A multi-faceted composer and conductor, Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli (b. 1969) creates music with enduring appeal across cultures and genres. His well-crafted and deeply-felt scores for the studio and indie film worlds, his innovative compositions for the classical concert stage, and his skilled musical direction for artists from across the pop music spectrum have earned him a reputation as a musician with a collaborative spirit and emotional intelligence.
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 score: A Year to Remember on CBS News. LA Weekly praised his score for the Civil War drama Shooting Creek (Starz/Encore) as “wonderful period music” while Variety described Revolution OS (dist. 7th Art, Sundance Channel) as coming “complete with a nice soundtrack, unusual for this kind of documentary.” He has composed innovative and potent scores for the Venezuelan thriller Elipsis (dist. 20th Century Fox), the award-winning Swedish short Without Snow, the animated action feature Angel Wars: The Messengers (Fox Faith Video), and The Wind and the Water (aka Burwa Dii Ebo) – a collaborative feature film project by Vero Bollow and the Igar Yala Collective of Panama, which received its acclaimed premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Anderson-Bazzoli is also the recipient of the prestigious Sundance Composers Lab Fellowship (2003).
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. He received a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation for Continent's End, his affecting settings of iconoclastic California poet Robinson Jeffers, commissioned for the 150th anniversary of the poet's birth. He is winner of the 2010 Ironworks Percussion Duo Composition Competition for his dynamic work Prayer of the Heliotrope, as well as the American Composers Forum's “Subito” Award for his amplified string quartet Gentrify – written for LA's cutting-edge rock string quartet The Section.
As a conductor and orchestrator Christopher Anderson-Bazzoli has provided musical direction for leading contemporary music festivals, innovative theater companies, and recordings from across the pop music spectrum – among them Christina Aguilera's Grammy-winning Back to Basics, a forthcoming 2014 album from indie stars She & Him (Zooey Deschanel & M Ward), and crooner Michael Buble's multi-platinum album Christmas. He spent the '05-'06 television season orchestrating and producing synth-tracks for Paramount's Star Trek: Enterprise with composer Jay Chattaway and made an appearance at the 2011 Carlsbad Music Festival, where he conducted a performance of Sarah Kirkland Snider's “rapturous” (NY Times) song cycle Penelope. Most recently Anderson-Bazzoli directed the choir for A (Micro) History of World Economics, produced by the ground breaking theater troupe Los Angeles Poverty Department and staged at LA's outdoor Pershing Square by noted French director Pascal Rambert.
Anderson-Bazzoli's music preparation and editing skills have been sought by major arts organizations and publishers such as Chester Music (London), The Royal Opera, and Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as feature film studios such as Disney, ABC, Paramount, and Warner Brothers. Immediately after receiving degrees in Tuba Performance and Composition from UCLA, Anderson-Bazzoli served as editor and consultant for eminent composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen on several projects with the LA Phil, including Salonen's work LA Variations, the Filmharmonic series with innovative stage director Peter Sellars, and PBS' Great Performances special to inaugurate Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Well-known for expertise in craft and perceptive expression, Anderson-Bazzoli's artistry always invites listeners into a rich musical experience.
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