Hear the score behind the next Olympic film

As the London Olympics approach, most of the headlines are, understandably, about the opening of venues such as the velodrome and the likely prospects of British sports stars.

But it’s not all about athletic and architectural achievement. In the lead up to the Olympics, a series of animated films written by the author Michael Morpurgo have been made based around the London 2012 mascots. The second in the series is unveiled next week. Its score has been composed by British composer Thomas Hewitt Jones and performed by the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

“There is a little connection because I am an ex-member of the NYO,” said Hewitt Jones, who once played cello with the ensemble, and who in 2003 was named BBC Young Composer of the Year. “It’s been really fantastic, and a new experience hopefully for them.” The youngest member of the orchestra was only 13. “The ethos behind it was to try and make them have fun – some of them had never been in a studio before, so it was a real challenge for them to work in that pressurised environment.”

The composing process began with storyboard designs for the animation. “You simply get a load of images which in your mind begin to paint a picture. And as more information comes in, as the animators get going, at that point you get to put in the detail,” he said, adding that during the orchestration process, “I try to get all the beautiful colours of every single frame of the animation into the music, somehow.” A significant focus of Hewitt Jones’s work has been music for ballet, most recently Lady of the Lake for Independent Ballet Wales, so this proved a not unnatural starting point. “It was very balletic when it came in. So I treated it like a bit of dance.”

Hewitt Jones says he’s tried to achieve “a very upbeat, very mainstream sound, trying to be very catchy and memorable, but British at the same time. I was looking at the movement of the characters, and also the storyline, which is very optimistic, this kind of Olympic message.”

The film will available to watch on the London 2012 website on Tuesday, but you can hear an excerpt from the score, performed by the National Youth Orchestra and conducted by the composer, below.