Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli is an Emmy-nominated composer of concert and film music with a multi-faceted career in the music industry. Gramophone magazine recently said of the composer: “Anderson-Bazzoli admirably doesn’t follow in anyone’s footsteps.” As a conductor and orchestrator he is also an in-demand collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Michael Bublé, Spinal Tap, Dr. Dre, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. 

Anderson-Bazzoli's concert music navigates diverse aesthetics – from strict forms of motor-rhythmic process music to emotional and freely improvised art songs, embracing tonal and non-tonal elements as well as electronics and amplification. 

Opera News recently chose the world premiere recording of Continent’s End, Anderson-Bazzoli’s song cycle on iconoclastic California poet Robinson Jeffers, as its “Critic’s Choice,” further noting it as a “fine contribution to the art song canon, one that should prove widely appealing for listeners.” Gramophone said the music “arrives like a bolt out of the blue…epic qualities abound.” Music critic Rafael de Acha, writing in Rafael’s Music Notes, perhaps summarized it best: “Anderson-Bazzoli’s music perfectly embodies with its unpredictable harmonic twists and turns and its mutli-tonality Jeffers’ hyper-masculine, pantheistic, often erotic poetry.” Continent’s End is currently available on the Delos music label. 

Prayer of the Heliotrope, Anderson-Bazzoli’s post-minimalist work for percussion duo, was inspired by the writings of Sufi mystic Ibn al-Arabi and depicts the process of a flower’s emergence from the ground and its gradual life-giving turn toward the sun. From the dark fertile soil of marimbas and temple blocks the piece develops in repeating rhythm and pitch cells into skin drum textures and the celestial brightness of vibraphones and cymbals. The piece is winner of the 2010 Ironworks Percussion Composition Competition and was featured in a recital by Ironworks at Cal State Long Beach in 2013. Prayer of the Heliotrope is available on Anderson-Bazzoli’s Bandcamp page. 

Anderson-Bazzoli is recipient of the American Composers Forum's “Subito” Award for his string quartet Gentrify another post-minimalist work inspired by the process of the physical transformation of an urban neighborhood. Hypnotically unfolding through amplified digital delays, Gentrify was composed written for LA's cutting-edge rock string quartet The Section. 

Once a student of film scoring masters Henry Mancini and David Raksin, Anderson-Bazzoli was nominated for an Emmy Award at age twenty-one for his first professional film score: A Year to Remember on CBS News. Variety described the feature film Revolution OS as coming “complete with a nice soundtrack, unusual for this kind of documentary.” He has also composed innovative and potent scores for the Venezuelan thriller Elipsis, the award-winning Swedish short Without Snow, and The Wind and the Water – a collaborative feature film by Vero Bollow and the Igar Yala Collective of Panama that received its acclaimed premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. 

As a conductor and orchestrator, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli has worked with some of the top recording artists in the world, including Michael Bublé, Dr. Dre, Christina Aguilera, Jonas Brothers, and M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel (She and Him). He recently served as co-arranger for legendary Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls (a.k.a. Harry Shearer), whose solo album Smalls Change featured an all-star band and 80-piece orchestra. For the accompanying tour, Lukewarm Water Live, Anderson-Bazzoli conducted the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra at the Saenger Theater in New Orleans and The Hollywood Chamber Orchestra at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, among others. In addition to Smalls, Anderson-Bazzoli had the honor of sharing the stage with legendary guest artists like Steve Lukather (Toto), Dweezil Zappa, Paul Schaeffer, Jack Black (Tenacious D), and Billy Idol. 

In the world of film Anderson-Bazzoli also served as additional orchestrator and conductor on Disney’s Encanto featuring songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda and music score by Germain Franco. 

At the 2011 Carlsbad Music Festival Anderson-Bazzoli conducted a performance of composer Sarah Kirkland Snider's “rapturous” (NY Times) song cycle Penelope, working with members of the celebrated Calder String Quartet and My Brightest Diamond (a.k.a. vocalist Shara Nova). Anderson-Bazzoli was also conductor and choir director for A (Micro) History of World Economics, produced in 2013 by the groundbreaking theater troupe Los Angeles Poverty Department and staged at LA's outdoor Pershing Square by noted French director Pascal Rambert. 

A native of California’s Monterey Peninsula, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli began learning percussion and tuba at age eleven and went on to receive a Bachelor’s degree in Tuba Performance from the University of California at Los Angeles where he studied with LA studio legend Tommy Johnson. He continued his post-graduate studies in Composition at UCLA studying with Ian Krouse and Paul Reale, as well as spending a summer at the Aspen Music Festival and School where he studied Composition with Michael Czajkowski and Jacob Druckman. Has studied conducting with Lucas Richman and Harold Farberman. He and his wife Donna Eshelman currently split their time living in Carmel and Los Angeles, CA. 

With enduring appeal across cultures and genres, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli’s  innovative compositions for the concert stage, his well-crafted and deeply-felt scores for the studio and indie film worlds, and his skilled musical direction of artists from across the pop music spectrum have earned him a reputation as a musician with a collaborative spirit and a broad vision.