John Frizzell

Composer John Frizzell has enjoyed a successful career writing music for film and television, showing a versatility that allows him to suit a broad range of genres and moods. An early advocate of using electronic tools in screen composition, his music shows he's comfortable blending digital and organic sounds to best serve the story at hand. Frizzell is as skilled at scoring historical dramas (2003's Gods and Generals) and period family stories (2005's The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio) as he is at creating backdrops for edgy thrillers (2014's The Loft) and animated TV comedies (Duncanville and Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus). Born in New York City in 1966, John Frizzell was introduced to music through choral singing, performing in the children's chorus with the Metropolitan Opera Company and Paris Opera Company at the age of ten. (His singing career came to an end when his voice started to change when he was 12.) He next learned to play guitar and performed in several rock bands. With time, Frizzell's interest moved from rock to jazz; he studied at the Manhattan School of Music as well as the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. During his years in academia, he was introduced to the celebrated jazz guitarist Joe Pass; Pass became a mentor to Frizzell and encouraged him to hone his talent for composition. After he completed his studies, Frizzell began working for producer and instrumentalist Michael Mainieri, an early authority on the Synclavier and other digital synthesizers and sampling keyboards. His work with Mainieri led Frizzell to work with another electronic music pioneer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, creating orchestrations for the popular miniseries Wild Palms. In 1995, Frizzell scored a pair of made-for-TV movies, Whose Daughter Is She? and It Was Him or Us, and the following year, he added theatrical features to his filmography, writing music for Beavis & Butt-Head Do America. Frizzell's career got a significant boost when he began working with award-winning film composer James Newton Howard; Howard helped Frizzell guide his career, and he would work with Howard on the movies The Rich Man's Wife (1996) and Dante's Peak (1997), with Howard writing the main themes for both pictures while Frizzell scored most of the rest of the film. His work on Beavis & Butt-Head Do America also sparked a creative relationship with Mike Judge, and he would go on to score Judge's first live-action feature, Office Space (1999), 27 episodes of the series King of the Hill, 16 episodes of Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus, and the streaming feature Beavis & Butt-Head Do the Universe. In 2001, he wrote music for the cult favorite Josie & the Pussycats, and he maintained a busy schedule, scoring 16 feature films between 2001 and 2006, as well as episodes of the TV series Star Trek: Enterprise and Reunion. He continued to work frequently through the rest of the decade, with thrillers dominating his projects, including The Reaping, 100 Feet, The Lodger, and The Roommate. From 2010 onward, Frizzell focused on television projects, with his credits including The Secret Circle, The Following, Stalker, Conviction, Tell Me a Story, and Space Force. He still found time to work on features, including the documentary Zappa (about Frank Zappa's life and music), the horror opus The Possession of Hannah Grace, and the 3D horror reboot Texas Chainsaw. Frizzell has also helped to educate the next generation of film composers, serving as a lecturer at the Sundance Music Lab and his alma mater, the Thornton School of Music.
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