Composer Jonathan Elias has made his mark in the film and television industry through commercials, to which he introduced film scoring and sound design techniques, thus transforming the genre.
Elias launched his compositional career with music for movie trailers, most notably Alien, Blade Runner, Gandhi, and Back to the Future. He soon began scoring television commercials and went on to work on the scores for such films as Chaplin, Jagged Edge, A View to A Kill and 9 1/2 Weeks, the music for the Columbia Pictures logo and the original MTV logo. He continues to regularly score commercials for the likes of Coca Cola, Nike, Apple, Lexus and Levis.
In the mid to late 1980s, while producing albums for Duran Duran, Grace Jones and Yes among others, Elias produced his first solo album, Requiem for the Americas (Enigma/Capital 1989), a rock/classical fable and tribute to the spirit of North American Indian culture. In this project he was inspired by the photography of Edward S. Curtis, whose photographs document turn-of-the-century Native Americans and their way of life.
The theme of diverse cultures struggling to survive in a clashing and shrinking world reverberates in Elias second solo album, "The Prayer Cycle" (Sony Classical 1999), which grew out of a period of contemplation for the composer. The work is a response to his dark vision of humanity's future, "Prayer is what we turn to when the only thing we have left is hope," says Elias. Scored for orchestra and chorus, the cycle consists of nine meditations in which the original texts in English have been reinterpreted in many other languages by the artists. It is performed by a diverse array of artists, including Alanis Morissette, Perry Farrell, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, classical guitarist John Williams, Malinese musicians Mah Damba and Salif Keita, Tibetan vocalist Yungchen Lhamo, the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza and the late Pakistani Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
In 2004 Elias was nominated for a Grammy for his Classical Americana album, "American River" (Decca/Universal Classics 2004) which combined his hypnotic composition with spoken word readings from Johnny Cash (his final recording), Roseanne Cash, Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson.
In 2008 he will release his next album, The Prayer Cycle II.
He has scored over a dozen films including the Sundance Film Festival hit "A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints" (2006) and Marcus Nispel's "The Pathfinder" (2007) for Twentieth Century Fox.
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