2011 has proved a busy year for Nigel. Projects include a live action / animated feature film, a major stage musical, and a follow-up album to his hugely successful Classic FM CD Silent Nights, which rode high in the classical charts over 2010's Christmas period. A second album of Nigel’s popular music for symphonic wind band is also in preparation.

The year has also seen more performances around the country of Admission One Shilling, the story of Dame Myra Hess (Nigel’s great-aunt) and her famous wartime National Gallery concerts, starring legendary actress Patricia Routledge and international concert pianist Piers Lane. Devised by Nigel, and with glorious music by Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann and Chopin, the show tells – in Dame Myra’s own words – how the great adventure of those 1600 lunchtime concerts began, and how they continued while bombs rained down on London. It is an uplifting story about the healing power of music.
Click here for performance details.

2010 saw Nigel busy at Shakespeare’s Globe scoring a new production of Henry VIII and overseeing the revival of The Merry Wives of Windsor which subsequently toured to Los Angeles and New York: “Nigel Hess’s lovely original music” (New York Times); “wonderful, Elizabethan-style music” (New York Post); “The music by Nigel Hess is a joy, which everyone came out humming” (A Younger Theatre). The cast album is available on iTunes. Nigel’s film score for Ladies in Lavender continues to be popular worldwide. Starring Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, the soundtrack was nominated for a Classical Brit Award, and was performed by virtuoso American violinist Joshua Bell and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It continues to be one of Sony Classics’ best-sellers.

Nigel’s music is a regular on Classic FM, the UK’s most popular commercial radio station, and the largest classical music station in the world. Both his Piano Concerto (commissioned by HRH The Prince of Wales) and Ladies in Lavender have featured for many consecutive years in their Hall of Fame (their top 300 tracks voted for by listeners), and in Classic FM's 2011 Movie Music Chart Ladies in Lavender was voted number 9 in a list of the 101 most popular movie soundtracks. Nigel was nominated as Composer of the Year at the 2009 Classical Brit Awards for the Piano Concerto, the recording of which has now been re-released worldwide as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s new compilation Best of Lang Lang.