Debbie Wiseman guest of honour at 25th World Soundtrack Awards

The festival is delighted to announce Debbie Wiseman as guest of honour at the World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony & Concert on Wednesday 15 October 2025, in Muziekcentrum de Bijloke. The Brussels Philharmonic, conducted by maestro Dirk Brossé, will play a selection of works by Debbie Wiseman during the presentation of the film music awards. Film Fest Gent will also proudly present Debbie Wiseman: Music for Film and Television, the film festival’s 2025 album with all-new studio recordings of selected scores by Debbie Wiseman.

On her invitation to be guest of honour, Debbie Wiseman says: “I am thrilled to have been invited to the 25th World Soundtrack Awards as guest of honour, following in the footsteps of a long list of illustrious and celebrated names. It’s a true privilege to be sharing music with fellow composers, songwriters, industry professionals and film music fans. I'm excited to have concert suites of my scores performed - some for the very first time - by the esteemed Brussels Philharmonic under the expert guidance of Maestro Dirk Brossé in this beautiful setting.”

A composition: more than a series of notes

Debbie Wiseman grew up in a vibrant cultural environment in north west London, where she discovered an early passion for music and started composing at only eight years old. Her passion was fully supported by her family, which would then motivate her to study at the Trinity College of Music junior department. She eventually followed a full-time programme for piano and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she worked with James Gibb and Buxton Orr. Early in, she realised that she wanted to compose her own pieces instead of playing the work of others, a skill that Wiseman developed with the guidance of Orr. He taught her that composing isn’t just about writing a series of notes and then letting them be played by others, but that you have to infuse these notes with dynamics, phrasing and accents to fully shape a composition, so that the musician can respond to the piece on paper. Advice that she definitely took note of.

Starting out and building a reputation

Wiseman started in the music industry by composing for a Channel 4 drama-documentary and followed it by writing the music for the channel’s hard-hitting current affairs show A Week In Politics and the theme for the popular ITV sitcom The Upper Hand which ran for seven years. She later gained recognition in the film industry for her score for the Brian Gilbert-directed Tom & Viv in 1994. A collaboration that was deemed to be fruitful, as the two worked together again for Wilde in 1997, which would earn her a nomination for Best Original Film Score at the Ivor Novello Awards.

Another regular collaborator of Wiseman is none other than Sir Stephen Fry. Their television projects include Fry’s Planet Word and Stephen Fry in America, and more recently they recorded The Mythos Suite, an album that serves as an expansive piece to Fry’s bestselling book Mythos. About his collaboration with Wiseman on this hybrid work, both an audiobook and film-soundtrack, Fry only had positive things to say in an interview with Abbey Road: “I have known and loved Debbie Wiseman’s music for most of my life – to collaborate with her again has been nothing short of rapture. Her music perfectly captures Greek mythology’s juicy and joyous mixture of the elemental and the specific, the noble and the wicked, the ethereal and the earthy.”

Wiseman has received numerous award nominations and wins from prestigious institutes. Her wins include a TRIC Award for The Good Guys and an RTS Award for Warriors, and she was awarded the Gold Badge of Merit by the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters in 2007. In addition, she has been nominated for two Ivor Novello Awards for Wilde and Death of Yugoslavia and was a nominee at the 44th annual Grammy Awards for her album Wilde Stories. In March 2016, she was presented with the Best Composer, Drama Award at the RTS West Awards and Best Original Composition for a TV Programme at the Music and Sound Awards, both for Wolf Hall.

Scoring the royals

Wiseman doesn’t just operate in the constraints of film and television, as she is frequently asked to compose albums for special occasions. She composed The Music of Kings and Queens, an album honouring the 95th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II, and was the official composer and musical director of the Platinum Jubilee Celebration at Windsor in May 2022. It was in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2018 that Wiseman was awarded the OBE for her services to music. Wiseman was commissioned by His Majesty the King to compose the two Gospel Alleluias which were performed in Westminster Abbey at the Coronation of King Charles and Queen Camilla.

As of now, Wiseman has over 200 credits to her name, for both the big and small screen. In an interview with Colonne Sonore, Wiseman shared how she stays inspired to keep writing scores: “I think one of the great gifts of being a film composer is you always have an inspiration from the film, the television program or a character. And that keeps you fresh and gives you inspiration. I generally like to start with creating a theme for the character or a strong melodic line that would help me write the score. When I get that, usually the rest of the score flows naturally, but for me it all starts from that one little hook, that little phrase of three or four notes.”

Practical

This year’s WSA Film Music Days will be held from 14-16 October 2025. The World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony & Concert will be held at Muziekcentrum de Bijloke in Ghent on 15 October 2025. Tickets are now available at the link above.