Biography

2021 Hollywood Media in Music Award winner, composer and conductor Brian Ralston has spent the past 19 years creating compelling, heart-pounding, uplifting, and beautifully melodic tracks that delight and inspire audiences. His creative gifts lend themselves to an extremely rich and beautiful sound that can not only be seen, but felt throughout his works.

Ralston's early aspirations for scoring films began in junior high school when he began re-scoring films using an old keyboard and VHS player. He developed a distinct personal sense of musical compositions, finding favorites in film scores such as drama fantasy "Willow", action-thriller "The Rocketeer", and science-fiction film "Krull", all scored by American composer James Horner. Horner's ability to create a captivating, infectious melody through his interpretation of what was on screen, inspired Ralston to pursue his career in film music composition.

After studying film music composition and conducting at the University of Arizona under film/TV composer Jeff Haskell, Ralston completed graduate level work in the Scoring for Motion Pictures & Television program from the University of Southern California in 2002. His studies and musical background sparked an extraordinary desire to enhance the heart of a film's narrative with the language of music.

Ralston is best known for his work on the film score for (Crooked Arrows (2012)) (20th Century Fox), the first mainstream Hollywood movie about lacrosse, starring Brandon Routh ("Superman Returns") and Gil Birmingham ("Wind River", "Hell or High Water"), directed by Steve Rash ("Buddy Holly Story", "Can't Buy Me Love"). The score reflects richly thematic melodies set against the thrill of victory and the pains of defeat in the action-packed sports drama, which has won him much praise within the film community. Of Brian's Crooked Arrows score, Daniel Schweiger of Film Music Magazine says, "It's this kind of constantly surprising depth and sense of sports adventure that will hopefully let "Crooked Arrows" fly Ralston straight, and deservedly into the big leagues with his terrific score that's seemingly shot out of from nowhere."

More recently, Ralston worked on the intimate western inspired score to the dramatic love story (Being Rose (2017)), starring Cybill Shepherd, James Brolin, and Pam Grier which hit theaters nationwide January 2019. A soundtrack on the Notefornote Music label is available. Brian has also recently completed scoring the Chris Chan Lee directed Sci-Fi drama (Silent River (2021)) set to hit the festival circuit in late 2021.

Ralston lives with his wife, Heather and daughter, and makes time to give back to future generations of composers by serving as an instructor for the UCLA Film Scoring program. He also hosts the SCOREcast podcast for film composers. An industry insider show discussing all facets of the entertainment industry from a film composer perspective that averages 50,000 unique downloads per episode.
- IMDb mini biography by: Brianralston.com

Plays the trumpet and piano, though trumpet is his primary instrument. He is also a classically trained conductor.

He was a featured trumpet soloist in the 1998 Holiday Bowl Halftime show.

Graduate of the USC Film Scoring Program where he studied with composers such as Christopher Young, Elmer Bernstein, David Raksin, Joe Harnell, Jack Smalley, George Burt, David Spear, David Bell and the late Buddy Baker.

Brian's entire score for the feature film Don't Fade Away was composed, recorded and mixed into the film's sound mix in less than one week.

Brian teaches the Electronic Composition for Film and Television class in the film scoring certificate program at UCLA Extension in Los Angeles, California.