John Hardy is a British composer for live performance and film. His music has been described by listeners as 'heart-warming', 'incredibly moving' and 'brilliant', and by critics as 'gripping and intensely theatrical' (Opera Now), 'engrossing...unique' (Guardian) 'epic' (Daily Telegraph) and 'achingly beautiful' (Composers of Wales). More of John's music is available at www.johnhardymusic.com or at record label www.ffinrecords.co.uk He studied music & composition at Oxford and the Guildhall, and worked with theatre & dance companies including Cardiff Lab and Brith Gof, composing and producing the music for theatre shows, films & TV projects, radio dramas A Clockwork Orange, Under Milk Wood, In Parenthesis, The Sicilian Expedition, Stardust, Sunbathing In The Rain & How I Live Now. Orchestral works include Fever for the Welsh Proms, and Blue Letters From Tanganyika, commissioned by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, who performed it five times and broadcast it several times on BBC Radio 3. A recording of Blue Letters is due to be released after Easter 2009. Choral and vocal music includes De Profundis, commissioned by Westminster Abbey Choir, BBC Singers & London Brass; two chamber operas for Music Theatre Wales; and a community opera about the 1797 French Invasion, commissioned by Welsh National Opera. 2004 saw the premiere, later broadcast on Radio 3, of an R.S.Thomas cycle Not Darkness But Twilight, commissioned, & performed twice, by the BBC National Chorus Of Wales. In 1994 he won the BAFTA Cymru music award for the Oscar-nominated film Hedd Wyn; a second BAFTA Cymru followed in 2003, for Fondue, Sex & Dinosaurs and a third in 2008 for drama series Y Pris. In 2006 he was given a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales. Unusual projects include a sound and light event in a ruined abbey; the creation of a 3-hour work of narration, sound and music about the Carrlands of North Lincolnshire; and concerts by the John Hardy Ensemble [The Hardy Syndicate]. A substantial choral cycle, Spaces – Beyond the End of the World, was commissioned by Vivace, Only Men Aloud & Serendipity, with support from the Arts Council of Wales & the PRS Foundation. Following the recording by the BBC Concert Orchestra of seven tunes for epic BBC1 documentaries on the intrepid yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur, he was commissioned by them to compose one twelfth of a composite composition for the concert Music & Chance at QEH on 17 February 2009, along with The Petshop Boys, Will Gregory, & Anne Dudley.