Benson Taylor (born Mark Davison 10 September 1983) is an English composer, songwriter, record producer, and humanitarian.
In November 2016, Taylor was awarded an honorary doctorate for services to humanitarian causes & music.
He founded A Remarkable Idea in 2017, a sub label of Universal Music, located in London & Santa Monica, California. Taylor has collaborated and produced artists for the label, including MOBO-winning jazz quartet Kairos 4Tet, The Halle Orchestra, Mercury Prize-nominated Maxïmo Park and Kele Okereke, Bloc Party, Good Charlotte’s Billy Martin, Pulled Apart by Horses, Robot Koch, Lack of Afro, Benoît Pioulard, Bo Ningen, James Brown, and Menace Beach.
Taylor won the "Best Original Music" award at the 2014 Monaco International Film Festival. In 2018, he scored and produced the music to Mathew Cullen's thriller adaptation of the Martin Amis novel, London Fields, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Amber Heard, Lily Cole, Cara Delevingne, Theo James and Johnny Depp. In 2020, he scored the music for the film, Chick Fight, starring Bella Thorne, Alec Baldwin & Malin Akerman, for which he also served as executive producer.
Taylor is an goodwill ambassador for the UK aid agency CAFOD, part of Caritas Internationalis, and a goodwill ambassador for the Cambodian Children's Trust. He is patron of the British charity, Music and the Deaf. Taylor was appointed the first ambassador of the Leeds Conservatoire, and in November 2021, he was installed as the first honorary Composer in Residence at the University of Huddersfield, both in the United Kingdom.
Life and career
Born in Brontë Country, Bradford, Taylor later studied composition at the University of California, Los Angeles. After UCLA in 2009, he mentored with American composer, Mark Mancina, and studied privately with orchestrator, Hummie Mann. His style of music has a British influence, often working a classic film score sound amongst electronics, and other musical settings.
He began writing music at a young age, whilst working as a radio producer. He later opened a studio in England, writing scores for American television, including Two and a Half Men, 30 Rock, 90210, and The Big Bang Theory, as well as producing music for the Super Bowl between 2010 and 2014. Taylor's music has been widely used across international advertising campaigns, including Nissan in 2017, McDonald's in 2018, Jose Cuervo's 2015 campaign and a collaboration in 2011 with CeeLo Green for the Las Vegas Tourist Board.
In 2011, Taylor made his London West End theatre debut co-composing the electronic music for Derek Bond's production of the play Many Moons.
In June 2013, music publishers Fairwood Music announced that they had added Taylor to their roster of artists which includes David Bowie, U2, Cat Stevens, The Average White Band, Bob Marley, and J.J. Cale. Taylor told British magazine Music Week, "I'm extremely humbled to join their roster, amongst some of the most recognised talents in the world. Here's hoping some of it will rub off on me!"
In November 2014, Taylor was a Grand Juror at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival alongside director Tomasz Wasilewski.
In 2016, Taylor produced soundtracks for US talk shows, including, Late Night With Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel Live. He has twice contributed music to the Netflix produced series, Orange Is the New Black. Taylor's music has also appeared in the sixth series of Justified, the first series of How to Get Away with Murder, the second series of Ray Donovan, and in the 2015 Kroll Show.
Taylor scored and produced the music to Mathew Cullen's thriller, London Fields in 2015, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Theo James, Cara Delevingne, Amber Heard and Johnny Depp. Due to legal problems between the director and producers, the film was not released until September 2018, three years after Taylor had finished the musical score. As well as writing the musical score, Taylor collaborated with Toydrum and Bat for Lashes to cover Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight", and also with James Bagshaw from the British band Temples, covering "How Do You Sleep" from John Lennon's Imagine album, both tracks were recorded specifically for the film.
In December 2021, Taylor's music was performed by an orchestra and the Italian Mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, in a returning Christmas tradition celebrating the city and its residents. The concert took place in the Salone Dei Cinquecento in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio.
Taylor is a professional member of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. He was styled as the "New Sound of Hollywood" by MovieScope magazine in its 24th issue in 2011.