Simon Turner is an English musician, songwriter, composer, producer and actor. After portraying Ned East in the 1971 BBC TV adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays and roles in films such as The Big Sleep, Dover-born Simon Turner quickly rose to fame as a teenage star in Britain thanks to his mentor Jonathan King who released his first album Simon Turner in 1973 on UK Records. Turner was a member of the Gadget and also joined The The for a period of two years. He has used several names as a recording artist, including Simon Fisher Turner, the King of Luxembourg, Deux Filles and Simon Turner. He continues to record albums for Mute Records as Simon Fisher Turner. He was a member of The Portsmouth Sinfonia Orchestra, and plays clarinet on their only live album, recorded at The Albert Hall, London.
Career
In the 1980s, he released several singles on the él record label as the King of Luxembourg, many of them having been given airplay by BBC Radio DJJohn Peel. In 1990 he released a solo album on Creation Records. Turner also recorded film soundtracks, including for Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, The Last of England, The Garden, and Jarman's final film Blue. He also composed the complete score for William Eggleston in the Real World as well as for the David Lynch-produced film, Nadja. Many of his soundtracks are released on CD, mainly on Mute Records, on which he issued three solo albums. In 2002, Turner was a visiting professor at Braunschweig School of Art in Germany. In 2009, he joined Tilda Swinton on a new film essay shot in Berlin for The Invisible Frame directed by Cynthia Beatt. In the same year he produced Polly Scattergood's self-titled debut album, Polly Scattergood. Turner completed music for sculptor, Alyson Shotz, at the Nasher Sculpture Centre, Dallas. In 2010 he composed the music for The Great White Silence a film by Herbert Ponting. It was restored by the British Film Institute, and released on Blu-ray/DVD. The soundtrack is available from Soleilmoon Recordings. In 2011, Turner released a triple CD, Soundtracks for Derek, on Optical Sound. It is music composed for an exhibition, "Super 8", by Jarman at the Julia Stoschek Foundation. Mute Records released an album made with the sounds supplied by Espen J. Jorgensen. Also in that year, "Music for Films you should have seen" was released by Optical Sound. This includes music for the only film Jean Genet made, Un Chant D'amour. Turner continued to make music for commercials for water, supermarkets and cancer research. In 2012, Turner worked with Shiro Takatani, artistic director of dumb type in Kyoto, the BFI in the UK and prepared new sounds. He played concerts in Europe performing both BLUE and THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE, live with the Elysian Quartet. During 2013, Turner provided the score for The Epic of Everest: a film made in 1924 by Captain John Noel. It was restored by The British Film Institute, and was released on Blu-ray. A soundtrack album was released on Mute Records. This won him an Ivor Novello Award. Simon Turner lives with his wife and two children in London.
