Spitfire Audio have teamed up with Emmy Award-winning composer and pianist, Kris Bowers (King Richard, When They See Us, Space Jam, Green Book) to offer the composing community an amazing opportunity to showcase their skills. 

Spitfire Audio have secured an unscored clip from episode five of the first season of the mega-hit Netflix drama series, Bridgerton, where the Queen finds out about a change of plans and Daphne Bridgerton prepares for her marriage to the Duke of Hastings. The acclaimed series is produced by Shondaland, the global media company founded by award-winning writer and producer Shonda Rhimes. Composers can download the 90 second clip, then create and submit their own score to be in with a chance of winning some amazing prizes. Kris Bowers – who has received two Emmy nominations and a Grammy nomination for his work on Bridgerton – will pick the winner and four runners-up. 

Entrants have four weeks to enter the competition and can use any of the Spitfire Audio virtual instruments – including the LABS and BBC Symphony Orchestra Discover plugins (which are available for download for free on the Spitfire Audio website) – or other music-making software. 

Prizes: 

The winner of the competition will receive:-

 Spitfire Audio Everything Collection – every Spitfire Audio library on two external SSDs, worth over $20,000 if bought separately

• One hour digital one-to-one mentoring session with series composer, Kris Bowers 
• A score from Bridgerton, signed by Kris Bowers 

The four runners-up with receive:-

• Spitfire Audio Symphony Complete Professional Bundle
• A score from Bridgerton, signed by Kris Bowers

Working with high-quality visual content and working around dialogue and FX, the competition is a great chance to practice composing to picture or even try it for the very first time. The Spitfire Audio Forum has a section dedicated to advise on scoring and sharing your submissions. 

How To Enter: 

• Download the music-free Bridgerton clip from spitfireaudio.com/bridgerton
• Complete your score in whichever DAW you choose 
• Upload and set it to ‘Public’ on your own Youtube account with the tag #mybridgertonscore 
• Submit your score to the competition via the application form on spitfireaudio.com/bridgerton

Key Dates: 

• The deadline to enter the competition is Wednesday 24 August, 2022 at 5pm BST 
• The winner and four runners-up will be announced on Thursday 6 October, 2022 at 5pm BST

About Kris Bowers (https://www.krisbowers.com/) 

Emmy Award-winning composer and pianist, Kris Bowers, creates genre-defying music that pays homage to his jazz roots with inflections of alternative and R&B influences. The result is a sound rife with contradictions, a work of nuanced alchemy situated at the summit of his influences. A confluence of jazz greats, classical standards, and the alternative and experimental music of his youth, along with the cinematic storytelling of his most studied film scores. Bowers’ earliest musical inspirations were varied, transcending generation and genre to include work by artists such as Steve Reich, Radiohead, Stevie Wonder, Brian Eno, Herbie Hancock, and Jimi Hendrix. As a young musician, Bowers brought the language of jazz to his covers of artists like Death Cab For Cutie, Tune-Yards, Radiohead, and Kendrick Lamar. 

Since 2013, the Juilliard-educated pianist has established himself at the forefront of Hollywood’s emerging generation of genre-defying composers. What sets Bowers apart is his unique ability to compose music that resonates across such a diverse continuum of artists, storytellers, and audiences. From scoring documentaries like Kobe Bryant’s Muse (SHOWTIME, 2015) and Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You (2016), to scripted series including Shonda Rhimes and Paul William Davies’ For The People (ABC), Netflix’s Dear White People, and SHOWTIME’S Black Monday (Exec. Produced by Seth Rogen & Evan Golberg), Bowers’ work as a film and television composer is a testament to his versatility as an artist. 

Bowers first made a name for himself in 2011, when he won the prestigious Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where Aretha Franklin chose him as a favorite to win during the semi-finals concert. The win earned him a record deal with Concord Jazz, who later released his debut album, Heroes+Misfits, which opened at number one on the iTunes jazz chart in 2014.

In 2018, Bowers had the honor of collaborating with Emmy and Academy Award-winning director Peter Farrelly and Academy Award-winning actor Mahershala Ali on their critically acclaimed Green Book (Academy Award Winner, ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay,’ 2019). In addition to scoring the film, Bowers served as Ali’s on-screen hand-double, providing the fingering for close up piano shots, as well as spending months working with Ali as his piano instructor—Ali went on to win ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for the role. Bowers’ work on Green Book landed him a nomination for ‘Best Score’ at the 2019 Critic’s Choice Awards, at which he performed a live version of “Dear Dolores” from the Green Book soundtrack. 

Bowers’ scoring work can be heard across a wide range of film and television from Amazon’s TV movie The Snowy Day (for which he won a Daytime Emmy) to Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, Seeds of Time, Play it Forward, I Am Giant: Victor Cruz, and Little Boxes, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix. In early 2018, Bowers scored the critically acclaimed drama, Monsters and Men, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. His work appeared in Ava DuVernay’s miniseries, When They See Us (Netflix) about the Central Park Jogger case, for which he was nominated for an Emmy award. He later composed music for the television miniseries Mrs. America for which he again received an Emmy nomination for Original Dramatic Score, and most recently received two Emmy nominations for his work on the Netflix drama series Bridgerton. Additionally, his original music and lyrics are featured as the main theme and end credits for Madden NFL 19: Longshot, as well as Madden 2020 and Madden 2021. Since 2021, Bowers’ work can be heard on the following feature films Space Jam 2: A New Legacy, Respect, The United States vs. Billie Holiday, and King Richard (for which he was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media Award). 

About Bridgerton 

Bridgerton is a romantic, scandalous, and clever series that celebrates the timelessness of enduring friendships, families finding their way, and the search for a love that conquers all. The series also stars Adjoa Andoh (Lady Danbury), Lorraine Ashbourne (Mrs. Varley), Harriet Cains (Philipa Featherington), Bessie Carter (Prudence Featherington), Nicola Coughlan (Penelope Featherington), Hannah Dodd (Francesca Bridgerton) Ruth Gemmell (Violet Bridgerton), Florence Hunt (Hyacinth Bridgerton), Martins Imhangbe (Will Mondrich), Claudia Jessie (Eloise Bridgerton), Luke Newton (Colin Bridgerton), Golda Rosheuvel (Queen Charlotte), Luke Thompson (Benedict Bridgerton), Will Tilston (Gregory Bridgerton), Polly Walker (Portia Featherington), and Julie Andrews as the voice of Lady Whistledown. The series is inspired by Julia Quinn’s novels. Season 3 is currently in production in London. 

About Spitfire Audio (www.spitfireaudio.com) 

Spitfire Audio is a British music technology company that specializes in sounds — sample libraries, virtual instruments, and other useful software devices. It collaborates with the best composers, artists, and engineers in the world to build musical tools that sound great and are exciting to use.

Spitfire Audio was founded by two award-winning composers: Christian Henson and Paul Thomson. Born out of their shared dissatisfaction with string sample libraries, they pooled their resources and decided to record their own string samples at the legendary Air Studios in London. Initially, they invited a limited number of friends and associates to own copies of their samples, but whispers of this private sample club soon started to echo across the Atlantic Ocean throughout the composer community. Within a year, some of the most renowned composers in film and television signed up, so Paul and Christian decided to take their samples public. 

To date, Spitfire Audio has recorded and released over 100 sample libraries, collaborating with some of the biggest names in media composition, including Hans Zimmer, Eric Whitacre, Ólafur Arnalds & the London Contemporary Orchestra. Spitfire Audio’s sounds are heard in everything, from major Hollywood film scores to recordings by Radiohead and U2. Paul and Christian’s initial side project is now a thriving international music technology enterprise, with a uniquely experienced and diverse workforce, all focused on a shared mission: to inspire a generation of composers. The composer team remains at the center of the business, drawing on their own experience as obsessive music makers to explore the needs and wants of their fellow composers.