Joseph Trapanese is a composer and music producer known for integrating his extensive classical training with his skill producing electronic music. He has crafted uniquely hybrid and inventive scores for Tron: Legacy (with Daft Punk), Oblivion (with M83), The Raid (with Mike Shinoda), No One Will Save You, Arctic, Straight Outta Compton (Black Reel award, 2015), The Divergent Series’ second and third installments Insurgent and Allegiant, The Greatest Showman (with John Debney), The Witcher, Shadow and Bone, and interactive projects for Disney Animation, EA, Lucasfilm, and Ubisoft. He has also arranged and produced songs for The Greatest Showman (Grammy award, 2018), Divergent, and Jason Bourne, and collaborated on albums and live events with Aloe Blacc, Amon Tobin, Dierks Bentley, Dr. Dre, The Glitch Mob, Haim, Janelle Monae, Kelly Clarkson, M83 (Grammy nomination, 2013), Moby, S. Carey, Sohn (World Soundtrack Award nomination, 2015), Zedd and many more.
In 2022, he was commissioned by NASA to write the theme for the 2027 Mars Sample Return mission, and in 2021 he contributed production and arrangements (alongside Adam Blackstone) for the Super Bowl National Anthem. Trapanese’s choral composition New Collective Consciousness, commissioned and performed by Tonality, was featured as the opening of Bjork’s 2022 west coast concert tour, and addresses the climate crisis through intense harmonies and dissonances, striking choral textures, and unique text drawn from Greta Thunberg’s 2019 speech at the United Nations.
Trapanese has conducted the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, AUKSO Poland, and numerous festival and studio orchestras around the world. He completed his bachelor’s degree in composition at the Manhattan School of Music, and later an M.A. in Music for Visual Media at UCLA, with support from the Henry Mancini fund. His tutors included Giampaolo Bracali, Bruce Broughton, Paul Chihara, Roger Bourland, Jack Smalley, and Martin Bresnick, and he also engaged in brief studies with Louis Andriessen, Aaron Jay Kernis, Julia Wolfe, Mark Snow, and Ira Newborn. From 2008 to 2011, Trapanese taught the Electronic Music and Composition curriculum at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music.
