatre Cat

As a composer and sound designer for theatre, Chris has created original scores and sound designs for many theatre UK theatre productions, working at major national theatres such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Exchange Theatre, Wiltons Music Hall and the Lyric Belfast.

Abbey Road Studio 1 - taking a break during a large string orchestra session

“It [Much Ado About Nothing] is spoken with a welcome clarity throughout and it is enhanced by Chris Warner’s music.”

— ★★★★ The Times

In 2021 Chris worked as co-composer and producer on the album ‘Immersive Stories’ alongside the brilliant Sue Verran and legendary Dame Evelyn Glennie.

“Kilroy’s writing... emphasises the persuasive quality of sound and image, adeptly enriched by Neil O’Driscoll’s video and, best of all, Chris Warner’s soundscape.”

— Irish Times

Chris designed and developed both the technology and the musical score for a pioneering outdoor immersive family theatre event using ‘Silent Disco’ technology (Day Dreamers, Full House Theatre). Recent theatre projects include Sadie, directed by Game of Thrones star Conleth Hill and due to be broadcast on BBC4 in March 2021 as part of BBC Arts ‘Lights up’ Theatre for new Culture in Quarantine Season. Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Elizabeth Freestone for the acclaimed Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory. The original score and sound design for a new play by Marie Jones (The Government Inspector, Women on the Verge of HRT, Stones In His Pockets) and the musical score for a new theatre work exploring themes of memory, landscape and loss set on the Norfolk Broads, part of the Heritage Lottery Funded Water, Mills and Marshes project, in collaboration with the trail blazing regional touring theatre Eastern Angles.

Chris Warner.jpg — Performing live with the
Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra

As an orchestrator and arranger, Chris has worked across the fields of theatre, film and television. In addition to arranging and scoring all his own work, he was arranger, orchestrator and composing assistant on The Ipcress File (ITV), orchestrator and producer for The Mauritanian (BBC Films, 30West), and orchestrator and composing assistant for the 2018 BBC1 Drama McMafia. He has worked as musical arranger and orchestrator at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and on albums such as A Portrait of John Doe (Mercury XV Records) by classical-electronica artists Tom Hodge and Floex, for which Chris also performed in a live stage show with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2019 Chris re-orchestrated the classic 1970s album ‘Banana Blush’, a recording of John Betjeman performing his own poems to music by BAFTA winning composer Jim Parker. In this new 2019 version Chris plays multiple instruments together with a 3-piece band, with live narration by Zeb Soanes (BBC Radio 4) and Carole Boyd (The Archers). He created all the rock band arrangements for the Children's BAFTA nominated BBC Make A Musical. Chris has also composed incidental music and themes for a number of BBC Radio features and documentaries, including the theme for Radio 2's A History of British Comedy with David Mitchell.

BBC1 - McMafia - Air Studios - Deep in scores for the final session of Series 1 (from right to left - Chris Warner [orchestration & score preparation], Franz Kirmann [composer], Tom Hodge [composer], Paul Ritchie [producer])

Chris has also composed music for the concert stage including a number of choral pieces and arrangements. Highlights include a new commission for the award winning vocal trio Juice Vocal Ensemble (scored for 3 voices and tuned bottles), soon to be featured on their latest album 'Snow Queens' which will be released in Autumn 2018. Having composed the original soundtrack and created the sound design for the Audible release of the acclaimed new children's book Gaspard The Fox, written by the BBC presenter Zeb Soanes (Radio 4, BBC Proms, BBC4) and James Mayhew (creator of the much-loved Ella Bella Ballerina series and many other books, including The Knight Who Took All Day, Koshka’s Tales, Miranda the Explorer and Boy), Chris is working on a new version for live orchestra to be performed later in the year.