Brian Tyler

Brian Tyler
Brian Tyler, 2009
Background information
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres	Film music, Classical, Rock, Electronic, Jazz
Occupations	Composer, conductor, music producer, instrumentalist
Instruments	Drums, Piano, Guitar, Percussion, Bass, Stringed instruments, Bouzouki, Cello, Keyboards
Years active	1997–present

Brian Tyler is an American composer, producer, and conductor, most known for his scores of Eagle Eye, Rambo, Fast and Furious, and Constantine. Tyler is a symphonic conductor and conducts his own scores. He is signed with Sony Music as a songwriter.

Early life

Tyler was born in Los Angeles, California. He attended UCLA and Harvard University. Tyler's musical career began at an early age, after being inspired by his grandfather, Walter H. Tyler. He traveled to United States and Russia, performing at concerts with his own written and composed pieces. After a couple of years, Tyler began playing for orchestras, ensembles, choirs, using instruments, such as piano, classical percussion, guitar, bass, bouzouki, mandolin, keyboards, and drums.^[1] Tyler was also featured in a number of rock bands and with artists, such as Elton John, Taylor Hawkins, and Slash.^{[citation needed]}

Musical career

Robert Kraft, who was impressed after hearing Tyler's music, encouraged Tyler to pursue a career in film scoring. He began his career in 1997, where he composed the film score for the independent film Bartender by Gabe Torres. The following year, he and Red Elvises composed the film score for Six-String Samurai.^{[2][dead link]} Tyler wrote several musical scores, based on rap music for Simon Sez (1999). John Williams recommended Tyler to producer William Sherak for Four Dogs Playing Poker (2000). He has since scored two other films produced by Sherak, Darkness Falls (2003) and Bangkok Dangerous (2008).

Tyler's breakthrough came in 2001, after composing the film score for Frailty (2001).

William Friedkin, after being impressed by Frailty, called Tyler in to compose The Hunted (2003). Later, Tyler also wrote music for Star Trek: Enterprise, and Children of Dune over a span of one month, coinciding with his work on Darkness Falls.^[4]

At the end of 2003, Tyler began working more on big-budget films, including Timeline (2003), Godsend (2004), The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), and Constantine (2005).^[5]

Tyler partnered with music producers Pharrell and Dr. Dre with the 2006 film The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Before that, he had composed another Justin Lin film, Annapolis. To date, Tyler has scored two films, each of Bill Paxton, William Friedkin, Greg Yaitanes, and Henry Bromell.

Tyler was then hired to do Partition (2007). He had to integrate Indian and Middle Eastern music with orchestral writing. He conducted the orchestral portion of the score in Los Angeles with the Hollywood Studio Symphony.^[6] Tyler also conducted the London Symphony Orchestra for the score to the film War.

In 2008, Tyler composed music for the 2008 films Rambo, Eagle Eye,^[7] and The Lazarus Project.

He continued by composing Dragonball Evolution,^[8][9] Fast and Furious, The Final Destination, and recently Middle Men.

Other media

Tyler's cues for Children of Dune were used in the theatrical trailers for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Master and Commander (2003), Sahara (2005), Cinderella Man (2005), The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). The track "Summon the Worms" from Children of Dune was used as a leader for the Belgian/Dutch show Peking Express, and in the first leaked promotional reel for The Golden Compass (2007).^[10] A version of the track "War Begins" is used in the first full-length theatrical trailer of Star Trek (2009).^[11]

A cue from The Final Cut was used for the theatrical trailer for The Da Vinci Code (2006), and a track from Tyler's score for Annapolis was used for the theatrical trailer for World Trade Center (2006).

Besides films, Tyler's music has also been featured in the 2004 and 2006 Olympic Games, the 2006 NBA Finals, the 2006 Super Bowl, and the 2006 U.S. Open Championship.

Awards

• Tyler received an Emmy nomination for his score for Last Call (2002).
• Tyler has twice won the International Film Music Critics Association Award for Constantine and The Final Cut.
• Tyler's scores for Darkness Falls and Children of Dune both won the BSOSpirit Award for Best Score of the Year in their respective categories in 2004.
• Tyler won the Cinemusic Award in 2002 for Best New Composer of the Year along with Frailty winning Best Thriller Score of the Year.
• Tyler was nominated for Discovery of the Year at the 2002 World Soundtrack Awards.

Filmography

• *scores for which soundtrack albums have been released

References

External links

• Official website
• Brian Tyler (composer) at the Internet Movie Database
• Brian Tyler at Allmusic