I'm currently orchestrating and conducting episodes for the second season of Wonder Pets!, produced by Little Airplane Productions for Nickelodeon Jr. Since its debut in March 2006, Wonder Pets! has consistently ranked among the top three preschool shows on all of commercial TV in the U.S. Larry Hochman is Lead composer, and Grammy-winning Jeffrey Lesser is the Music Supervisor. Composers of episodes have included Jason Robert Brown, Michael John LaChiusa, and Jerry Bock. Each episode is a twelve-minute, through-composed mini-operetta recorded with live orchestra – not your average children's fare in this rock-pop world.

 

I came in at the end of the first season of The Magic Schoolbus, under the auspices of my mentor, composer Peter Lurye. At first glance, the shows were science lessons disguised as quirky entertainment – but what I saw were full-out adventure shows, as our heroes (led by the indomitable Miss Frizzle, portrayed by Lily Tomlin) bounded into outer space, into the human body, and inside such memorable objects as pickles and water treatment systems.

So I pulled out the John Williams and let 'er rip – and fortunately for me, they bought it, and by the third and fourth seasons I was doing a fair percentage of the underscore.

The show played on PBS, then was syndicated by the Fox Network, and continues to play in markets around the country and around the world.

Director Andy Erish commissioned me to create the orchestral-simulation score for his short film The Sons Of Fun Meet Dr. Death, a pastiche of the Abbott & Costello genre; the end title of this film became the piece I’ve retitled “Cornball Concerto” (soundclip).

Director Allen Barton (of Milton Katselas’s Beverly Hills Playhouse) commissioned me to create the orchestral-simulation score for his short film Cannes In 1999, for which I provided a mix of film noir and pop styles. The film was screened in the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival.

My first film assignment, a dance film with Dance Theatre of Harlem, was done with a live orchestra of New York’s best (contracted by John Monaco, Saga Productions, George S. George, producer). To score this nocturnal fantasy film, I interwove various ethereal and sensual motifs with a symphonic rhapsody based on Rodgers’ & Hart’s “Blue Moon.”

I was trained in the USC Film Scoring graduate program, as one of twelve composers selected nationwide in 1990, and won the annual Harry Warren Scholarship for my work in the program. I scored a range of movie and TV scenes, conducting live ensembles of all types and sizes, from the full USC Symphony to “TV-size” orchestras and various odd groups designed to test our ingenuity. I also got the priceless opportunity to see a number of highly regarded film composers at work on the soundstage (including Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Bruce Broughton, and John Debney).

If you have film or TV work that needs to be scored, contact me. No project too small or too large – hit me with your feature, TV series or your student film – I'd love to take a look at it.