John Du Prez is a Grammy Award winning composer (A FISH CALLED WANDA, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SPAMALOT). A Trevelyan Scholar at Christ Church, Oxford he worked as a Music Lecturer at London University Goldsmiths College until 1979 when he entered the film industry composing additional music for Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Developing his film work during the early 1980s with Monty Python & George Harrison’s Handmade Films he also played trumpet on eight Top 40 hits with the UK salsa band Modern Romance. The success of A FISH CALLED WANDA took him to America where he scored the three Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and Weird Al Jankovic’s cult classic UHF. In 2001 he co-wrote MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT with Eric Idle which won them both Grammies and the 2005 Tony for Best Musical, both rare awards for a British musical. He conducted their comic oratorio Not The Messiah (commissioned by Toronto Symphony ) on a world tour which included Sydney Opera House, Houston Opera, Wolftrap (NSO), Hollywood Bowl ( LA Phil ) and finally the Albert Hall ( BBC Symphony ) for the Monty Python 40th Anniversary. In 2014 he was appointed Music Director for the Monty Python O2 Arena concerts and then began scoring 104 episodes of the Bafta Award winning TV Series The Clangers. Future projects include a Live To Screen version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a new stage musical version of A FISH CALLED WANDA.
