Chris Bacon

If you're looking for Mormon musical summit meetings, consider all those Sundays when Kurt Bestor and I home taught the Bacon family in the early '90s: prolific media composer Kurt joining university music professor me on monthly visits to a large, disciplined gaggle of musical wunderkinds on strings, winds, voice, and keyboards, all parented by a pair of ace musicians whose commercial-meets-classical instincts—not to mention home recording studio—raised the bar for Provo, Utah.  We didn't need to talk music much.  It was deep in the pulse of every sentence.

At BYU Christian Bacon quickly earned a top saxophone spot in the jazz program as he veered more and more into composition.  But commercial music or concert music—which program? I helped woo him into the latter and kept pushing him to wrap up the degree and go to USC, since he wanted to write great film soundtracks and had more knack for that than any of his colleagues.  The musicality was inbred, but its flowering awaited the rigor of tough coursework and pro-level networking.

Tying up his diplomas with ribbons of pioneer work ethic, he's gone on to make his mark. A deep but elegant one.  A sheaf of major release films and award-winning television series in his portfolio, Chris composes to order in a nimble amalgam of old-school craftsmanship and new school spontaneity—that knack I spoke of.  Few film composers create scores that stand on their own so well amidst the brimming sonic landscape of latter-day America.

Opening March 10, Chris' latest collaboration with Danny Elfman (following Netflix's Wednesday series) undergirds the Sam Raimi-produced sci-fi/dinosaur movie 65 (starring Adam Driver).  In what appear to be the most raucous yet grandiose horror scenarios he's yet undertaken, Bacon widens his sonic palette even further. - Michael Hicks (65 opens in theaters March 10, 2023.)