Stephen James Taylor

Filmography

Taylor has written the scores to most of the feature films of Charles Burnett including the award winning, To Sleep With Anger (Sony Pictures), The Glass Shield, Selma, Lord, Selma, Oprah Winfrey's, The Wedding (TV miniseries), and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation for which he won best score at the Kuala Lumpur International Film Festival. For director, Robert Townsend (actor), he has scored several projects including Holiday Heart for Showtime, and the recent feature film about the life of Sonny Liston, Phantom Punch (film), starring Ving Rhames. Other credits include the HBO movie, BOYCOTT, directed by Clark Johnson, the Disney animated theatrical release, Teacher's Pet (film), as well as a number of television, cable and direct to video movies including the 2016 film Southside With You, which dramatizes the first date between President Barack Obama and his future wife, Michelle Robinson, and the documentary Maya Angelou And Still I Rise.

Television

His prime time music career began in 1981 when he joined the composing team of Mike Post and Pete Carpenter writing and orchestrating for such shows as Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Magnum, P.I. and Hunter. He co-wrote the theme to ABC’s Gideon Oliver in 1988 and in 1993 he was hired by David Chase (who later went on to create and produce The Sopranos) to write the music for the 2nd season of NBC's I'll Fly Away resulting in Taylor's 2nd Emmy nomination. Another historically significant network show was Under One Roof for which he wrote the main title song and underscore for the first few episodes. This CBS show was the last primetime black family show on a major, non-cable network.

Commissions

In 1996 he was commissioned to write and conduct an orchestral suite, with Mark Watters, for the Atlanta Symphony to perform at the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics for which he received a BMI Olympic Tribute Award. In 2007, he was also hired to create world music for the lobby of the World of Coca-Cola (museum) in Atlanta as well as do some surround sound design for one of the permanent installations there.

Animation

Taylor’s experience in writing music for animation began with Hanna Barbera and Ruby-Spears in 1980, runs through Spielberg's Tiny Toon Adventures in the late 1980s and several series for Disney TV animation in the 1990s such as Jungle Cubs and Raw Toonage, up through the present with the recent release of the Black Panther for Marvel. He was hired in 1991 to write a new theme for G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, for which he also provided the score for 2 seasons. He composed the underscore and main title song for all 3 years of Mickey Mouse Works (later incorporated into the newer show, House of Mouse) with a 12 piece band that included homemade instruments and fretless guitar. This show represented the first time the core Disney characters (Mickey et al.) had been animated for television in 50 years.

Study

He received a bachelor's degree in music composition from Stanford University, after which he continued his studies in classical composition and conducting privately with Henri Lazarof, Dr. Albert Harris (composer), and microtonality with Erv Wilson. In recent years he has been expanding his music composition skills into the visual arena via a multimedia programming language known as Max/MSP. As a "music oriented content provider", he has redefined himself as a 21st-century composer/artist.