Ryan Youens composes, arranges, orchestrates and prepares music for stage, screen and studio. His work has been recorded at Abbey Road, arranged for Alicia Keys, and performed by orchestras around the world, among them the Royal Philharmonic. He is based in Auckland and delivers worldwide.

In twenty years he has written 150 original works and more than 600 concert arrangements, and proofed and delivered tens of thousands of scores and parts.

Much of his screen work comes through long relationships with the composers he works for. With Victoria Kelly, over more than a decade: Neil Finn's Song of the Lonely Mountain for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Billy Boyd's The Last Goodbye for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, both recorded at Abbey Road Studios, and the opening ceremony scores for the Rugby World Cup and the Pan Arab Games. With Rhian Sheehan: The Sounds, Belief: The Possession of Janet Moses, a planetarium show for the National Space Centre, and Mission Ferrari at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi.

Other screen credits include Ka Whawhai Tonu, The Convert, Pike River, Mahana, A Mistake, Doubt: The Scott Watson Case, Camino Skies and Happiness, with composers including Tiki Taane, Arli Liberman, Karl Steven, Ewan Clark, Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper, Tane Upjohn-Beatson and Tom McLeod.

He has written and prepared music for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, Auckland Philharmonia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra. His arrangements have been performed by Basement Jaxx, John Butler, Shapeshifter, Dave Dobbyn and Bic Runga.

In theatre and opera he arranged Amadeus for Sydney Opera House Presents and Red Line Productions starring Michael Sheen, typeset and edited Act 3 of August Enna's Kleopatra for Danish National Opera, and has worked on productions for New Zealand Opera and West Australian Opera.

Youens builds live orchestral shows with artists and promoters, from creative conception to live execution. He worked with Six60 on the opening concert of One New Zealand Stadium in Christchurch, with Blindspott on their debut album performed live with orchestra at a sold-out Spark Arena, and arranged Full Metal Orchestra, featuring AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd. As arranger and show director for Synthony he writes full programmes performed by orchestras around the world, and has taken the production to Formula 1 in Las Vegas, the world's largest floating stadium at Marina Bay in Singapore, and the opening of Sindalah Island in Neom, Saudi Arabia, where the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra performed with Alicia Keys. For the 37th America's Cup he arranged the choral and string parts to Arli Liberman's theme, recorded in Barcelona by the Cor de Noies de l'Orfeo Catala.

He conducts in the studio and on stage, including the Australian Pops Orchestra at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Music preparation is a core part of the work: typesetting, engraving, copying and editing. He has prepared an arrangement by Van Dyke Parks for album release, and engraves and edits for the publishers G. Schirmer and Massey University Press, and for many of New Zealand's leading composers, among them John Psathas, Gareth Farr, Jack Body, Jenny McLeod, Gillian Whitehead and Anthony Ritchie, covering new contemporary scores and the restoration of historic ones.

On large projects the job is running the music department rather than occupying a desk in it: score supervision, briefing teams of arrangers and copyists, version control and quality across hundreds of charts, personnel and session logistics, and show calling on international tours. The call often comes late, when a project is already in trouble, and the work becomes deciding what can be saved, what has to be rebuilt, and getting it playable before the downbeat.

Youens trained at the New Zealand School of Music Te Koki, the University of Otago and the University of Auckland. He guest lectures and mentors, working with universities, orchestras, schools and hundreds of individual composers, arrangers and music teams.

Youens, pronounced YOO-ins.