Joris de Man

Biography

Joris de Man is a Dutch composer and sound designer living in the UK. Born in the Hague in 1972 into a musical family, his father was a professor at the Hague Royal Conservatory and a well known contemporary composer, his mother an internationally acclaimed Harpsichordist. Joris' own passion for music started with the violin. He joined the Gymnasium Haganum’s School Orchestra a year before attending school there. He would later exchange the violin for a synthesizer and computer, embarking a sea...

Joris de Man is a Dutch composer and sound designer living in the UK. Born in the Hague in 1972 into a musical family, his father was a professor at the Hague Royal Conservatory and a well known contemporary composer, his mother an internationally acclaimed Harpsichordist.

Joris' own passion for music started with the violin. He joined the Gymnasium Haganum’s School Orchestra a year before attending school there. He would later exchange the violin for a synthesizer and computer, embarking a search for musical identity which would lead Joris from hard edged industrial to ambient, electronica and everything in between, though never leaving his classical roots too far behind.

After a year’s course in Sonology at the Royal Conservatory he attended the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht studying Music Technology, leaving to pursue a career in music for Games.

A 1997 move to London led to working for various games companies, including The Bitmap Brothers. He returned to the Netherlands 3 years later to join startup company Guerrilla Games and was Musical Director there for over 6 years. It was during this time he developed the acclaimed Orchestral Score and sound design for Killzone, the Playstation 2 game developed exclusively for Sony, which sold over 2 million copies worldwide. Joris composed and orchestrated the score, which was recorded with the Prague Philharmonic and Chorus.

2005 took Joris to LA to attend the ASCAP Film and Television Scoring Workshop ; a prestigious one month course taught by industry professionals. He was fortunate to be selected for from over 300 entries with 14 other participants. Attendees were tasked to score a 3 minute cue to be performed live by a 40 piece Hollywood Studio Orchestra which they were to orchestrate and conduct. The resulting score was mixed by Armin Steiner and the workshop as a whole was an unforgettable experience.

Joris has worked with various composers as a sound designer or programmer; sound design for Alexander Knaifel’s Alice in Wonderland, the 2003 opening for the Stopera’s season, design of tape parts for Johan de Meij’s much lauded ‘Planet Earth’ Symphony in 2006. He has provided sound design and programming for contemporary composers such as Willem Jeths, Peter Eotveos and Louis Andriessen.

Other recent works include the music and sound design for the animated short Codehunters, for MTV’s Movie Awards in Asia; sound design 'Prince of Persia' TV spot for Ubisoft and score for Sony/Guerrilla’s much anticipated 'Killzone: Liberation' for the Playstation Portable.

Joris style has been described as epic, powerful, sweeping and grandiose in his orchestral based pieces; he enjoys writing for a live orchestra if the project permits, though he is equally versed in creating powerful and bombastic midi renditions. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.