Jeremy Holland-Smith is a composer, orchestral arranger and conductor who has amassed an extensive range of work in film, television, ballet, concert hall and theatre.
Most recently, Jeremy worked as arranger, orchestrator and conductor on Warner Bros' Wonka, continuing his long running collaboration with composer Joby Talbot. The film was released in December 2023 to critical acclaim. As of January 2024, Wonka had grossed a worldwide total of $530 million.
Another recent project of note is the Netflix movie Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, an animated musical adaptation of the Leslie Bricusse musical Scrooge starring Jessie Buckley, Luke Evans, Olivia Coleman and Jonathan Pryce. Jeremy composed the original score, arranged and produced the original Bricusse songs, and wrote two new songs, including the featured duet Later Never Comes.
Jeremy’s musical training started from a young age; he was Head Chorister at St. Paul's Cathedral before he went on to study at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and then the Royal Northern College of Music, winning numerous prizes at both. This equipped Jeremy with a depth of musical knowledge and understanding that has enabled him to undertake a vast array of projects in his working life.
Examples of this include his orchestrations and arrangements for the hit animated films, Sing and Sing 2 for Universal Pictures and the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables, and his composition of the original score for the feature The Passing, which won three BAFTA Cymru awards, and for which Jeremy won the Music and Sound Award for Original Feature Film score in 2015.
Jeremy has repeatedly collaborated with choreographer Will Tuckett, scoring ballets The Secret Garden and Changing Light for the Sarasota Ballet. Other concert work includes, ‘The Caretaker’s Guide to The Orchestra’ with the Dockland’s Sinfonia, for which Jeremy was nominated for a British Composer Award in 2018.
Other TV and film score credits include the highly acclaimed BBC documentaries I Shot my Parents and North Korea: Murder in the Family and the score for the return of the BBC series, The League of Gentlemen. Jeremy has won awards for his advertising campaigns including Phones 4U (winner of the 2012 Music and Sound award for Sound Design in Cinema Advertising) and scored the US campaign for Hertz.
As an orchestrator and conductor, Jeremy regularly collaborates with composer Paul Englishby, with credits including Queens of Mystery (Acorn), The Musketeers (BBC), Witness for the Prosecution (BBC), Decline and Fall (BBC), A Royal Night Out (Ecosse Films). He also works with composer Murray Gold, with credits including Doctor Who (BBC), and Life Story (BBC).
He has conducted orchestras in Prague, Vienna, LA, Brussels, Australia and London and made his debut at the BBC Proms in 2015.
Historically, he has also been Musical Director and Composer on numerous productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company and for several West End productions, including The Lord of the Rings, Billy Elliot and The Thief of Bagdad.
