Richard Jacques

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Richard Jacques

Richard Jacques at October 2007 Video Games Live's meet and greet event
Background information
Birth name Richard Adrian Jacques
Born (1973-04-02) 2 April 1973[1]
Origin Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
Genres Orchestral, jazz, hip hop, pop
Occupations Composer, musician
Instruments Various
Years active 1995–present
Labels La-La Land Records
Sumthing Else Music Works

Richard Jacques (born 2 April 1973 in Leamington Spa, England) is a British music composer. He is best known for his video game music, most notably in numerous video games created by Sega, including entries in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.

Early life

Born a member of a musical family, Jacques was interested in composing from an early age. He wrote his first music achievement, a piano duet, at the age of nine.[2] Richard began studying music at Colchester Institute School of Music and Wells Cathedral School, but he got his primary music education at Royal Academy of Music, where was exposed to a number of instruments and was taught to play in various genres, from jazz to rock.[2] Jacques finished the academy with Bachelor's Degree "In Music Composition" in 1995 and two days after his graduation set as in-house composer at Sega Europe.[2]

Career

At Sega Europe, Jacques began by doing soundtracks for a number of Sega Saturn games, most notably jazz, eurodance and powerpop-influenced scores for Sonic R (with vocals by TJ Davis) and Sonic 3D (the Sega Saturn and PC versions). In 2000, he also created the interactive radio system and some tracks for Metropolis Street Racer (again with vocals by TJ Davis) and composed additional hip-hop tunes for Jet Set Radio, but Jacques's most known and acclaimed work at Sega came with his soundtrack for 2001's Headhunter.[3] Jacques composed it with London Session Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, scoring dramatic orchestral pieces. The soundtrack was well received,[4] won awards, was historically performed at first Symphonic Game Music Concert at Leipzig and became popular entry at Video Games Live event.[3] Jacques left Sega Europe shortly after Headhunter's release and became freelancer, but contributed to soundtracks of sequels of Headhunter and Jet Set Radio Future, and still composes for titles in Sonic the Hedgehog series. Perhaps his most known work from recent time is the additional score for critically acclaimed science fiction RPG Mass Effect. Aside from composing video game music, Richard also writes pieces for commercials and Video Games Live. He also composed some of the music in the BBC TV gameshow series, Don't Scare The Hare.

Selected works

References

  1. ↑ Genes Reunited information.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Richard Jacques's MobyGames profile.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jacques's VGM Rush profile.
  4. ↑ "Headhunter (PAL Import) - Dreamcast Review at IGN". Dreamcast.ign.com. 2002-01-07. Retrieved 2011-04-04. 
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