The Children’s Hour
Lillian Hellman, 1934
Dir. Steve Thompson (Sherlock, Vienna Blood), Nov. 2025.
To score this play I sought inspiration from its setting in 1930’s New England. Composers of the time like Aaron Copland and Charles Ives combined a modernist approach with rural American folk music, and the result was a peculiar character; lively Appalachian fiddle muddled into a more complex world of dissonance.
To a modern audience, this creates a background of unease throughout the play whilst also helping to ground us in a time and place. The music covers an intense emotional range, moving between playful naïveté, cruelty, deep companionship and utter devastation.
Biography
Simon Joyner (1990) is a British composer, sound designer, performer, arranger and orchestrator.
Whether in the theatre or the concert hall, film or video games, Simon’s work is characterised by a flair for storytelling, a desire to welcome the audience in, and an infectious delight in music’s power to capture, immerse and surprise us.
A broad and confident stylistic palette is built upon training in contemporary classical composition (University of Manchester), alongside years spent performing country-wide and internationally as a trumpeter-arranger. Through performing in jazz bands, pop lineups and orchestras, he encounters audiences from the smallest community theatres and village halls, to some of the country’s largest and most prestigious venues, and the exclusive clubs and hotels of London’s West End.
Simon’s recent composing work includes original music for The Children’s Hour directed by Steve Thompson (Sherlock, Lynley), and arranging for orchestras including the RTÉ Concert Orchestra and Down For The Count Orchestra.
Theatre credits: The Children’s Hour (The Barn); The Little Match Girl (Schmucks) [Winner of Manchester In-Fringe Theatre Award for Best Original Music].