Isobel Waller-Bridge

Photo: Jérôme Favre.

Isobel Waller-Bridge is an award-winning composer known for her scores for film, television and theatre, alongside her work in electronic and contemporary classical music. She works in a wide range of genres, extending across large-scale orchestral music, electronic sound design, experimental music and song writing.

Waller-Bridge has scored a multitude of feature films, including Munich: The Edge of War (Netflix, dir. Christian Schwochow), The Phantom of the Open (BBC Films, dir. Craig Roberts), Emma. (Focus Features / Working Title, dir. Autumn de Wilde), I Came By (Netflix, dir. Babak Anvari), BAFTA and Oscar-winning short The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Bad Robot/NoneMore Productions, dir. Charlie Mackesy and Peter Baynton), The Lesson (dir. Alice Troughton), Embers (dir. Christian Cooke), Magpie (dir. Sam Yates), Wicked Little Letters (dir. Thea Sharrock), and Mother Mother (dir. K’naan). For television, her work includes music for Fleabag (BBC/Amazon), Black Mirror (Netflix), the limited anthology series Roar (Apple), critically acclaimed docuseries The Way Down (HBO), and Sweetpea (Sky).

Alongside her commission Temperatures for the Philharmonia Orchestra, which premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in November 2021, she has also collaborated with fashion houses Alexander McQueen and Simone Rocha, and Francesca Hayward, principal ballerina at the Royal Opera House, for her dance film Siren. For theatre, Waller-Bridge has worked with Florian Zeller in The Son (West End) as well as his play The Forest (Hampstead Theatre). Other theatre credits include Woyzeck, adapted by Jack Thorne (Old Vic), Blood Wedding (Young Vic), and Knives In Hens (Donmar Warehouse). She has recently composed music for the new ballet The Limit, which opened in October 2023 at the Royal Opera House. More recently she has worked on The House of Bernarda Alba (National Theatre).

Waller-Bridge’s releases include her 2015 album Music for Strings, her single “Illuminations” on Mercury KX / Decca, and the original soundtrack album for Munich: The Edge of War, out on Milan Records / Sony Music. Waller-Bridge’s latest release VIII was released in November 2022 on Mercury KX / Decca. In February 2023, she performed VIII alongside other pieces at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, which was followed by another performance with the BBC Concert Orchestra in summer 2023 at Blue Dot Festival. She performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in September 2024.

Waller-Bridge has received a number of awards including Best Composer at Underwire Film Festival and  Best Sound Designer at the Off West End Theatre Awards. She was nominated for her score for Fleabag for the RTS Craft & Design Award. She was nominated for the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in 2022.