George Kallis
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George Kallis is a highly regarded new film composer whose recent score Highlander The Source (LionsGate 2008) is now available on iTunes and is receiving much acclaim by various film music critics and fans alike. Late 2008, he will be scoring The Fury, a thriller directed by Ian James Colmer whose award winning work can be seen in Superman Returns, House of Wax and will be distributed by Arclight.
George grew up in a musical environment in Cyprus. His mother was an accomplished pianist and opera singer who introduced him to a variety of recording artists, while his grandfather gave him his first lessons on the violin. At the age of 8 George started studying the piano but by his early teens he rebelled and turned his musical attention to more freestyle music such as playing bass in heavy metal bands and taking up the jazz saxophone.
Soon enough he took his first steps in songwriting and by the age of 16 George set up his first home studio, which although had its limitations enabled him to score the music for his school's play Antigone, which lead to The National Music Award for Drama by the Ministry of Culture. On the following year his songwriting progressed and George won several national songwriting awards; his songs are still popular and sang at national festivals today.
Having grown up watching classic movies such as Ben Hur and Laurence of Arabia, their beautifully thematic soundtracks left a strong musical impression and George's hidden passion soon became scoring music for films. Straight after his two-year army post as a first lieutenant in Greece, he earned a music scholarship of outstanding talent at the well-renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston and in his final year represented the film-scoring department on a special NBC programme on film music. At the same time he represented Cyprus as a songwriter in The Eurovision Song Contest. After relocating to London he followed up his degree with a MMus in Composition degree at The Royal College of Music, one of the top music conservatories in Europe.
With a solid foundation in both classical and contemporary music writing, George began his career as a composer. Having worked his way up from scoring documentaries (such as the acclaimed BBC series Horizon), and multimedia presentations, the distinctive quality of his music was recognized by international music producer Graham Walker (The Talented Mr Ripley, Sleepy Hollow). Graham gave George the opportunity to compose, orchestrate and conducted the music for the WWII feature drama Joy Division with the music being published by EMI.
This collaboration was so successful that the production team introduced George to Hollywood film director Brett Leonard (The Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity) who at the time was finalizing the editing of Highlander The Source (LionsGate 2008). George scored and also conducted the soundtrack music.
As an orchestrator he has worked on the scores for Ultimate Avengers II and Dr Strange. He is also working closely with new singer songwriter Caroline Harrison.
