Stephen Gallagher
Stephen Gallagher is an award-winning composer and Emmy-winning music editor. He has recently completed scoring the New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. animated adventure film ‘The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim’, directed by Kenji Kamiyama.
Selected Credits
During his more than two decades in the business, Stephen has worked on projects ranging from global blockbusters alongside industry legends such as Peter Jackson, Brian Eno, Ed Sheeran, Nick Cave and Junkie XL to Emmy-winning television productions, independent documentaries, and contemporary theatre and dance. In his own words, he is excited by “making sounds and worlds out of sound”.
Stephen’s music editorial is known for being highly sensitive to storytelling. He has been nominated three times for an MPSE Golden Reel Award. In 2022 he won both a Golden Reel and an Emmy Award for his work on Peter Jackson’s critically-acclaimed documentary series ‘The Beatles: Get Back’.
His credits as Music Editor include the box-office successes ‘The Hobbit trilogy’: ‘The Battle Of The Five Armies’, ‘The Desolation Of Smaug’, ‘An Unexpected Journey’, and the sci-fi smash hit ‘District 9’. He was Supervising Music Editor for ‘The Lovely Bones’ and the documentary ‘West Of Memphis’.
Stephen is known for his innate understanding of scoring for film, which goes straight to the heart of the story, and his ability to blend sound and emotion into the perfect soundtrack.
He composed and worked with actors directly on the iconic songs ‘Blunt The Knives’ and ‘The Torture Song’ for ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’.
In 2021 he was nominated for Best Original Score at the International Sound And Film Music Festival for the documentary short ‘Kimana Tuskers’. In 2018 he was nominated for an APRA Silver Scroll Award for his original score to the feature film ‘Human Traces’.
He composed additional music to accompany Brian Eno’s original score for ‘The Lovely Bones’. Stephen’s original scores for feature film include the multi-award-winning Canadian horror/comedy ‘Puppet Killer’ and documentary ‘Conquering Cancer’. Alongside David Long, he co-composed the score for the Emmy Award-winning show ‘INSiDE’ and three seasons of the BBC children’s series ‘Mystic’.
Stephen is highly adaptable, collaborative, and detail-oriented, focused on producing music that best supports the larger narrative. Equally at home arranging for electronic or orchestral instruments or cutting a temp score, he has a reputation for delivering to directors exactly what they’re after.
Stephen lives in Poneke Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.