Austin-based composer-bandleader-improviser Graham Reynolds creates, performs, and records music for film, theater, dance, rock clubs, and concert halls with collaborators across a multitude of disciplines.
Called “the quintessential modern composer” by the London Independent, Austin-based Graham Reynolds is anything but your stereotypical composer, more a fully qualified mad scientist of music and creative blur (he once smashed up a piano in the desert).
Yet he is also Richard Linklater’s (‘Slacker’, ‘Dazed and Confused’, ‘School of Rock’) go-to guy, who said of Reynolds’ ability to score any scene that “he can do anything”. Reynolds has scored films such as ‘Before Midnight’, ‘Bernie’ and ‘A Scanner Darkly’, which was released on vinyl for the first time on Fire in 2017.
Reynolds also creates music for theatre and dance. Along the way he’s grabbed a few gongs on the mantelpiece, he digs crime jazz – nods to the Duke, loves a minor country chord, even wrote a concerto about cog wheels and crank handles.
He likes the tension, as he circumnavigates the boundaries of what and how we should be listening – who else could make ‘Music For Forklift Danceworks’, or re-imagine Hitchcock’s ‘The Lodger’, a tale of murder and suspense set on the foggy streets of ripper-terrorised London, as part of Fire’s Re-Imagined soundtrack series in 2020?
His movie and TV credits are regularly cult and quirky, a cavalcade of offbeat moments that jar purposefully next to his pieces for Ballet Austin’s ‘Grimm Tales’ and his continuing work on a bi-lingual opera… gotta fill your time. All this while a multimedia collaboration with Kronos Quartet’s Jeffery Ziegler ‘The Sound Of Science’ tours internationally.
In 2023 Graham Reynolds joined by classically trained Italian vocalist Marta Del Grandi revealed their first collaboration with the release of new single ‘Linger In Silence’, a bonafide Psych Folk Ambient Opus fitting in somewhere between Vince Guaraldi and Jon Brion and ‘Music of Egon Schiele’ era Rachel’s. More news coming soon.
“A fantastic player that adds a muscular edge to the rich tones he pulls out of his instrument… capable of stretching all manner of sonic boundaries” Jazz Times
“For director Richard Linklater alone, Reynolds has been heartsick and wistful (Before Midnight), tense and suspenseful (A Scanner Darkly), jaunty and blithe (Bernie)…” Texas Monthly
“A rare talent” Pop Matters