John E. Keane

John Elton Keane (born 17 April 1952) is a British BAFTA and BFI Award-winning film and television composer. He has been nominated for two British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards, for A Very British Coup in 1989 and Hornblower: The Even Chance in 1999.

Keane's many credits include the 1993 miniseries Tales of the City, the 1998 film Hideous Kinky, and multiple installments of Hornblower between 1998 and 2003.

Keane studied composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Edmund Rubbra, and piano with Geraldine Peppin. He went on to study sound recording and film music at the National Film and Television School. While there, he scored many graduation films, and his successful career as a composer was launched with his score for Careless Talk, which won the BAFTA Short Film Award in 1986. Keane quickly established himself in the film and television music industry in 1987, when he scored The Kitchen Toto, directed by Harry Hook. The film won the Tokyo Grand Prize, and Keane won a prize for Best Soundtrack at the Festival International du Film et de la Jeunesse. The same year, he won the 1987 British Film Institute prize for Young Composer of the Year.[citation needed ]

Keane's first television commission was for the serial A Very British Coup for director Mick Jackson. The show received many awards, including an International Emmy for Best Drama, five BAFTA Awards, a BAFTA nomination for Best Music, and Best Drama Series from the Broadcasting Press Guild.[citation needed ] Since then, Keane has written music for a host of television dramas, including Selling Hitler, Tales from the City, A Pinch of Snuff, Faith, Hearts and Minds, Kavanagh QC, Plotlands, Far from the Madding Crowd, Wives and Daughters, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, Monsignor Renard, Anna Karenina, The Russian Bride, Gunpowder, Treason & Plot, Mansfield Park, the Emmy Award-winning Hornblower, and Heroes and Villains: "Shogun and Cortes".

Keane has also written music for a number of documentary series, including Molly Dineen's BBC The Ark, winner of a BAFTA Award, and The House, about London's Royal Opera House. He has also written music for a number of feature films, including four directed by Gilles McKinnon: Small Faces, Trojan Eddie, Hideous Kinky, and Tara Road.[citation needed ]

His recent credits include the BBC crime drama series Case Histories and Inspector George Gently.