Portal:African cinema/Selected biography/41

Kyle Shepherd (born 8 July 1987 in Cape Town) is a South African jazz film and theater composer and pianist. He was the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Jazz in 2014 and the UNISA (University of South Africa) piano competition winner in the Jazz category in 2015.

His television credits include the Netflix South African hit drama series, Unseen, Blood and Water, and Savage Beauty.

His film credits include the South African films Noem My Skollie (Call Me Thief), South Africa's official entry to the 2017 Academy Awards; Fiela se Kind (2019) winner of Best Score at the 2020 Silwerskerm Film Festival—one of world's only Afrikaans film festivals; Barakat (2020), South Africa's official entry to the 2022 Academy Awards and giving Shepherd his second Silwerskerm award for Best Score (2022); Vlugtig (2021) and Indemnity (2021). His most recent film score was for the comedy caper The Umbrella Men (2022), awarded Best Film at London's Film Africa Fest.

Shepherd is also the co-creator of the hit Afrikaans musical television show, Koortjies with Cape Town jazz and gospel music star Jonathan Rubain.

Of his process of composing for film:

I try to learn the heart of the story. Sometimes, I don't need the full details. I don't always read the script. And then I just write music without any information. I write in open form. Usually, I come up with five or 10 pieces. And somewhere in between that, we find the main theme. Once you have your theme, you can really blast out from there. It's also nice to write music that's not restricted by the scene or edit.