School of Music Visiting Artist Series
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, 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.
Jeff's 1st prime time Emmy award came in 2001 for his season one theme song to Monk (2002). Frequently called on to score assignments that require a unique and diverse musical approach, Beal won an Emmy for Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King: Battleground (2006). 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".
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.