Steve Burke (composer)
| Steven Burke | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Steven Burke |
| Born |
1974 (age 39–40) Isle of Man, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Orchestral music |
| Occupations | Musician, Composer, Sound Designer |
| Years active | 1995–present |
| Labels | Sumthing Else Works |
| Associated acts |
Grant Kirkhope David Wise |
| Website | SteveBurkeMusic.com |
Steven Burke (born 1974) is a British video game composer, sound designer and voice actor. He is mostly known for his work at the British video game developer Rare Ltd. at 2001–2009 period.
Background and career
Burke was involved with music from early age. At home his family had a piano, which Burke played nearly every day. He also was playing the clarinet at Manx Youth Orchestra. At age of 20, Burke moved to London and studied at music branch of King's College London. Then, he graduated from Royal College of Music with Master Degree. At college Burke often went to film recording sessions where he met such the masters of orchestra such as John Williams and Michael Kamen.
After college he was composing for films about a year before he was recruited by video game giant Rare in early 2001. He firstly provided additional music for Star Fox Adventures, but his first major and most successful work at the studio was the soundtrack for 2005 game Kameo: Elements of Power. The soundtrack was scored with Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.[1] Burke scored the epic, movie-like soundtrack, consisting of enchanted melodies and battle marches. Music was well received and was nominated for several awards, so that was a good result for beginning VG composer. Then, he also scored Viva Piñata (with Grant Kirkhope), Jetpac Refuelled, Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise (with David Wise) and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise (again with Kirkhope). Aside of this, Burke made sound effects for games Perfect Dark Zero, Conker: Live and Reloaded and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. He also had done additional voice acting for all games above.
In August 2009 Steve left Rare[2] to work as freelance music composer, recently scoring the iPhone game SkySmash 1918.
In November 2010 Steve made all sounds and music for Xbox Live Avatars, heard by forty million users. The work was done as a part of his former relationship with Rare/Microsoft.[3][4]
Burke lives in Twycross, Leicestershire, where the HQ of Rare is also positioned.
This is as Burke comments about a work of video game composer:
"It's a great career to get in to. My advice is to be as versatile as possible in the styles of music you can write. Get a showreel CD together and make it sound unique, don't just stick a bunch of drum and bass tracks on it, really go out of your way to stand out from the crowd."
References
- ↑ Kameo: Elements of Power: full credits.
- ↑ Rare's Tweet on Aug 14th, 2009.
- ↑ Squareenixmusic.com's interview with Steve Burke.
- ↑ Burke's blog at MySpace