Occasionally I google myself to see what’s out there, and I once ran across a review of my film scores that stated that I “had disappeared off the face of the planet” after my last score for Breathing Fire. I assure you that I am alive and well, but I did leave the film and music businesses in 1992.
My road to film composing consisted of a series of accidents, I suppose. After college (where for some reason I majored in English instead of music), I moved to New York, where I played in a series of rock bands. Frustration with failed opportunities led me to L.A. where I managed to play on a few records and where I learned to arrange/produce recording sessions for a variety of would-be artists and songwriters. One thing led to another, and I was hired by a couple friends to program synths and help arrange music for a low-budget film they had been hired to score. (It was ultimately sold on video as Hollywood Zap.) Somewhere in the process I became co-composer and caught the attention of the postproduction supervisor who later steered another low-budget film my way, the teenage comedy My Chauffeur. At about that time, I felt my lack of formal training becoming a problem, so I took a couple of years to go back to school. I took harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration at a local junior college, along with a year’s worth of classes in the UCLA Extension’s film scoring sequence. I followed that by studying composition for a year in a small private class with Don Ray, the composer who began the UCLA program. It was near the end of that year that I was hired to compose the score for Bloodsport after I had rescued a children’s video for its producer, Mark DiSalle. I did a couple more low budget films between Bloodsport and Kickboxer, one entitled Street Justice (composed with Jamii Szmadzinski) and the other entitled Dangerous Love. They’re out there if you’re curious. And then after Kickboxer, to use a phrase popular with out-of-work musicians, I couldn’t get arrested. I did manage one more film, Breathing Fire, but otherwise, Hollywood and I seemed to have suffered irreconcilable differences. So my short career as film composer came to an end. However, fan interest in several of my scores has remained high over the years, and I have returned to writing and releasing new music. Please stay tuned. |