David Mitcham’s scores for natural history films have won numerous awards at international wildlife film festivals. These include an EMMY in 2016 for The Last Orangutan Eden, a Golden Panda at Wildscreen for The Elephant, the Emperor and the Butterfly Tree (2004), and in America, Best Music at both the American Wildlife Film Awards Jackson Hole (Danger in Tiger Paradise, 2003) and the Missoula International Wildlife Film Festival (South Pacific, 2010), an Ivor Novello Award for Danger in Tiger Paradise in 2002 and an Emmy in 2006 for Mississippi Tales of the Last River Rat.
David was also nominated for an EMMY in 2020 for his score for Netflix's Dancing With The Birds, narrated by Stephen Fry. Other recent credits include Netflix's Secret Lives of Orangutans (2024), for which David composed a full orchestral score featuring whistling, accordion, celeste and other imaginative touches; David Attenborough’s 2022 TV special Wonder of Song for the BBC; Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla for Cosmos Factory (2022); Big Wave TV’s New Forest: The Crown’s Hunting Ground narrated by Hugh Bonneville; Columbia Wild and Free for Cosmos Films; Wild Austria (Sciencevision 2018); PBS series Sex, Lies and Butterflies (Red Bull Media 2017); and The Canary Islands: World Of The Fire Islands (ScienceVision Filmproducktions 2016). Film credits include Collusion, directed by Richard Burridge.
In 2015 David won a competition to write a new fanfare for the City of Bristol that was first performed by Alison Balsom at the Bristol Proms and subsequently across the city. He has also written The Shard Symphony (2012), which can be heard in The Shard on London’s South Bank performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with the Joyful Company of Singers.
During his teens, David was a trombonist in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, and his passion for the symphony orchestra is evidenced in his beautiful orchestral scores for such projects as Secret Lives of Orangutanrs (mentioned above), Nile (BBC, 2004) and The Crown Jewels at the Tower of London (2011). David was awarded his ARCM at the age of 17, and went on to study for the BMus Tonmeister degree at Surrey University (spending a year working at Abbey Road Studios).
David has enormous skill and a natural flair for writing for picture: indeed he has commented that, after studying a film closely and getting to understand its narrative, the music virtually writes itself. It is the appropriateness and effectiveness of his scores that bear out the truth of this comment.
David is based in England in the heart of historic Wiltshire.