Anna Calvi shares Peaky Blinders season six opening track, "Miquelon"

Peaky Blinders: Season 5 & 6 (Original Score) marks the first ever score work by Anna Calvi: “Composing for Peaky Blinders was about atmosphere and space. There’s so much nuance when it comes to scoring to picture. It’s more about what you leave out than what you leave in. I had to let the voice of the actors do the talking but find ways of bringing out the emotion within that. I became completely obsessed with Tommy Shelby, I dreamt about him every night whilst I was working on the scores, I had to really inhabit the show," she explains.

Having been initially commissioned to write the score for season five in 2019, Calvi’s arrangements led her to being brought back on board to work on the show’s final ever season in 2022 (breaking BBC iPlayer streaming records with nearly seven million streams for the first episode). Calvi explains further: “There is a duality to the show, of beauty and brutality, which I had been exploring in my own music. I’m fascinated by the manipulation of emotions with sound, it’s so mysterious. I really tried to explore this with Peaky Blinders, sometimes putting the opposite music than you would expect on a scene had the most impact.”

On season five, Calvi composed everything herself and performed it largely herself including vocals, guitar, violin, piano, percussion and harmonium. Talking about the process, Calvi adds: “For season six I wanted to bring more musicians on board for a fresh take, and I wanted to find a new musical voice for Tommy. I decided to bring in Nick Launay to work with me – he had produced my last album, Hunter.” Alongside Nick Launay, Calvi also worked with Peaky Blinders director Anthony Byrne who acted as music supervisor, executive producer and musical arranger, Imogen Harrison as post-production producer and Nigel Heath as sound mixer on the score season six.

“What I learnt most from writing for Peaky Blinders is to trust my instincts. I realised I shouldn’t be afraid of simplicity, and I shouldn’t assume that if something happens quickly, that the quality is compromised. This whole experience was so wonderful and so intense. I’m so proud of my scores for Peaky Blinders and I would love for this work to be a signpost for future generations of female composers.”