'Mozart would have made video game music': composer Eímear Noone on a winning art form

The Irish composer and conductor - who's worked with film director Gus Van Sant and on World of Warcraft - talks passionately about making game music

Eimear Noone got into composing and conducting video game music by accident. One day, while studying music at Trinity College Dublin, a fourth-year student came to the bar she was drinking in with members of the college chapel choir and offered them a few quid to help with the orchestration on a project of his.

"I have a vivid memory of sitting on a studio floor somewhere in Dublin writing choral parts with my pals and then singing them," she says. "Six months later, my brother calls me in a complete tizzy and says, 'Did you work on Metal Gear Solid?' I was like, 'No!' He says, 'Well, I'm looking at your name on the screen credits right now.' And sure enough, the session she had contributed to for beer money was the soundtrack to Hideo Kojima's blockbuster adventure game. "Years later, I was at the Bird's Nest in Beijing conducting this very piece of music," she says. "It's just a bizarre life."