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Bio
I’m a husband, father, composer, and producer. I started writing in 1986, producing a collection of simple pieces that represented each of my friends. Later, I began developing my composing and orchestration, eventually widening my focus on recording and production as well. I’m currently writing my second CD, and working with some fellow composers to develop SCOREcast, an online community and resource web site companion for the SCOREcast podcast, for aspiring and veteran film score composers.
About
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I'm a composer and producer of orchestral, new age, film, and Christian music. I believe music says things that can't be expressed in words, that it communicates on a deeper level and in more complete fashion than simple words. My goal is to demonstrate this. I have a particular love for film music because the pairing of music with a good film facilitates emotion and depth of feeling that takes much longer to develop in real life.
I've just started working on a new CD titled "Shelter", which will be orchestral arrangements of hymns that have become significant to me growing up. Shelter will be released in late 2009 - early 2010.
I started out very young as a music lover, picking out harmonies to music playing on my parents' radio at 5 years of age. I became interested in piano by listening in on my sister's piano lessons, often repeating the lessons by ear after she finished at the piano. I was greatly influenced by music in the churches I attended throughout my childhood, learning music theory beginning in children's choir.
Even early on, I was fascinated by movie music. I remember my big "epiphany" clearly: one specific note in the opening music of Chariots of Fire. My parents took my brother, sisters, and me to see it in the theatre. If you've seen the opening scenes of the movie, you know the note I mean. It was at that very moment I realized the power of music, its ability to draw out emotion, and to help tell stories- or to tell their own stories. It was at that point that I decided I wanted to write music.
In 7th grade I received an electronic keyboard as a gift, and I began writing short tunes, passages, eventually gathering the courage to dive into writing a full song. It spilled out magically, and I recorded it in my room on a portable tape recorder.
In high school I took up percussion, and I became fascinated with how deceptively simple drums were to play, yet how a musician could spend his or her life learning to play more perfectly. Many of my compositions reflect my love for percussion and rhythm. During high school I also began to develop a deeper appreciation of purely classical music (as opposed to scores written just for movies).
My musical influences include Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Igor Stravinsky, as well as more modern composers such as Mark Isham, Ray Lynch, and Hans Zimmer. |



James Olszewski













