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About Stewart Copeland

After rising to international stardom as the drummer for the Police, Stewart Copeland parlayed his success into a career as a composer, authoring a prolific series of film and television scores, video game soundtracks, and even delving into opera and ballet. Despite his origins in rock and pop, Copeland's solo career has been reliably eclectic. After his acclaimed soundtrack to Francis FordCoppola's Rumble Fish and an African-inspired solo album, The Rhythmatist, he continued to branch out both as a composer and collaborator, playing in projects like the jazzy Animal Logic and the funk-fusion supergroup Oysterhead. A high-profile reunion tour with the Police in 2007 returned him more firmly into the rock world, as did the 2017 project Gizmodrome. In 2022, Copeland earned a Grammy Award for Divine Tides, a collaboration with new age composer Ricky Kej, then returned to his earlier work with the 2023 album PoliceDeranged for Orchestra.

Born July 16, 1952, in Alexandria, Virginia, Copeland -- the son of a CIA agent --spent his formative years in the Middle East but attended college in California before settling in England in 1975. He joined the progressive rock outfit Curved Air, working first as their road manager then as their drummer. In early 1977, following Curved Air's dissolution, he founded the Police with singer/bassist Sting and guitarist Henri Padovani (the latter was soon replaced by Andy Summers). Beginning with their first hit, 1979's "Roxanne," the trio emerged as one of the most popular and innovative bands of the post-punk era, drawing upon reggae, funk, and world music to create a uniquely infectious yet cerebral brand of pop which generated a series of smash singles including "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic," "Every BreathYou Take," and "King of Pain." While with the Police, Copeland-- who in 1980 issued a solo record, Music Madness from the Kinetic Kid under the alias Klark Kent -- not only earned wide critical acclaim for his intricate, textured drum work, but contributed many of the group's songs as well. Among his better-known efforts are 1979's "On Any Other Day"(on which he sang lead vocals) and "Contact," as well as "MissGradenko" from their blockbuster 1983 hit Synchronicity. When they officially disbanded in 1986, the Police were still more or less at their commercial peak. By that time, however, Copeland was already established as a film composer, earning a Golden Globe nomination for his score to Francis FordCoppola's adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel Rumble Fish. He had also released 1985's The Rhythmatist, the product of his musical pilgrimage to Africa. Despite a few forays into pop-oriented work -- he guested on Peter Gabriel's1986 album So and formed the late-'80s jazz-rock fusion band Animal Logic --Copeland devoted the bulk of his time to an ever-increasing number of film scores. Among them were a pair of Oliver Stone features, Wall Street and TalkRadio, in addition to acclaimed projects like Ken Loach's Raining Stones, FourDays in September, and West Beirut, as well as many more mainstream Hollywood productions. Copeland also authored the San Francisco Ballet's King Lear, the Cleveland Opera's Holy Blood and Crescent Moon, and Ballet Oklahoma's Prey. Hewas hired in 1998 to compose the score for the hit PlayStation video game Spyrothe Dragon and has remained with the franchise, composing all of its sequels.

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