Mark Warman

Mark Warman (born 5 August 1961) is a British conductor, musical director, composer, orchestrator, and educator.

He has worked in London's West End on musical productions, orchestrated and conducted albums, and TV and film scores.

Warman was born in Kingston upon Thames, and attended the Tiffin School.

He studied Music at King's College, Cambridge, where he sang in its Chapel Choir and eventually became the Musical Director of the Footlights Revue in 1983.

In 1986, he started working on the TV series of Mr Pye, followed shortly by A Penny For Your Dreams in 1987.

Between 1987 and 1989, Warman worked on Foreign Bodies, another TV series on the BBC.

In the 1990s, he worked on Mr. Abbott’s Broadway a BBC Omnibus production and the TV score of The Black And Blue Lamp.

Warman also worked on both the film scores of Vox Lux - a film by Brady Corbet, starring Natalie Portman and The Childhood Of A Leader - a film score with the music originally written by his long-time friend Scott Walker.

Warman has also orchestrated many West End musicals over his career.

Some of these include Nine at the Donmar Warehouse, Into the Woods at the Donmar Warehouse, Moll Flanders at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Hard Times at the Theatre Royal in Haymarket, Metropolis at the Piccadilly Theatre, London and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole at the Wyndham's Theatre in London.

He has also composed and orchestrated many incidental music scores for the theatre, including School For Scandal; Henry VIII and The Rivals for the Chichester Festival Theatre; and Three Hours After Marriage for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Ian Marshall Fisher, Artistic Director of Lost Musicals, invited Warman to be Musical Director for his inaugural 1990 season of three musicals: Fanny, Allegro and Trouble in Tahiti.

Warman went on to musically direct a further 15 shows in this project: Greenwillow (1991), DuBarry Was a Lady (1993), Music in the Air (1993), Red, Hot and Blue (1994), Love Life (1995), Of Thee I Sing (1996), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1997), As Thousands Cheer (1998), I'd Rather Be Right (1999), Evening Primrose (2005), Nymph Errant (2006), Park Avenue (2008), Darling of the Day (2010), Flahooley (2012) and Around The World (2013), which was presented in London and New York.

Together, Warman has orchestrated several TV scores over the years, including the 1995 series of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth, the 1995 documentary film Anne Frank Remembered, starring Glenn Close and Kenneth Branagh, The Queen's Nose from 1995-2000, the 1995 series Oliver's Travels, The Thatcher Years, and A Dance To The Music Of Time.

Warman has worked on many scores over his career.

He has orchestrated and written for both film and television, mostly with the BBC.

In 1998, Warman was the Musical Director for the first UK production of Sondheim's Saturday Night at the Bridewell Theatre in London.

In 2001, a revival of DuBarry Was a Lady, with Warman conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra, was broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

Warman began working with the avant-garde musician Scott Walker on his album, The Drift in 2003.

In 2003, Warman was invited by Mary Hammond, then Head of Musical Theatre at the Royal Academy of Music, to create a one-year postgraduate course in Musical Direction which he continues to lead as its Principal Tutor.

He then worked on Into The Woods at the Donmar Warehouse in London, Sweeney Todd for Holland Park Opera Company in the UK and then Pacific Overtures at the Donmar Warehouse, which went on to win the 2004 Olivier for Outstanding Musical Production.

Sondheim is often a guest at the Royal Academy of Music, where Warman currently continues to lead as its Principal Tutor.

For the last 10 years, Warman has been a judge for the Stephen Sondheim Society Student Prize of the Year competition, where he, Julia McKenzie, and a panel of judges select the best up-and-coming musical theatre graduate of the year.

Warman has also had a long working career with American conductor and musician Carl Davis.

This was followed up in 2005 with Warman being the Musical Director for Evening Primrose as part of the 'Discover the Lost Musicals' series in London.

He was awarded an Hon ARAM in 2012.

Warman lives in London.

He represents himself and still continues to record albums for shows, groups, and solo artists.

At the age of 23, Warman began his West End career as Musical Director of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4, which ran for 16 months at the Wyndham's Theatre.

For EMI, he conducted an orchestral version of the score by Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley at Abbey Road Studios.

Warman served as the Musical Director, Conductor, or Arranger for over 100 shows in the West End and abroad.

Over the course of his career, Warman has worked with Stephen Sondheim multiple times.

Brady Corbet's debut film The Childhood Of A Leader was chosen to close the 2017 International Film Festival Rotterdam with a live performance of Walker's score, performed by a 75-piece orchestra conducted by Warman.

In 2019, he composed the score for Alan Ayckbourn's play The Boy Who Fell Into a Book (Stephen Joseph Theatre).

He remained as Walker's musical director, conductor, keyboardist, and orchestrator of albums, ballets and film scores until Walker's death in 2019.