Grant Kirkhope

United Kingdom · Born 1962 · Composer

A classically trained trumpeter and rock-band horn player who joined Rare in 1995 and wrote the bouncy, endlessly adaptive scores of Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 — including the DK Rap.

Grant Kirkhope was born on 10 July 1962 in Edinburgh. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, where he trained classically on trumpet, and had taught himself guitar at eleven. Before games he worked as a musician in bands, including Zoot and the Roots with saxophonist Snake Davis and the horn section of the British rock band Little Angels. Kirkhope joined Rare in October 1995 and contributed music to GoldenEye 007 before becoming the principal composer of Banjo-Kazooie (1998). Its score is built around strong, playful melodies that change instrumentation as the player moves through a level — the same tune shifting from one arrangement to another underwater, in a cave or near a character — a technique that made the music feel woven into the world. He followed it with Banjo-Tooie and Donkey Kong 64, on which he composed and performed the DK Rap and voiced Donkey Kong, then Perfect Dark and, later, Viva Piñata. Kirkhope left Rare around 2008 and moved to the United States, becoming a citizen in 2017. As a freelancer he reunited with former Rare colleagues to score Yooka-Laylee, and composed Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope; the latter won him an Ivor Novello Award in 2023.