Laurence Aston

BA

Laurence Aston is manager and business affairs adviser to the Grammy and Academy Award-winning singer Jennifer Warnes. He also manages Adrian Sutton, creator of the music for the National Theatre productions of ‘War Horse’ and ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’, and composers Anna Rice and Rebecca Dale. From 1997 to 2017 he was manager and business affairs adviser to the distinguished Polish film composer Zbigniew Preisner, best known for his scores for the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Alongside his composer management business, Aston is the owner and director of First Name Music (in international collaboration with Wise Music) a music publishing company for composers and songwriters, including the celebrated Japanese screen composer Shigeru Umebayashi, and Michael Eimann, the principal songwriter and leader of German a cappella group SLIXS. Aston is a Director of Asian Music Publishing, a music publishing and copyright administration company specialising in the work of British Asian and Indian sub-continent composers and producers. He also acts as copyright administrator for composers Astrid Williamson and Stevie Wishart.

Since 1990 Aston has been active as a film and TV music consultant. Under a four-year contract with BBC TV documentaries department (1993 – 1997) Aston was Series Music Adviser to the major 26-part BBC TV history of the twentieth century, ‘People's Century', transmitted on BBC1 and BBC2. He commissioned and supervised all the theme and incidental music and researched the archive music in each episode. Other TV music work includes the 24-part documentary series ‘Cold War’ produced by Jeremy Isaacs Productions for Turner/BBC2; and the ground-breaking four-part 2007 series ‘China Inside’ made by ITV for BBC2.
 
Aston has considerable professional experience in contract negotiation and intellectual property issues. He has an extensive knowledge of a wide range of contemporary, classical, screen, folk, ethnic, jazz and popular music and of record marketing and distribution.

Aston is currently an Academic Programmes professor at the Royal College of Music, where he teaches an annual series of music business seminars to post-graduates in screen composition.

Faculties / departments: Composition, Academic staff

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