Burkhard Dallwitz : Home

Biography

Internationally acclaimed and regarded as one of Australia’s leading screen composers, Burkhard Dallwitz was born in Germany where he began classical piano training from the age of eight. In 1979 he settled in Australia and studied music at Latrobe University where he majored with Honours in Composition.

In 1983 Burkhard began his career as a screen composer for feature films, television drama series, animations and documentaries.

To date Burkhard has been the recipient of multiple International and Australian screen music awards and nominations, including those from APRA/AGSC, AACTA and ARIA.

In 1999, he was awarded the Golden Globe for Best Original Score in a Motion Picture for The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir and starring Jim Carrey. The score also won the Chicago Film Critics’ Award and the ASCAP Film and Television Award. The soundtrack reached number two on the Billboard charts.

Burkhard’s second collaboration with Peter Weir was on The Way Back, and in 2011 the score was nominated for Feature Film Score of the Year.

In 2001 he won the APRA award for Best Television Theme for Network 7’s coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Burkhard received multiple screen music awards for the hugely successful Underbelly franchise that were produced from 2008 to 2018 and for which he also wrote the now iconic title theme “It's a Jungle out There”.

In 2015 Burkhard scored the multi award-winning ABC mini-series

The Secret River directed by Daina Reid. This won the 2015 Screen Music Award for Best Music for a Television Mini-Series and was nominated for the 2015 AACTA award for Best Original Music Score in Television.

Again working with director Daina Reid, Burkhard scored the AACTA Award-winning series Sunshine produced for SBS.

In 2016 Burkhard scored the six part television series Wolf Creek for STAN, which premiered to critical acclaim.

In 2018/19 he scored the Netflix series Pine Gap and the feature film Locusts which received an ARIA nomination for Best Soundtrack Album.

In 2019 Burkhard co-founded Zeitgeist Music with screen composers Brett Aplin and Dmitri Golovko, a collaboration committed to providing original, high quality scores for TV drama, feature films and documentaries.

Zeitgeist Music projects to date include the big budget Chinese feature film The Longest Shot, directed by Xu Shunli.

Television drama series include the acclaimed Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, My Life is Murder and The Gloaming. Zeitgeist Music also scored the feature length documentary Splice Here: A Projected Odyssey.

Burkhard has been an APRA AMCOS Ambassador since 2010 and in 2021 he was elected to the APRA board as a non-executive Writer Director.

As part of his commitment to the art of screen composition, Burkhard, with Brett Aplin, co-founded a Melbourne based screen composers’ network to advise, encourage and mentor emerging talent and to share experiences in an increasingly complex work environment.

Photography: Daniel Boud