Born in April of 1957 and raised in Red Bank, New Jersey, Young was a jazz drummer before
he ventured into film music. He first realized he wanted to write music for films when he heard "The
Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann" for the first time. He earned a B.A. in Music from Hampshire College
in Massachussetts, and continued with graduate studies at North Texas State University, which is
renown for its music department. He then moved to Los Angeles to study with legendary film composer
David Raksin (The Bad and Beautiful, Laura), who deeply influenced him. His first scores
were for student films, but he quickly moved on to horror genre. His first album release was for his
score for The Power in 1980, and Young now has countles dozens of albums to his name.
While at UCLA Film School in the early 1980's, Young met several young filmmakers with whom he would
eventually collaborate for feature films. One student film that Young had scored,
The Dorm that
Dripped Blood, was picked up by a studio and became the composer's first taste of Hollywood.
Within a few years, Young's ability to effectively score horror films gained him the attention of
both studios and directors, including Clive Barker. With Barker, Young would win a Saturn Award for
his trend-setting score for
Hellraiser II (Hellbound). Much of Young's consistent work in the
horror genre was by his own talents and choice, although he would branch out in the 1990's to other
genres of film.
After working with Young on
Copycat, director Jon Amiel insisted on continuing the collaboration
into the comedy and action genres (with
The Man Who Knew Too Litle and
Entrapment),
leading Young to an opportunity to show a different side of his talents. In the middle to late 1990's,
Young would begin to receive award recognition from his rights representative, BMI, as well as Golden
Reel and Emmy awards and nominations. It was at this time that perhaps his finest score,
Murder
in the First was written. Young was tempted, however, to test the waters in the television
industry, and in the process of scoring his first four television films, Young was nominated twice
for an Emmy award.
It was shortly thereafter, at the turn of the century, when Christopher Young would break into major
arthouse feature assignments. Director Norman Jewison presented Young with
The Hurricane in
1999, which led to a recommendation to work with Barry Levinson for
Bandits in 2001. That
same year, Young would receive his first Golden Globe nomination for
The Shipping News. He
would also venture into a collaboration with DJ Paul Oakenfold for a trance/orchestral score for
Swordfish. In the following years, Young would continue to branch out into various genres
while also keeping one foot in the horror scene.
When not scoring, Young maintains a fascination with horror film memorabilia, extending from classic
horror genre autographs to a vast collection of jack-o-lanterns and masks. He also utilizes his free
time to assist students in learning how to break into the business, just as he had twenty years
earlier. For a decade, Young has taught film composition at the Film and Television program at USC
in Los Angeles, and he has been a popular and regular lecturer in UCLA's film scoring program as well.
He has also served in a more political position, as a board member for the Film Music Society. He is
married to Anne Atkins Young, who was the music supervisor for the original
Hellraiser film in
1987. Young wishes to someday write a book on the history of cold cereal.
Christopher Young in 2003
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