Brian Tyler

Brian Tyler

Brian Tyler is an American composer and film producer who is known for his fast paced, exciting scores for action movies, thrillers, and video games. Tyler won the 2013 Composer of the Year Award by Cue, and is also a regular guest composer of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Brian Tyler was born on May 8, 1972 in Orange County, California. Tyler, from a very early age, was heavily influenced by his grandparents. His grandfather, Walter H. Tyler, was an Academy Award winning director of art, and his Grandmother was an esteemed pianist. Tyler was extremely versatile and over time he taught himself to play different musical instruments, some sources state that today, Tyler can play about 31. He studied music at the University of California, Los Angeles first at the undergraduate level and then at Harvard for his master’s degree.

Robert Kraft, who served as President for Fox Music from 1994 to 2012, took a keen interest in Tyler’s early works. He encouraged Tyler to take up film scoring as a career after seeing Tyler’s works for short feature films. In 1997, Tyler kick started his career by writing the score for “Bartender”, an independent Gabe Torres Film. He then wrote the score for “Six String Samurai” in 1998. In 1999 and 2000, he was commissioned by seven separate entities to compose soundtracks for their films, and finally in 2001, Tyler composed the score for what he called his ‘big break’, “Frailty”. The score for “Frailty” led to Tyler being discovered by Academy Award winning director William Friedkin; Friedkin asked Tyler to compose the score for “The Hunted”. The score won a World Soundtrack Award in 2002, thereby exposing Tyler’s talents to the world. Tyler then composed music for the “Star Trek: Enterprise” series and for Frank Herbert’s “Children of Dune”.

By the end of 2003, Tyler had begun composing for big budget films. In 2004, he composed the score for Nick Ham’s “Godsend”, and in 2005, Tyler composed the score to Bill Paxton’s “The Greatest Game Ever Played”. In 2005, he collaborated with Klaus Badelt to compose the score to the $230 million blockbuster, “Constantine”. Arguably, his most popular score was for Justin Lin’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”, which hit No.1 on the iTunes sales chart. The success of the score also led him to score the next movie in the Fast and the Furious label, “Fast and Furious”. In 2009, he composed for “Dragonball Evolution” and “Middle Men”, followed by another big budget film, “The Final Destination”.

Tyler is now a popular figure in the Marvel movie lineup. In 2013, he scored for two Marvel movies, “Iron Man 3” and “Thor: The Dark World”. He is also set to compose for “Avengers: Age of Ultron” which is set to be released in Summer 2015.

Tyler is also fairly prolific in the video game world. In 2010, he composed the soundtrack for NetDevil’s multiplayer game “Lego Universe”. For Electronic Arts, Tyler composed the score for the 2011 Need for Speed release, “Need for Speed, The Run”. For Infinity Ward, Tyler composed the score for the highly anticipated First Person Shooter, “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3”. Tyler also composed for “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and “Far Cry 3”.