About
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. He was one of the original keyboardists 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.
Gary's main music composition teacher was Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Karel Husa, whom he studied privately with for four years. That classical training provided the groundwork for Gary to create several on-line music composition courses, including the highly rated and very popular course “Music Scoring 101-Creating Moods and Styles” for MacProVideo.
A visual artist since childhood, Gary is also a magic realist painter. His love for bold art led him to have some memorable conversations with his other childhood idol, R. Crumb. Gary’s paintings have been exhibited in the 13th and 14th Annual BLAB! Shows, curated by BLAB! Magazine founder, Monte Beauchamp. Gary’s art and music career were the subject of a six page profile in the August 2018 edition of PIKCHUR Magazine.
This 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.
“Gary is definitely a talented composer with refreshing, unusual ideas. I can recommend him very highly.”
– Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Karel Husa
A few links the whole family can enjoy:
Interview about Gary’s score for the TV series "Captain Power"
“Composing Adventure” featuring a new interview with Gary