CHRIS BROWN - Producer and Composer

Chris Brown is an in-house producer and composer at West One Music Group – a global music agency consisting of eight independent labels - where he has worked since 2013.

Chris began working with orchestras during his time at the Royal Academy of Music. He was first hired as an assistant to British film composer James Seymour Brett, and went on to orchestrate cues on NBC's ‘Crusoe' and Sony Animation's 'Planet 51’.

An introduction to West One Music Group co-founder Richard Harvey in 2006 led to him being heavily involved in film and production music work. This involved music editing and producing the music for a number of films including the Thai blockbuster 'King Naresuan', directed by Prince Chatri. Through this work, an introduction to Hans Zimmer led to his working at Zimmer's Remote Control Studios in LA and assisting on a number of Hollywood films before bringing this range expertise to West One Music Group. Chris is now Label Manager for Fired Earth Music, West One Music Group’s LA-based boutique trailer label.

NICK LEONARD - Creative Sales & Music Manager The Nordics, Baltics, and UK

A music industry professional with 13+ years’ experience and a background in commercial music and events, Nick started his career as a booking agent at X-Ray Touring,representing commercial artists such as Groove Armada, The Swedish House Mafia and Moby. Nick then began working at Ministry of Sound manging their International Tours & Event division hosting events at ADE, WMC as well as festivals across Europe.

Nick now heads up West One Music Group’s Creative Music teams supporting clients across Advertising, Film, TV, Radio and Video Game sectors. He brings in-house produced repertoire, off- the-peg production music as well as commissioned & bespoke compositions to his much loved client network across Europe.

Most recently Nick has worked on sonic branding for the Danish broadcasting channel TV3, advertising films for McDonalds UEFA Women’s Euros Football Tournamentand a trailer for David Lynch’s 4K release of Mulholland Drive.

During the festival, Chris and Nick will appear in the following talks:
November 30
18:30-19:30 Introduction to production music, and a music libraries' role for scoring to film by Nick Leonard, Chris Brown (West One Music) (Nordic Hotel Forum, room Arcturus).

December 1
10:30-12:00 Mentorship sessions for composers, producers, music composition teachers with composer Chris Brown (West One Music) and music manager Nick Leonard (West One Music). Topic: Production music.

Mentoring session with music manager Nick Leonard and composer Chris Brown (West One Music)
Friday, December 1
10:30-12:00.
SIGN UP FOR THE MENTORSHIP SESSION

Structure
The mentoring session is a small group format with mentor + 5 participants (+ an optional moderator). It consists of:

• Short introduction and overview of the work and experience by the mentor
• Short introductions by the participants (brief materials will be made available to the mentor beforehand)
• Q&A with some pre-agreed focus topics (will be required to suggest by the participants when applying + adjusted and confirmed with the mentor or Michael Pärt). The entire session is participant-led: it is based on the participant's particular profiles, prepared topics and proactive questions.

Participants:
5 participants will be chosen through an application process. The target profile is both composers who are interested in creating music for film and TV as well as music composition teachers who want to gain a better understanding on the processes of how to best coach young composers and music business professionals.

Topics:
The session will serve as a practical beginner’s guide to starting out with composing production music.

• Starting out as a production music composer. What are the trends and where are the gaps in the global music market? What genres are least saturated and could be the best ones to start off with as a new production music composer?
• Adapting your composition style to production music. The mentors will individually coach one composer in how to adapt their composition style to fit with the requirements of production music. Based on existing samples, we’ll look into what elements could make this production music, what could be added or change to make it more production-music friendly and how sticking to best practices in production music can provide an advantage to film composers.

The general goal is to give the participants as clear and realistic as possible picture of what the career models and workflow of a film composer can be like.