Original Score Compositions
Film Music Credits
Music Editor | Additional Music Composer | Music Arranger | Score Editor | Programmer | Music Mixer
Short Bio
David Menke is a film composer born in 1982 in Cologne. He devoted himself to music from an early age—first on violin and piano, later on jazz saxophone (big band as well as various bands). He studied sound engineering in Vienna (MDW) and Paris (CNSMDP) and has worked primarily as a sound engineer since 2002 on various projects between Cologne, Paris, and Vienna. He gained experience in classical music production, for example as an assistant on the recording of the Shostakovich symphonies with the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne (conductor Dmitri Kitajenko), as well as the GO-Live project, and various baroque TV productions for Scarlatti in Vienna and Melk.
Thanks to an internship with Christian Heck at the Loft jazz club in Cologne, Menke gained extensive insight into the recording and mixing of jazz. Subsequently, Heck and Menke also worked together on crossover projects with jazz bands and symphony orchestras (e.g., Fred Köster's Homeward Bound Suite).
He received the decisive impulse for his further career in 2007 through his work as an assistant to the renowned film composer Gabriel Yared. Together they worked on, among others, Judy (directed by Rupert Goold), By the Sea (directed by Angelina Jolie), The Happy Prince (directed by Rupert Everett), and The Promise (directed by Terry George).
As a composer, Menke has written the music for numerous films, including the French productions Heureux Gagnants by Maxime Govare and Romain Choay, as well as Belle et Sébastien – Nouvelle Génération by Pierre Coré.
Creative collaboration is especially important to him. He worked with Lionel Limiñana on Netflix productions such as Monsters Inside Me and The Last Days of American Crime (directed by Olivier Megaton), as well as on the Arte documentary Thatcher is Not Dead (directed by Guillaume Podrovnik). Most recently, the two completed the music for the MGM-Amazon film Tigres et Hyènes by Jérémie Guez and the French film Les Règles de l'art by Dominique Baumard.
He also worked with Boris Rogowski on the Netflix series Skylines, on commercials for Yves Saint Laurent, and on the Disney+ series Sam – Ein Sachse.
In addition to composing, Menke is a sought-after music editor and has worked with numerous renowned composers, including Klaus Badelt, Pierre Adenot (Beauty and the Beast), Bryce Dessner (Cyrano, She Came to Me, Sing Sing, The Accountant 2), Ben Frost (Raised by Wolves, What Remains), Jóhann Jóhannsson, Hildur Guðnadóttir (Mary Magdalene), and Ludovico Einaudi (The Father). Most recently, he worked as a music arranger and editor for Tom Rowlands (Chemical Brothers) on the series M – Il figlio del secolo, directed by Joe Wright.
In 2025, Menke, together with Boris Rogowski, provided the orchestration for I Did It My Way, a music theater evening by Ivo van Hove based on songs by Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone, which premiered at the Ruhrtriennale and has since been part of the repertoire of the Stuttgart State Opera. Already in 2023, the two had orchestrated two songs by the artist PeterLicht for the Stuttgart State Orchestra, performed as part of the concert gala Belonging Together.
To date, David Menke has contributed to more than 80 films. He lives in Paris and Vienna, where his production company PDV Records is also based.