I jumped on a flat bed coal truck and ended up in Hollywood: Acclaimed composer looks back on a zing musical journey
Oscar-nominated Patrick Doyle heads home for birthday bash
His
music has soundtracked some of Hollywood’s biggest movies and his virtuosity has won him acclaim in concert halls around the world.
But Patrick Doyle, the son of a miner, remembers his first performance just as vividly – on the back of a flat-bed coal truck. The two-time Oscar nominee, who has worked with A-list directors like Robert Altman and Kenneth Branagh, was 12 when he decided to play the wonky old piano as it was driven through the streets of his home town in Lanarkshire.
Little did he know he would be celebrated more than 50 years later by a significantly larger audience at a special Celtic Connections concert celebrating both his 65th birthday and a career that has seen him score hit movies like Bridget Jones’s Diary, Calendar Girls, Harry Potter And The Goblet
Of Fire and Thor.
Patrick says the incredible focus that has seen him become one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers over the past 30 years comes from growing up in a house with 12 siblings in Uddingston.
“I can stop writing in the middle of a phrase and pick it straight up again the next morning and I think that’s because I switch off from peripheral noise,” he said.
“I learned to drown out everything else when I was growing up in such a busy house. I developed very good focus.
“It was a hectic home – if you didn’t hurry up and finish your meal it would be swiped by someone else.
“Central to it all was music. It was a house full of singing and I would also play the church organ as I got older.
“My parents got me a piano when I was 12 – it belonged to my dad’s friend, who was going to throw it out.
“A group of men got this piano with half the ivory missing strapped on to the back of an open coal truck. I stood on the back playing it as we went through the streets and people came out of their houses to see.
“It was so out of tune, worse than the piano in any bar scene of a western film, and a few of the keys didn’t work, but I was so happy to have my own piano.” Although now based in England, Patrick comes home to Scotland “all the time” and is devoted about introducing as many young people to music as he can. He has spoken out Patrick wrote the scores for hits such as Murder On The Orient Express, Brave and the new Cinderella film about local authority cuts to music tuition and takes pride in a programme he was involved with that brought youngsters aged 14 to 16 together to play music.
“Seeing all of those kids coming in was better than being nominated for any Oscar,” he continued.
School music lessons led to a place at the RSAMD (now The Royal Conservatoire) and after a year teaching at Hillhead High, Patrick became involved in a theatre group. This led to TV and radio work, and when he was recommended to Kenneth Branagh to score the actor’s film version of Twelfth Night, so began a collaboration that lasts to this day.
“We’ve done 12 movies together now,” dad-of-four Patrick said. “We’ve just finished the latest, All Is True, which is about Shakespeare’s life when he returns to Stratford after The Globe burns down.”
As well as the birthday concert, for which Patrick has composed two new pieces of work, he was also involved in the world premiere of Brave In Concert, another show at the Celtic Connections festival.
The Disney Pixar film will play on the big screen while the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra perform Patrick’s soundtrack live.
“To be asked to write the score for Brave was a fantastic honour and I’m so proud of its representation of Scotland.
“I dreamed we would hold the world premiere in Glasgow, so I’m thrilled it’s happening.”
He may be 65 now, but Patrick says he’ll never retire.
“That will never be part of my life, because I can’t function unless I’m running around doing something,” he added.
“I had leukaemia 21 years ago but I feel better now than I ever did, so if the health stays strong I want to continue because I love what I do.”