Bruce Babcock
Bruce Babcock was born in Pasadena, California (1951). He began his musical studies on clarinet and later concentrated on jazz alto saxophone before making the transition to full-time composer. He was a member of the All-California High School Orchestra and studied clarinet with George Rowe, retired clarinetist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and saxophone with William Calkins. He holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in music composition from California State University, Northridge. At CSUN, his teachers included Aurelio de la Vega, George Skapski, Daniel Kessner and Frank Campo. While still a student, Bruce Babcock won a Young Musicians Foundation (Los Angeles) competition for his "Music for String Orchestra." Other concert works have been performed by the Kansas City Symphony "Orchestral Sketches"), the San Francisco Chamber Players ("Initiation" for tenor and chamber orchestra, on texts of Rainier Maria Rilke, featuring Jonathan Mack of the Los Angeles Music Center Opera) and in such venues as UCLA's Royce Hall and the Bing Theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is a former member of the faculties of Santa Barbara City College, Ventura College and Moorpark College. Bruce Babcock has spent most of his career writing music for television and film. He learned his craft from such Hollywood luminaries as Hugo Friedhofer, Earle Hagen and Paul Glass. He received six consecutive Emmy nominations between the years 1990 and 1995, winning in 1992 in the category of outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic underscore) for an episode of "Matlock." He received his seventh and eighth Emmy nominations for his work on the animated series "Casper" in 1997 and 1998. A member of BMI, Bruce Babcock has received eight BMI TV/Film Awards for his television music, and has contributed orchestrations to such films as "King Kong," "Die Hard," "Lethal Weapon," and " Spider-Man 2." His most recent concert commissions include "Tribute," for Twelve Horns, which has been performed by the Horn Ensembles at both USC and Eastman, and "5/4/4," for the Los Angeles Trombone Quartet. His TRIO for clarinet, viola and piano, was commissioned by Pacific Serenades in 2003. He was composer-in-residence of the 2005 Santa Barbara Chamber Music Festival, which premiered two new commissions entitled "the present moment," for string quartet, and imagined/remembered," for cello and piano. His latest work, "irrational exuberance," for alto saxophone, cello and piano, commissioned by Los Angeles Philharmonic member and UCLA professor Douglas Masek, premiered at the Idyllwild Arts center in Southern California in August of 2005.