Patrick Savage
Australian-born and based in London, Patrick has led a multifaceted musical career across genres.
One of Britain’s foremost violinists and a former principal member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, he has performed on the great stages of the world as guest concertmaster, soloist and chamber musician. Beyond the classical world, Patrick has led touring bands for icons Burt Bacharach and Quincy Jones, performed electroacoustic ambient sets on electric violin alongside trail-blazing French composer and DJ, Holeg Spies, led studio orchestras for multiple film and television scores, and led the band for the London production of the global smash-hit musical, Hamilton. He is also a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and has composed a string of feature film scores.
Patrick was a student of Donald Scotts in Melbourne at the Victorian College of the Arts and then Dr Felix Andrievsky at the Royal College of Music in London. As a chamber player he was also a Leverhulme Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music and a Junior Fellow at the Royal College.
In his years as first violinist in the Tippett Quartet, he performed critically acclaimed Wigmore Hall and Purcell Room recitals and championed British contemporary composers.
In Britain, he has featured as soloist with multiple orchestras including the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the Young Musicians’ Symphony Orchestra. In Australia, his live recital recording with Sally Whitwell on piano of Whitwell’s ‘Suite From An Imaginary Film’ was released on CD by the ABC and receives frequent radio play.
As guest concertmaster, he has toured and recorded with major orchestras including Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Liverpool Philharmonic, Australian World Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Opera Australia Orchestra.
As a studio musician, Patrick has recorded for film scores with combined box office takings of over thirteen billion US dollars, for many of the biggest blockbusters of recent decades, including The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the live- action remake of Disney’s, The Little Mermaid, Godzilla Vs Kong and Wonder Woman 1984 as well as television series such as Call The Midwife and Downton Abbey. He has also contributed as a musician to albums by legendary recording artists including Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Frank Ocean and Sting.
Composing in partnership with Holeg Spies, Patrick has scored multiple film, television and video game titles and incidental music for the theatre. Their joint feature film composer credits include the 2009 cult horror film, The Human Centipede, the multi-award-winning puppet-horror, Abruptio, starring James Marsters, Jordan Peele and Robert Englund, Sophia Banks’ thriller, Black Site, and The Outsider, starring James Caan. Their production music has appeared in television shows around the world, such as Burn Notice, Ancient Aliens, Stacey Dooley Investigates and many others. Patrick also scored the Sony PlayStation game, Invizimals: The Lost Kingdom.
Patrick Savage and Holeg Spies’ music for the 2021 Sydney Christmas Lights, Max Pugh’s spectacular animated film projected onto the giant façade of St Mary’s Cathedral, featured Patrick on violin and was experienced by tens of thousands of Sydney-siders throughout the month of December that year as the city emerged from its final COVID lockdown. Their suite for strings and organ, drawn from their score for Daniel Bhattacharya’s powerful Holocaust documentary, Le Chemin des Juifs, has seen concert performances on both sides of the Atlantic.
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