Guest ArtistsMichael Giacchino, composer

Michael Giacchino has fast become one of the best-known and most successful composers working in Hollywood today. His filmmaking career began in his backyard in Edgewater Park, New Jersey, when he was ten years old. He eventually went on to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. After college, while working in marketing at Disney, he began studies in music composition first at Juilliard, and then at UCLA. When Mr. Giacchino was hired as a producer for the fledging Disney Interactive Division, he had the opportunity to write music for video games. Eventually, his work was brought to the attention of Steven Spielberg, who later said, “I did what anybody in their right mind would do, I signed him up to score Medal of Honor.”

It was Mr. Giacchino’s work in video games that caught the attention of director J.J. Abrams, and thus began their long standing relationship that would lead to scores for the hit television series Alias and Lost, and the feature films Mission Impossible III, Star Trek, Super 8, and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Mr. Giacchino’s additional credits feature some of the most popular and acclaimed film projects in recent history, including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Cars 2, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Family Stone. His score for the 2009 Pixar hit Up earned him an Oscar®, a Golden Globe, the BAFTA, the Broadcast Film Critics' Choice Award and two Grammy® Awards. His most recent films include Matt Reeves’ Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Andy and Lana Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending, Tomorrowland (directed by Brad Bird), Jurassic World (directed by Colin Trevorrow) and the latest Pixar film, Inside Out.

Michael Giacchino sits on the Advisory Board of Education Through Music Los Angeles.