CLIFFORD J. TASNER Composer

Clifford J. Tasner’s commitment as a film composer is to enliven and support the story on the screen. He is dedicated to bringing an original sonic landscape to his collaboration with a director in order to support that director's unique vision. His palette ranges from the subdued and suggestive to the thunderous and electrifying. Tasner lets his inspiration and passion pour out to serve the picture and allow the story to fully emerge..

 

Tasner's technical expertise and creative insight give him the flexibility to make the most of any size budget. His extensive experience working with music for orchestra has taught him to be both artful and appropriate. Tasner’s facility at creating scores for real acoustic instruments adds astonishing dimension to the dramatic unfolding of the story and substantial production value as well. Whether writing for a small ensemble as in IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU or for the full orchestra employed to score RUNNING WITH ARNOLD, Tasner uses his extensive understanding of orchestral instruments to enhance the power of the narrative.

 

There’s usually not much time between the day a picture is locked and the day the dialogue, music and sound effects must be mixed. During that mad scramble, Tasner effectively gets the music onto the page and in front of musicians in a recording studio.

 

Tasner studied composition with T.J. Anderson (himself a student of Darius Milhaud) while at Tufts University where he graduated magna cum laude. His senior thesis, ODYSSEUS, was a two-and-a-half hour pop opera based on Homer’s The Odyssey that was performed as the spring musical. Tasner then did post-graduate work in Musical Theater at NYU before moving to Los Angeles to explore opportunities in the Film Music Industry. Tasner completed a certificate program in Film Scoring headed by Don Ray at UCLA-Extension. It was there that he met his friend and mentor Conrad Pope. Conrad Pope is a brilliant composer as well as Hollywood’s top orchestrator. Tasner and Pope have worked together on a wide variety of projects since 1992.

 

Tasner has become a better composer by working in every capacity in the business; as a music copyist, a transcriber, a proofreader (proofreading a number of scores that Conrad Pope orchestrated for John Williams) and an orchestrator. Tasner has orchestrated on the last two HARRY POTTER Films, the last two HOBBIT films, LIFE OF PI, ARGO and GODZILLA among many others. He has used every gig as an opportunity to master his craft as a composer – to learn what to do or not do in film. His lengthy apprenticeship has taught him how to effectively use the orchestra to help a director to tell a story; how to use a small ensemble to create a big sound; how to deliver a powerful, effective score given the budgetary strictures that directors delivering their first or second feature films encounter.

 

In addition to composing for film, Tasner is active in Musical Theater. He has been part of the Academy of New Musical Theater since 2009 and is currently developing a work with acclaimed, award-winning company "Deaf West," a company of deaf and hearing actors that produced the Tony Award winning adaptation of BIG RIVER and the more recent SPRING AWAKENING.

 

Tasner also composes chamber works and Jewish liturgical pieces. And since 2000 Tasner has been writing and producing the songs for THE BILLIONAIRES political street theater collective. He has engaged some of Hollywood’s top session players and singers to use humor to get people to think about the pressing issues of the day and the growing disparity between the top 10th of 1% in this Country and everyone else.

 

He is also a member of the West Coast Composers’ forum, which gets together a few times each year to create concerts of new chamber music in Los Angeles.

 

Tasner’s score to VERBATIM: THE FERGUSON CASE will be heard when the film screens at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2016.