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Jeff Beal is one of the most prolific and respected composers working in Hollywood today. He grew up studying the trumpet in the San Francisco Bay area, where he was immersed in the sounds of the 70's jazz, classical, and the rock & pop music scene. His prodigious talent in composition lead to many works for both big band and orchestra during his high school years. In his teens, his compositions were performed by the Oakland Youth Symphony under maestro Kent Nagano, the Monterey Jazz Festival All Star big band, and others.
After high school, Jeff went to the Eastman School of Music to study composition with Pulitzer prize winner Christopher Rouse, Rayburn Wright and Bill Dobbins. During the Eastman years, he was awarded an unprecedented 11 student awards from Downbeat Magazine for his compositions and trumpet playing. It was at Eastman Jeff also studied film scoring, and met the producers of what would become his first film assignment, Cheap Shots (1988).
Before moving to Los Angeles, Beal lived in New York City and San Francisco, where he pursued a career as a jazz recording artist and composer. His debut recording "Liberation" for Island Records was considered an underground classic by the New York jazz community. Beal would continue to release a total of seven solo recordings, and frequented as a guest artist on other recordings.
In 1993, after his "Concerto for Jazz Bass" was recorded by John Patitucci on Chick Corea's new label, Beal decided to make the move to Los Angeles. His big break came when Ed Harris called on Jeff to score his directorial debut Pollock (2000). Beal's unique blend of Americana, minimalism, and chamber orchestra caught the ear of many in Hollywood. This led to his relationship with HBO, where he has provided scores for two of their most adventurous series, Rome (2005) and Carnivàle (2003), resulting in 3 Emmy nominations. In total Beal has received 15 prime time nominations and 4 Emmy Awards to date.
Frequently called on to score assignments that require a unique and diverse musical approach, Beal won an Emmy for Battleground (2006)
* a one-hour no-dialog installment of "NIghtmares and Dreamscapes,"
directed by Brian Henson, starring William Hurt. "Battleground" was a modern day homage to the iconic no-dialog Twilight Zone episode, "The Invaders". Jeff's incredible sweeping and emotive orchestral score for the Ridley Scott CIA mini-series The Company (2007) also resulted in a prime-time Emmy. His most recent Emmy is for the underscore to Netflix ground-breaking political drama, "House of Cards".
Other notable scores include Appaloosa (2008) dir. Ed Harris, No Good Deed (2002) dir. Bob Rafelson, Little Red Wagon (2012) dir. David Anspaugh, Georgia O'Keeffe (2009) dir. Bob Balaban, the "Jesse Stone" films, dir. by Robert Harmon and the Golden Globe-winning series Ugly Betty (2006). He also scored Wilde Salomé (2011) for Al Pacino, Mr. Pacino's long-awaited follow-up to Looking for Richard (1996). Beal has also been a frequent collaborator of Academy Award winner Jessica Yu, on In the Realms of the Unreal (2004), Protagonist (2007), and her feature documentary for Participant Productions; Last Call at the Oasis (2011).
Jeff's 1st prime-time Emmy award came in 2001 for his season one theme song to Monk (2002). The instrumental theme was replaced in season two by the producers and became a cause célèbre among Monk fans and critics. This resulted in an online petition with thousands of signatures, and an episode by the show's writers "Mr. Monk and The TV Star" where a theme song change is protested by guest star Sarah Silverman.
Beal's scores are often driven by a strong sense of melody, and frequent use of chamber-size instrumentations. In a musical climate where bigger is better seems to be the pervading aesthetic, his scores are often intimate, dramatically specific and character-driven. He conducts and orchestrates his own scores, and often performs on them. He plays piano, trumpet, duduk, recorders, harmonica, percussion, rababa, oud, and french horn. Beal's wife Joan Beal is a trained opera singer and has sung on several of his scores, including Carnivàle (2003), The Situation (2006), and Wilde Salomé (2011).
