BIOGRAPHY

gary-guttman-biography

“He’s the best brother I’ve ever had.”
—Award-winning Travel Journalist and Author, Peter Guttman

For over thirty years, Gary Guttman has been a working composer in Hollywood. His music has been performed and recorded by The London Symphony Orchestra (at Abbey Road Studios), The Toronto Symphony and The Seattle Symphony. He’s composed musical scores for television, IMAX films, theater and large theme park attractions.

Gary discovered his composing talents early in life. At age 16, after several years of composing, he was awarded the Orchestration Scholarship at Chautauqua Institution in New York. At this renowned artist colony, Gary was fortunate to have his composition performed by one of their orchestras. One year later at Ithaca College, he commenced his four year studies with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Karel Husa.

Soon after graduation, Gary was invited out to Los Angeles by famed jazz musician Tom Scott (whose credits include Paul McCartney, Steely Dan, and Barbara Streisand). A few months after arriving in L.A., Gary started playing keyboards for the pop group Missing Persons and can be heard on their hits Destination Unknown and Mental Hopscotch. That allowed him to spend some quality time with his childhood idol, Frank Zappa. The Missing Persons recording sessions were produced by The Beatles and Elton John engineer Ken Scott.

Shortly after leaving Missing Persons, Gary started work at Landmark Entertainment Group in Hollywood where he spent almost two decades as their senior staff composer. Some of his work for Landmark included the scores to the futuristic sci-fi television series Captain Power, the IMAX film Race for Atlantis and the themed attraction James Bond 007: License to Thrill for MGM. After leaving Landmark Entertainment, he began his freelance career where he added shows such as 20/20, The Today Show and Primetime to his list of credits. Gary has written music for CBS, NBC, ABC, Universal Studios, Warner Bros, IMAX Films, Caesar’s Palace Las Vegas and Sesame Street, among others.

Thanks to his intensive classical training, Gary also created several on-line music composition courses, including the highly rated and very popular course “Music Scoring 101-Creating Moods and Styles” for MacProVideo. He also participated in the CD release of his soundtrack to the television series Captain Power, which was immediately chosen “pick of the month” at Film Music Magazine. In addition, Gary scored Michele McGovern’s music video “Pavane” which went on to win “Best Music Video” at the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival.

This past year, Gary was featured in the new book “Composing Adventure”, by Aaron Lam. A collection of new interviews with Hollywood film composers, including Bill Conti (the “Rocky” movies), Bruce Broughton (“Silverado”), Dennis McCarthy (“Star Trek” T.V. series) and Christopher Young (“Spider-Man 3”).

Interested collaborators can contact Gary here.