Michael Giacchino is an Academy Award-nominated American soundtrack composer who has composed several multi-award winning scores for many popular movies, television series and video games.

Michael Giacchino's melodies have enhanced entertainment of all genres, including television shows, feature films, animated shorts, video games, and stand-alone symphonies with themes that run the gamut from driving, melancholic, and suspenseful to serene. Viewers of the hit ABC TV shows "LOST" and "Alias" are well acquainted with his work and have been enjoying his compositions for several seasons.

Members of the Entertainment Community have grown to appreciate Giacchino's musicianship and artistry as well. He recently garnered an Oscar Nomination for his second collaboration with writer/director Brad Bird on Pixar's Ratatouille, and earned an EMMY award for his work on "LOST" in 2005.

In early 1997, Giacchino was approached by the newly formed DreamWorks Studios to score their flagship PlayStation video game, based on Steven Spielberg's summer box office hit "The Lost World." "The Lost World" featured the first original live orchestral score written for a PlayStation console game and was recorded with the members of the Seattle Symphony.

Since "The Lost World," Giacchino has gone on to compose many orchestral scores for DreamWorks Interactive, including the highly successful "Medal of Honor" series, a World War II simulation game created by Steven Spielberg. It was his work on such games that led to his involvement in the ABC series "Alias," created by writer/director JJ Abrams. The producers of the show contacted the composer because they were fans of the games he had worked on.

"Alias," in turn, became a gateway of sorts for his work with Pixar on The Incredibles. At the age of ten, Giacchino spent the majority of his time split between the movie theater and his basement, where he made many 8mm stop-motion animated films using his brother's ping pong table as a sound stage for his miniature movie sets. His favorite part of the process was actually finding music to put to the films. He remembers listening to the Star Wars soundtrack as a kid, and being completely amazed at the way the music was telling a story. It was an instant awakening as to what the various instruments of an orchestra could accomplish.

His boyhood fascination with movies led him to film school at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he majored in film production with a minor in history. Upon graduation, Giacchino began composition studies at Juilliard School at Lincoln Center while working day jobs at both Universal and Disney's New York publicity offices. Two years later, he was transferred to the Disney Studios in Burbank to work in their feature film publicity department. During that time, the aspiring composer accepted a job with Disney Interactive as an assistant producer, managing and producing titles for the division. He devoted his evenings and weekend to practicing and studying music.

On May 13th, 2000, the Haddonfield Symphony premiered Giacchino's first Symphony, "Camden 2000." The concert took place at the Sony E-Center in Camden, and proceeds went to benefit the Heart of Camden, an organization dedicated to rebuilding inner city Camden housing. The symphony, which played to a sold-out crown, celebrated the birth, past greatness, and future of hope in the city of Camden, N.J.

In May of 2001, Giacchino's score for the DreamWorks Interactive game, "Medal of Honor Underground" won the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences award for "Best Original Score." Soon afterwards, he wrote new scores for both "Medal of Honor Frontline" (which also won a "Best Original Score" from that same group), and "Medal of Honor Allied Assault," also recorded by the Seattle Symphony.

The popularity of ABC's "LOST" and the music that Giacchino created for the show brought about the premiere of "The LOST Symphony" in September of 2007. The symphonic piece, which incorporated themes and passages written by Giacchino for the hit TV show, was performed by the Honolulu Symphony and conducted by Tim Simonec and Giacchino in a multimedia concert at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Emmy Award-winning actor Terry O'Quinn, who plays the show's character John Locke, joined the musicians on stage to provide narration throughout the concert.

Giacchino's more recent projects include Pixar's Ratatouille, for which he received an Oscar Nomination in 2008 and a GRAMMY Award for Best Score Soundtrack Album in 2007, The Wachowski Brothers' Speed Racer, Mission Impossible 3, The Incredibles, The Albert Brooks written and directed Looking for Comedy In The Muslim World, The Family Stone, and Disney's Sky High. Next up, Giacchino will write the scores for Star Trek directed by JJ Abrams, Pixar's UP directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, and director Brad Silberling's Land of the Lost starring Will Ferrell.

Share Link: