# Tandis Jenhudson

Tandis Jenhudson (born 1979) is a Emmy-nominated British composer, musician and medical doctor, best known for his work on film and television soundtracks. He has also received two Royal Television Society award nominations and is the first composer to have been honoured as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.

## Early life and education

Tandis was born in Clapham, London in 1979 and attended St George's Hanover Square Primary School, and the London Nautical School and Christ's College, Finchley secondary schools.
Despite his early interest in music, he studied Medicine at UCL and divides his time between medicine and music. He composed soundtracks for numerous short films during his early medical career, one of which was nominated for a BAFTA Cymru award in 2005.
In a 2014 interview, with PRS for Music's M-Magazine he said "I was obsessed with TV themes when I was a kid in the eighties and would even dance to some of them when they came on: "Ski Sunday, Dallas, The A-Team, Grange Hill, Airwolf, Doctor Who, Knight Rider, and Doogie Howser, M.D." He studied piano achieving Grade 8 although describes himself as a largely self-taught composer, stating "most of my musical development has come from listening to and dissecting other people's music" citing Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Michael Jackson as examples.

## Film and television work

In 2013, he received his first television broadcast credit for The March, a BBC/PBS documentary narrated by Denzel Washington which received a BAFTA nomination at the 2014 British Academy Television Awards. Directed by John Akomfrah and executive-produced by Robert Redford The March is about the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom – largely remembered for Martin Luther King's famous and iconic "I Have a Dream" speech.
In March 2015, Tandis was named laureate and winner in the media composer category at the first International MediaMusic competition in Moscow, for which film composer Ennio Morricone served as honorary chairman. In May he was revealed as one of the judges for the 60th Anniversary Ivor Novello Awards, alongside Gary Barlow and Guy Chambers. In the same year he scored the soundtrack to director Christopher Riley's National Geographic Channel film Hubble's Cosmic Journey.
In 2016, he composed the soundtrack for 'The Traffickers' an eight-part documentary TV series produced by Simon Chinn (winner of two Academy Awards for Searching for Sugar Man and Man On Wire) and Jonathan Chinn.
In 2018, he scored Civilisations, a 9-part art history television series produced by the BBC in association with PBS as a follow-up to the original 1969 landmark series Civilisation by Kenneth Clark. It was presented and narrated by Simon Schama, Mary Beard and David Olusoga. Jenhudson's soundtrack received two nominations at the RTS awards in 2018.

## Video installation work

Tandis Jenhudson has created the soundtracks for two multi-screen video installations by the award-winning artist John Akomfrah.
In 2015, he scored Vertigo Sea, a 3-screen triptych that explores man's relationship with the sea and its role in the history of slavery, migration, and conflict. It premiered at the 2015 Venice Biennale and has since exhibited at numerous galleries including Arnolfini, the Turner Contemporary and as recently as 2018 at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. It was nominated for a South Bank Sky Arts award in the Visual Arts category.
In 2017, he collaborated with David Julyan to score Purple, a six-screen film about climate change, human communities and the wilderness. It exhibited for 14 weeks at the Barbican in London, receiving a 4-star review from The Telegraph commenting that it offered "ravishing reminders of what we all stand to lose".

## Awards and honours

In 2014, he was selected as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and as a result was mentored by his lifelong idol Ennio Morricone.
In 2018, he was nominated for two Royal Television Society awards for Civilisations in the categories of Original Score and Original Title Music.

## Selected works

| Year | Title | Format | Platform | Director | Notes |
| 2006 | Love You, Joseff Hughes | Short Film | | Dan Hartley | Nominated BAFTA Cymru |
| 2013 | The March | Feature Documentary | BBC Two PBS | John Akomfrah | Narrated by Denzel Washington, exec-produced by Robert Redford Nominated: BAFTA (best factual) |
| 2015 | Hubble's Cosmic Journey | Feature Documentary | National Geographic | Christopher Riley | Narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson Nominated Emmy Award |
| 2015 | Vertigo Sea | Video Installation | | John Akomfrah | Nominated South Bank Sky Arts Award |
| 2016 | The Traffickers | 8-part TV series | Fusion TV | Various | Lightbox Productions (exec producer Simon Chinn) Winner: The AIBs Asian Media Awards |
| 2017 | Stalkers | Feature Documentary | BBC One | Kat English | Produced by Wild Pictures |
| 2017 | Purple | Video Installation | | John Akomfrah | Premiered at Barbican Curve, London |
| 2018 | Food Exposed | 8-part TV series | Fusion TV | Various | Produced by Lightbox (executive producer Simon Chinn) |
| 2018 | Civilisations | 8-part TV series | BBC Two PBS | Various | Produced by NutopiaPresented by Simon Schama Mary Beard and David Olusoga Nominated RTS Award (Best Original Score and Best Title Music) |
| 2019 | Hatton Garden: Inside Job | Feature Documentary | ITV | Tim Conrad | ITV (produced by Optomen) - presented by Ross Kemp |
| 2019 | Cajun Navy | Feature Documentary | Discovery Channel | James Newton | Produced by Lightbox (exec producer Simon Chinn) |
| 2019 | The Cameron Years | 2-part TV series | BBC One | Ian Leese | BBC1 (exec producer Denys Blakeway) |
| 2020 | Tigers: Hunting the Traffickers | Feature Documentary | BBC Two | Laura Warner | BBC2 Natural World (produced by Grain Media) Nominated - Grierson Award (Best Natural History Documentary) |
| 2021 | Joanna Lumley and the Human Swan | Feature Documentary | ITV | Ian Leese | ITV |
| 2022 | Jeremy Kyle Show: Death on Daytime | 2-part TV series | Channel 4 | Kira Phillips | Nominated: BAFTA (best factual series) RTS (best doc series / best director) Grierson (best doc series) Broadcast Awards (best doc series) |
| 2022 | Patagonia: Life at the Edge of the World | 6-part TV series | CNN SKY | Various | Plimsoll Productions (exec producer Martha Holmes) Nominated: EMMY (outstanding narrator Pedro Pascal) |
| 2022 | The Disappearance of April Jones | 3-part TV series | Channel 4 | John Incledon | Nominated: BAFTA Cymru (best doc series) |
| 2022 | Charlie Mackesy: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and Me | Feature Documentary | Apple TV+ BBC Two | Clare Sturges | Nominated: BAFTA Cymru (best director) |
| 2023 | Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom | Feature Documentary | ITV | Gesbeen Mohammad | Hard Cash Productions |
| 2023 | David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived | Feature Documentary | HBO SKY | Dan Hartley | Produced by Lightbox (exec producer Simon Chinn) |
| 2023 | Putin and Ukraine's Stolen Children | Feature Documentary | BBC One | Robin Barnwell | Top Hat Productions |