English composer Grant Kirkhope is musical director at Big Huge Games and a former composer of Rare Ltd. He learned to play the guitar and trumpet from an early age and majored in the latter at The Royal Northern College of Music. During the early 1980s, he was a guitarist and composer for the York-based heavy metal bands Syar and Maineeaxe, which together released three studio albums. After a spell with soul band Zoot and the Roots, he joined the long-running hard rock band Little Angels as a trumpeter and even toured with Van Halen on their behalf. Through these activities he became friends fellow trumpeter Robin Beanland, who went on to become head of music at Rare. Beanland encouraged him to apply for a position at Rare after Little Angels disbanded. He was eventually recruited in 1996.

Kirkhope was initially responsible for the sound design of Donkey Kong Land 2 where he arranged David Wise's Donkey Kong Country 2 compositions and contributed some new pieces. He later worked with Graeme Norgate performing guitar on Blast Corps and adapting James Bond themes on GoldenEye. On these early projects, he relished the opportunity to compose for a living and gained considerable experience working in diverse game audio roles.  In his first major project, he was responsible for all of compositions for Banjo-Kazooie. His score was praised for its catchy light-hearted compositions, including the banjo-focused main theme, as well as the way themes were varied to add interactivity to the experience.  He was also responsible for the majority of the sound effects.

On Donkey Kong 64, Kirkhope led an even larger score which was recognised for the way music dynamically changed with the scenery of each of the levels.  With the GoldenEye team, he was subsequently assigned as the main composer for Perfect Dark. He characterised each of the game's levels with vibrant and futuristic music given slow and fast variations. Firmly trusted with the Banjo team, Kirkhope produced a humorous and melodious score for Banjo-Tooie in 2000. He concluded Rare's years as a Nintendo developer as an additional musician on Star Fox Adventure and a voice actor on the Game Boy Advance's Donkey Kong Country. However, he was likely also involved in one of the Rare's projects when bought by Microsoft in 2002.

Kirkhope was responsible for all composition and sound effects on the Xbox's Grabbed by the Ghoulies in 2003. On this project, he used the Vienna Symphonic Library to stream music for the first time and his realistic score was even nominated for several awards. He produced an even more technologically accomplished score for the Xbox 360 life simulation title Viva Piñata by integrating performances by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. It remains his most cherished score for the company since he especially enjoys writing classically-oriented music.  Since its release, he has balanced work on the upcoming Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts with the assistance from several collaborators.

In July 2008, Kirkhope left Rare to become music director of Big Huge Games. The decision was especially hard for him since he would have to leave his friends in and out of the company by emigrating from Leicestershire, England to Baltimore, United States. He remains ever thankful for his experiences at Rare and is looking forward to a bright future at his new company. His next project is currently unknown, but he is likely to be involved in Big Huge Games' currently untitled Wii and multi-platform titles, which are possibly related to their flagship Rise of Nations series. With so many major projects under his belt, Kirkhope has acquired a massive fan base and received much acclaim over his 13 year tenure at a game musician.