Grant McLachlan

Grant McLachlan is a South African composer based in Cape Town. He holds music degrees from Magdalen College, Oxford, King’s College, London, and Bournemouth University. Grant spent nearly 20 years in England during which time composed extensively for chamber ensembles and for choirs. He had several years of composition study with the composer Jeremy Dale Roberts, and piano studies with the Swiss pianist Lise-Martine Jeanneret.

Since retuning to South Africa in 1994, Grant has specialised in composing for natural history films, and has scored music for more than 120 wildlife and feature film productions over the last three decades. He has composed for many broadcasters, including the BBC, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Animal Planet, Discovery, ZDF, NKH, Terra Mater, and many more. He has written music for every imaginable creature, including condors, whales, cheetahs, lions, leopards, tigers, hyaenas, wild dogs, dugongs, penguins, sharks, baboons, elephants, snakes, and proboscis monkeys. In 2007 the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra performed Ocean Voyagers live to picture for Animal Planet’s tenth anniversary. He won a Best Music Award for the Australian film The Jammed. Capetonians may recall a documentary on the penguins at Boulder’s Beach called City Slickers. Other films Grant has composed for include Cosmic Africa (best music, Stone awards); Faith Like Potatoes; Killer Whales; The Megahunt; and 2099: The Soldier Protocol.

Chamber music has included a work a piano quintet, Oesterwal Landscape, performed in the Purcell Room in 1992; Umbhiyoso Wase Afrika for harpsichord and African percussion, commissioned by the Polish harpsichordist, Elisabeth Chojnacka, which has been performed by several harpsichordists around Europe, most recently by Alina Ratkowska of the Chopin University in Poland; from the direction it should depart for violin, clarinet and piano; and in June 2020, The Cape Chamber Music Collective performed Music For The Beginning of Time. He has also written much choral music, and the Christmas anthem Come, Colours Rise has become a classic with choirs around the world.