Music by Max Steiner

Today, few music professionals are as esteemed as Conrad Pope is for his first-hand, comprehensive command of the many facets of film. Among his peers, he is not only regarded as a “musician’s musician,” but as an imaginative musical dramatist who makes essential contributions to the emotional core of every film: its music.

Pope was classically trained at the New England Conservatory, Princeton University and in Europe. After receiving the George Chadwick Medal, the school’s highest honor, upon his graduation from the New England Conservatory, Pope went on to study at Munich’s Hochschule für Musik and at Tanglewood before completing graduate studies at Princeton University.

When he arrived in Hollywood, the industry’s top musical professionals soon recognized his uncanny ability to recreate different styles of music, leading to many arranging assignments of source music, as well as orchestrating and ghostwriting for many major motion pictures.

Pope’s passionate commitment to telling a film’s story with persuasive and compelling music has made him one of the most in demand scoring professionals. Such canny top guns as John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, James Newton Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Danny Elfman, John Powell, Hans Zimmer, and Mark Isham have all called upon his gifts as an arranger, orchestrator and conductor.

The iconic hits and contemporary classic films Pope has contributed to are too numerous to list. A small sample includes: three installments of the Star Wars films (The Phantom Menace, The Attack of the Clones, The Revenge of the Sith) the Harry Potter series, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Trek: Nemesis, the Matrix films, Memoirs of a Geisha, Julie and Julia, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Christmas Carol and The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Along with his orchestrations and arrangements, Pope is one of the most exciting, original voices in contemporary film scoring. He has worked on films of every genre, such as The Wolfman, No Reservations and Seabiscuit.

In addition to working in Hollywood, Conrad is also active in the contemporary music world, and his work has garnered international attention: his “Sonata for Violoncello Alone” was the American entry in the Paris Biennale, and his “Summer Sketches” appears regularly on orchestra concerts throughout the United States. In spring of 2006, standing ovation and critical acclaim greeted the premiere of Pope’s orchestral work “Purple Prose” with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Eckart Preu.

Among the awards his work has received are the prestigious Leonard Bernstein Fellowship and Fulbright Fellowship, while grants include: the New York State Arts Council, the MacDowell Foundation, the Alice Ditson Foundation, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, the Whiting Foundation and Meet the Composer. Pope was also awarded First Prize by the Pacific Composers Forum Composition Competition.