Ruth Barrett

Film and television composer Ruth Barrett frequently infuses her energetic folk and orchestral scores with an outsized sense of playfulness. She began in British television before making her feature debut alongside longtime collaborator Martin Phipps on the 2009 Michael Caine vehicle Harry Brown. Their work together earned an Emmy nomination in 2017 for the period drama Victoria. During the intervening years Barrett contributed music to Wallander for the BBC, Whitechapel for ITV, and Collateral for the BBC, along with the occasional film project such as City of Tiny Lights in 2016. Entering the 2020s she scored the NBC series Law & Order: Organized Crime and the sweeping ITV nature program Big Beasts, both of which highlighted her colorful orchestral approach.

Born in Roehampton in southwest London, Barrett absorbed repeated airings of the American series The Incredible Hulk (1977-1982) during childhood and has named it, together with Queen’s soundtrack for Flash Gordon (1980), among her earliest musical influences. Piano lessons led to original improvisations by her early teens. She later pursued music studies at Cambridge University and composition at the Royal Academy of Music. A full-time post-production role at ITV followed, after which she joined Strongroom Music Studios and there met Martin Phipps, who became both mentor and enduring co-composer.

Her first television composing assignments included What We Did on Holiday (2006), A Very British Sex Scandal (2007), and the 2007 telefilm Clapham Junction, the last of which marked her initial principal collaboration with Phipps. She handled the score alone for ITV’s 2009 adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring Tom Hardy, introducing electric guitar and stark dissonance within its historical, folk-orchestral framework. Joint work with Phipps on Harry Brown in 2009 preceded solo features such as Twenty8k (2012) and City of Tiny Lights (2016). Television assignments during this period encompassed Wallander and Whitechapel. The historical drama Victoria, broadcast on ITV from 2016 to 2019, brought Barrett, Phipps, and Natalie Holt a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score). She closed the decade with music for Fearless, Bodyguard, the comedy The Durrells, and the period drama Sanditon.

Sanditon continued into the new decade alongside the 2020 mystery miniseries The Sister, the police procedural Bloodlands, and American projects Law & Order: Organized Crime and The Terminal List that reflected growing demand for her subtly unconventional style. In early 2023 she joined the Apple TV+ documentary series Big Beasts, whose soundtrack appeared on Lakeshore Records.