Ben Castle

Ben Castle is an award-winning composer, songwriter, arranger, producer, and saxophone/clarinet/flute player. He has worked with a vast array of artists across many genres, including Gregory Porter, Paul McCartney, Gorrilaz, Radiohead, Diana Ross, Blur, Amy Winehouse, Quincy Jones, Matthew Herbert, Little Simz, Harry Connick Jr, Stan Tracey, Elton John, Paloma Faith, George Michael, Grace Jones, Lianne La Havas, Sting, Marlena Shaw and Jools Holland, and has featured on countless film and TV scores for top composers, including John Williams, Hans Zimmer, David Arnold, James Newton Howard, Stephen Sondheim, Gabriel Yared, and David Brent among many others. He currently features heavily on the soundtracks for the Netflix series ‘Sex Education’, BBC’s ‘Staged’ and ‘Amandaland’, and Channel 4’s ‘Toast of London’ and you can hear him play a multitude of woodwinds in the new Netflix adaptation of ‘The Twits’

With Ben’s love and grasp of so many styles of music and his ability to blur the genre lines, he has become a sought-after composer. He has written music for film, TV, theatre, and adverts, as well as music and songs for his own projects, and for other artists. He recently scored the Grammy award film ‘Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story’ with Paul Pilot for Sony Pictures. He contributed some additional music to the BBC’s adaptation of ‘Everything I Know About Love’ and Aoife Crehan’s 2019 film ‘The Last Right’ and was the composer and musical director for ‘Double Feature’ at The National Theatre in London. The song ‘Wrapped Around Your Little Finger’, written with Beth Rowley for Lone Scherfig’s 2009 film ‘An Education’, made it onto the Oscar nomination shortlist and the music he composed for the Lurpak Freestyle advert with Soundtree Music won BTAA Craft, Shots, Clio, and Music + Sound awards.

His own albums are an eclectic mixture of all the things he doesn’t get to play elsewhere, and the influences he’s picked up along the way. ‘The Heckler’ from his 2004 record ‘Blah Street’ won first prize in the International Songwriting Competition jazz category, judged by Pat Metheny. His band ‘The Tombola Theory’ was described by Jamie Cullum on his BBC Radio 2 show as Punk Trad when they did a live session for the show. ‘An EP’ by the preposterous jazz collective ‘Ben Castle and the Blah Street Band’ features guest appearances from Matt Berry, Beth Rowley and Ben’s dad, the UK entertainer Roy Castle. It was featured regularly on BBC 6 Music and Jazz FM.