Joby Talbot (born 25 August 1971) is a British composer. He has written for a wide variety of purposes and an accordingly broad range of styles, including instrumental and vocal concert music, film and television scores, pop arrangements and works for dance. He is therefore known to sometimes disparate audiences for quite different works.
Prominent compositions include the a cappella choral works The Wishing Tree (2002) and Path of Miracles (2005); orchestral works Sneaker Wave (2004), Tide Harmonic (2009), Worlds, Stars, Systems, Infinity (2012) and Meniscus (2012); the theme and score for the popular BBC Two comedy series The League of Gentlemen (1999–2002); silent film scores The Lodger (1999) and The Dying Swan (2002) for the British Film Institute; film scores The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005), Son of Rambow (2007) and Penelope (2008).
Works for dance include Chroma (2006), Genus (2007), Fool's Paradise (2007), Chamber Symphony (2012), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2011, revived 2012 and 2013) and The Winter's Tale (2014), the latter two being full-length narrative ballet scores commissioned by The Royal Ballet and the National Ballet of Canada.
Talbot premiered his first opera in January 2015 with Dallas Opera. A one-act work entitled Everest and with a libretto by Gene Scheer, it follows the three of the climbers involved in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.