A symphonist and melodist enamoured of French music, jazz and world music, his passion for cinema placed him very early on the path to film music.
Sur mes lèvres, Un Prophète, The Ghost writer, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Ides of March, Twilight New Moon, The Queen, The King’s Speech, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game, The Shape of Water are but a few of his remarkable scores.
His encounter with Dominique Lemonnier, known as Solrey, his solo violin with a modern and sensitive voice and style of interpretation, changed his approach to writing for strings towards a more powerful but contained lyricism.
A composer and conductor, Alexandre Desplat began his career in France and in Europe by composing scores for Jacques Audiard, Philippe de Broca, Alain Berberian, Jérôme Salle, Gilles Bourdos, Francis Girod, Xavier Giannoli, Anne Fontaine, Florent Siri, Robert Guediguian, Daniel Auteuil…
He began his career in Hollywood with Peter Webber’s The Girl with a Pearl Earring in 2007, before going on to collaborate with Stephen Frears, Lasse Hallstrom, Terrence Malick, David Fincher, Kathryn Bigelow, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, Chris Weitz, Raymond Depardon, George Clooney, Wim Wenders, Francis Veber, Angelina Jolie, Matteo Garrone, Thomas Vinterberg, Ang Lee, Luc Besson, Tom Hooper, Jonathan Glazer, Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Costa-Gavras…
After more than 130 scores, he always tries to reveal the soul of a film, in order to show the invisible.
Alexandre Desplat has won numerous awards including 2 Oscars, 2 Golden Globes, 3 Cesars, 3 Baftas, 2 Grammys, 2 European film awards, the Berlinale Silver Bear, and was named president of the 2012 Venice Film Festival.
In 2013, he composed the concert piece “Pelléas et Mélisande”, Symphonie concertante for flute and orchestra, and in 2020 staged his first opera “En silence” by Yasunari Kawabata, with a libretto and staging by Solrey.
In 2020, it was Solrey again who initiated and ensured the artistic direction of the album "Airlines", bringing together the flautist Emmanuel Pahud and the Orchestre National de France conducted by Alexandre Desplat.
Photo : © Edouard Brane