François Evans conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London

François Evans is a classically-trained French-English film composer, conductor and music producer. His most recent feature soundtrack is the score for Paul Fradkin’s romantic parisian drama: Tornike which recently won three laurels at the Monpellier Independent Film Festival (2026) including ‘Best Film’. He is currently scoring the soundtrack for the US action feature Cuervo: Blending In directed by Brandon Grimes.

He is the composer of the soundtracks to Edgar Wright’s first feature A Fistful of Fingers, the disturbing score to North American director Cradeaux Alexander’s horror-thriller: Inherit the Witch, Shaun Mosley’s biblical epic The 3 Kings (featuring Ron Moody & Vanessa Redgrave) and the ferocious score to Darren Ward’s action film: Sudden Fury.

He wrote the emotive music for Stefan Archetti’s critically acclaimed Italian children’s feature Il fungo sirena (The Mermaid Mushroom) which won the Special Mention Award at the Granada Film Festival, 2011.

He runs the unusual La.M.P. Film Music Recording Studio in West France, designing surreal combinations for live instruments and rare vintage synthesizers.

Reel Life

François Evans cut his teeth on short films for the London International Film School, the National Film & Television School and the Fondation Européenne pour la maîtrise de l’image et du son (FÉMIS) in Paris. These scores include 29 Days in February starring Jim Broadbent and Lysette Anthony, Simon Hunter’s Click and John Dower’s The Secret Songs of Butterfish, which won the Gold Plaque Award at the Chicago Film Festival and was nominated for Best Soundtrack at the San Francisco ‘Golden Reels’ Film Soundtrack Awards.

In 2023 he took the London Raindance Festival Film Producer’s Foundation course, better to understand challenges faced by film producers.

Referred to as ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream for synthesizers?’ (Mastodon), his first concept album of pop ballads: The Lunatic, the Lover & the Poet with lyrics by John Porter under the duo name After Magritte, was released in 2022.

In 2014 François performed on ondes Martenot at the Glastonbury Festival in a concert of film music by 1960s’ Thunderbirds composer Barry Gray, conducted by Charles Hazlewood and members of the bands Portishead and Goldfrapp. He had already multi-tracked all three ondes Martenot parts for the first, complete stereo re-recording of Maurice Jarre’s score for David Lean’s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia for James Fitzpatrick of Tadlow Music, with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, described as “THE definitive recording of this legendary film score” …”in its full and uncut glory” (Amazon reviews).

François Evans at the ondes Martenot, Colston Hall, Bristol, 2015

In 2008 he co-produced and conducted the 81-piece Philharmonia Orchestra with live electronics for the Barry Gray Centenary Concert of science fiction film music, at London’s Royal Festival Hall; a charity gala in aid of the Cinema & Television Benevolent Fund.

In 1999, François arranged music for the wedding of David & Victoria Beckham.

In 1992 he assisted British composer Jonathan Harvey in the studio realization of the electronic part for Harvey’s opera Inquest of Love, commissioned by English National Opera.

During the 1990s he was Associate Conductor of the London Gay Symphony Orchestra, conducting charity concerts including the world première of Wilfred Josephs‘s Violin Concerto (soloist Michael Davis from Ohio, US) and the European public première of Josephs’s poignant Mortales, for 216 live musicians.

François Evans is a former voting member of BAFTA, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the UK Music Producers’ Guild and the Royal Society of Musicians.

François Evans studied ondes Martenot playing under Pascale Rousse-Lacordaire (pupil of Maurice Martenot) at the Conservatoire de musique, Boulogne Billancourt in Paris. He was bequeathed an early modèle 6 (valve) instrument from the family of the late British film & television composer Barry Gray, and occasionally uses this unique instrument in his scores.

Winning a scholarship from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust in 1991-2, Evans researched in spectral composition techniques for a year at the prestigious IRCAM research centre in Paris, tutored under Tristan Murail (pupil of Olivier Messiaen) and other notable contemporary composers including Brian Ferneyhough and the spectralist composers Gérard Grisey, Kaija Saariaho and Marc-André Dalbavie. Spectral composition techniques bring an otherworldly dimension to music, unifying timbre, sound identity and music harmony.

Evans sang with the chorus on the soundtracks to Barbra Streisand and Michel Legrand’s Yentl (1983) and Vangelis Papathanassiou’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) directed by Ridley Scott, giving him valuable film music recording experience.

During childhood experience singing with the chorus at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Evans studied classical piano from age six with David Oliver and Lylvia Lawman. He trained in harmony and counterpoint at the Watford School of Music under Patricia Cartwright. He graduated in Music from the University of Ulster (‘first’ in composition under Dr David Morris), was tutored in piano under Dr Donald Cullington, orchestral percussion with David Openshaw (principal timpanist of the Ulster Orchestra) and music analysis from Prof. Michael Russ.

Evans attended music composition summer schools in Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland under John Buckley; Dartington in Devon as apprentice to British film composer Wilfred Josephs and at Goldsmiths’ College, London in film music under Los Angeles composer Don Ray – former Chief Music Supervisor, CBS/MTM Studios, Hollywood.

Evans gained a PhD in electroacoustic composition at City University of London under Prof. Simon Emmerson, tutored by British composers Simon Holt, and Prof. Robert Saxton at the Guildhall School of Music, London.

In the 1970s he was a child actor at ATV Studios, Elstree, England, appearing in The Ballad of Salomon Pavey, and Come Back Lucy which was re-released in 2022.

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