Jesper Kyd Jakobson (born February 3, 1972 in Hørsholm, Denmark) is a Danish video game, television and film score composer. He composed soundtracks for the Assassin's Creed Series, Hitman Series, Borderlands Series, Darksiders II and State of Decay. His scores use orchestra, choir, acoustic manipulations and electronic soundscapes.

Biography

Early years
Kyd started playing piano at an early age. Later, he took several years of training in classical guitar, note reading, choir singing and classical composition for piano. However, he is mostly self-taught. Kyd started using computers for composing on a Commodore 64 at age 14, and later an Amiga. He and Mikael Balle became members of the demo group Silents DK, and later started collaborating with a group of coders known as Crionics. They eventually made the Amiga demoscene production Hardwired. Kyd also created and scored the first wild demo, Global Trash 2, together with Mikael Balle.

Kyd then left the demo scene and started to work as a game musician. He and others created the computer game developer Zyrinx and a game called Sub-Terrania for the Sega Genesis.

The team relocated to Boston. Kyd composed music for two additional Zyrinx titles, Red Zone and Scorcher and the music for two externally developed games, Amok and The Adventures of Batman and Robin. When their game publisher Scavenger went bankrupt the Zyrinx team dissolved.


Freelance
Many former Zyrinx members returned to Denmark to start IO Interactive. Kyd moved to New York City and set up his own sound studio in Manhattan called "Nano studios". He worked as a freelance computer game musician.

He worked on Bioware's MDK2: Armageddon, Shiny's Messiah and IO's Hitman: Codename 47. The soundtrack to Codename 47 was based on urban soundscapes and ethnic instrumentation.



He then recorded the soundtrack of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin with 110 musicians of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and Choir.

He recorded the score for the action/adventure Freedom Fighters with the Hungarian Radio choir. It was described by Film Score Monthly Magazine as "Vangelis on steroids". Billboard Digital Entertainment Awards nominated him for Best Use of Soundtrack, and Game Audio Network Guild Awards nominated him for "Best Original Vocal Song – Choral" (for Main Title and March of the Empire). Leading video game web site GameSpot awarded Freedom Fighters "Best Music of the Year".

He used modern electronica and symphonic and choral music in Hitman: Contracts. It was awarded Best Original Music by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts at the 2005 BAFTA Games Awards and won Best Cinematic / Cut-Scene Audio at the 2005 G.A.N.G. Awards.

Kyd then provided the music for Ubisoft’s Assassin's Creed, created by developer Patrice Desilets. He produced a cinematic score for Altair’s Middle-Eastern story. He then produced the music for Assassin's Creed II, recorded in Los Angeles.

Kyd wrote the soundtrack for the action/adventure Darksiders II, notable for being his first entirely non-digital score.

Kyd lives in Burbank, California and is represented by The Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency.