Search results
John Charles (4 November 1940 - 7 May 2024) is a New Zealand film composer, conductor, and orchestrator. He created a number of musical works for the New Zealand cinema of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, including compositions for films such as Goodbye Pork Pie , Utu , The Quiet Earth , A Soldier's Tale or Spooked .
John Charles is best-known in New Zealand as one of the country’s first composers to make his mark on film, thanks to his varied and distinctive scores for classics Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu and The Quiet Earth. He also spent time working in television as a producer and executive. John Joseph Charles began playing piano while growing up in Wellington.
Aug 17, 2024 · Obituary: The country in which a young John Charles (1940 - 2024) first sought his future was occasionally accused of being the Albania of the Pacific – with inferior wine. Equally exaggerated...
Feb 10, 2023 · John Charles has composed distinctive scores for some major New Zealand movies, including Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu, and The Quiet Earth. He’s an arranger, pianist, freelance composer – and was the pianist with BLERTA for a time.
John Charles was best-known in New Zealand as one of the country’s first composers to make his mark on film, thanks to his varied and distinctive scores for classics Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu and The Quiet Earth. He also spent time working in television as a producer and executive.
New Zealand composers have been creating music for locally-made movies since the 1930s, and one of the first composers to really put their mark on a string of hit films with his original music was John Charles.
John Charles worked for New Zealand television before moving to the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney. He wrote the film music for The God Boy, Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu, The Quiet Earth and many others.
