Brian Keane
Brian Keane is a multi Emmy and Grammy award-winning American composer, music producer, and guitarist. In a career that has spanned more than four decades, he has composed the music for hundreds of films and television shows and produced over a hundred record albums. Keane is known as a world class guitarist, a musical pioneer in scoring music for television documentaries, a leading record producer of the 1980s and 1990s, and one of the most prominent and influential composers of his era.
Among the over four hundred films that Keane has scored, well over one hundred are award-winning, including eighteen Emmy winners for best documentary or series , nine Peabody Award-winning films, six Oscar nominated films, and one Academy Award-winning film. Keane has won four Emmy Awards for his music, among twenty nominations.
Keane's notable documentary scoring credits include Ric Burns' Emmy and Peabody Award-winning films ', The Donner Party,, and, Thomas Lennon's Peabody Award-winning and Oscar-nominated film The Battle Over Citizen Kane, Lennon and Ruby Yang's Academy Award-winning The Blood of Yingzhou District, ' for multiple Emmy award-winning director and HBO. Keane's first Oscar nominated film came with 1981's '. Brian scored the first prime-time feature documentary series on network television with ABC News' Turning Point. He is also known for scoring multiple award-winning episodes for the long running PBS series American Experience and ', among many other credits.
In the sports world, Keane scored the music to some of the top sports documentaries in television history, including such Emmy-winning sports classics as ', ', and ', and was the music behind HBO Sports for more than a decade when under Ross Greenburg, the network reigned as the dominant award-winning network for sports documentaries. Keane has also scored a number of Emmy Award- and Peabody Award-winning sports documentaries for ESPN, CBS, and others. The 2019 ESPN series ', directed by , won two in 2020. In 2001, Brian was the first and only composer in Sports Emmy Awards history to sweep all of the nominations for music in a single year.
As a record producer, Keane has produced over three dozen Billboard charting albums with over 150 commercial albums in total. He is particularly known for producing ethnic and new-age music. Keane's many credits as a producer include Winter Solstice for Windham Hill Records, the Grammy Award-winning Long Journey Home: The Irish in America soundtrack album for RCA Records and his influential work with middle eastern musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek.
As a guitarist, Brian Keane played on well over a thousand recordings, and performed on concert stages throughout the world, from Montreaux to Carnegie Hall, as a headlining jazz virtuoso, and in duo with Larry Coryell, Joe Pass, Paco De Lucia, and Bobby McFerrin, as well as a sideman for many others.
Keane's music has been performed by symphony orchestras throughout the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Pops, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. He has also scored several feature films and dramatic television shows, working with such notable directors as Academy Award winner Barry Levinson, Emmy winner Tom Fontana, and Stephen King, among many others. Among his many series, Keane scored the Levinson/Fontana television series , which debuted in 2012 as the highest rated television series in the history of BBC America. In 2013 Brian Keane was nominated for a Prime Time Emmy Award for Copper in the category of Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music. Much of Brian Keane's 8000-plus composition catalog, spanning over four decades, has been computer categorized as a searchable library, and leased to several networks who continue to license and reuse Keane's music on an ongoing basis in television, films, and online programming today.
Biography
Early life
Brian Keane was born January 18, 1953 in Philadelphia. His mother Winifred Keane is an avant garde composer, and his father George F. Keane, while being a successful business man, was also an Irish tenor. Brian's brother Geoffrey Keane and his sister Sheila are both musical as well. Brian grew up in Westport, Connecticut and played his first professional job as a rock n’ roll musician when he was still a sixth grader. He studied privately with the late jazz pianist and Juilliard educator John Mehegan, and then with Czech composer Karel Husa at both Ithaca College, and Cornell where he went to school.Professional career
Guitarist
Brian began his professional career as a guitarist playing in clubs and as a sideman, and eventually became a world-renowned jazz guitarist, performing with many Jazz greats of the 1970s and 1980s, including touring worldwide and recording for several years in a guitar duo with Larry Coryell, and eventually becoming a Blue Note recording artist. Brian played on hundreds of records, commercials and film scores as a guitarist beginning in the 1970s and has performed or recorded as a guitarist with artists as diverse as disco singer Vicki Sue Robinson, entertainer Eartha Kitt, the rock group Wishbone Ash, jazz bassist Eddie Gómez, jazz fusion group Spyro Gyra, flamenco guitarist Paco Delucia, blues artist Taj Mahal, cajun icon Buckwheat Zydeco, classical clarinetist Richard Stoltzman, jazz saxophonist Marion Meadows, folk legend Pete Seeger, singers Linda Ronstadt, Bobby McFerrin, The Clancy Brothers, John Sebastian, and many others.Composer and Record Producer
1980s
In the late seventies, still making his living primarily as a guitarist, Brian met film directors and , while working in his childhood friend 's recording studio in Norwalk, Connecticut. In 1981, Brian scored his first documentary for them, , which was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary in 1982. That early success led to several more scoring opportunities for Brian in the eighties, an era where few documentaries were scored with original music. Keane's prominence as a composer rose quickly, even as he continued to tour as a guitarist in a duo with Larry Coryell, and eventually as a solo artist with the release of his first solo CD Snowfalls in 1986. In 1987, Keane's score to the documentary , was discovered by German publisher who heard the documentary on television, and decided to release a soundtrack CD of Brian's score on his label. The record, among the first to harmonize traditional Middle Eastern music, would form the first of a series of enduring, and culturally important collaborations with middle eastern musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and the success of that CD would eventually lead to Brian becoming a prominent producer of ethnic and New Age recordings, both for Celestial Harmonies and for a variety of major record labels.In 1989, Brian Keane scored the music to , the HBO Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary that helped introduce the public to naturalist Jane Goodall. The film was made by Oscar-winning directors Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman whose New York offices happened to be in the same building, one floor down, from the acclaimed film maker Ric Burns. After producing the classic Civil War mini series with his brother Ken Burns in the late eighties, the highest rated television documentary series in history, Ric went on to work with Brian on the 1990 award-winning documentary Coney Island. Brian has scored every one of Ric Burns' award-winning films ever since, and their ongoing collaborations span almost three decades. By the end of the 1980s, Brian Keane had already established himself as the leading pioneer in scoring documentary films with the Hollywood Reporter calling him "the John Williams of documentaries".
1990s
The early 1990s saw Brian's composing career rise dramatically in stature with the multiple-award-winning General Motors' Playwright's Theatre series for Nederlander television, which ran for four years on A&E, the Emmy- and Columbia Dupont-winning miniseries and for the prominent film maker Henry Hampton, the highly influential Ric Burns film The Donner Party which won a Peabody in 1992, and the Emmy- and Peabody-winning film , for Oscar-winning director Thomas Lennon. Brian scored many award-winning films for the PBS history series American Experience, working with producer Judy Crichton, directors , , , and others. Brian also scored several award-winning specials for National Geographic working with director Oren Jacoby, and again with the . In addition, Brian was hired by ABC News in the early nineties to be the composer for the first prime time, hour-long, news documentary series Turning Point. Working with producers and , Turning Point would become the first of several news documentary series Brian scored for ABC News in the 1990s, and the musical approach developed for ABC News has been adopted in many subsequent news documentary series. Because of demand, Brian began hiring orchestrators, many of whom would go on to become successful in their own right like Michael Bacon, , Don Grady, , and others.Keane's prominence as a record producer was also rising with the release of the critically acclaimed, and commercially successful early nineties albums. for , , and with Omar Faruk Tekbilek, 's , for Hearts of Space, and featuring Irish whistler Joanie Madden, among others. In 1992, Brian produced the Grammy nominated comedy album featuring the comic, turned United States senator, Al Franken. Also in 1992, following the success of Brian's production of jazz saxophonist Nelson Rangell's CD for GRP records, working with executive producers and Danny Weiss, Brian was signed by legendary music executive Bruce Lundvall, and became a Blue Note recording artist with his debut release of . However, despite the successful debut of Common Planet, Brian resigned from his career as a recording artist. By that point, Brian was the father of young children and already in demand as a record producer and composer. He would let go of his career as a touring guitarist from that point on, but continue to record as a guitarist on records and soundtracks.
By the mid 1990s Brian Keane was firmly established as a leading composer in documentary film, and a prominent producer of ethnic and New Age music simultaneously. The later 1990s brought Keane widespread success as a record producer with over three dozen Billboard charting albums for Windham Hill, RCA, Sony, Hearts of Space, and other record labels. Brian produced several successful Windham Hill records including the billboard chart topping CD's , , and several CD's in the hugely popular , and series. Brian also signed to a deal with Windham Hill. Brian also produced several critically acclaimed ethnic records including: , and for Senegalese artist , and featuring Linda Ronstadt and . In addition, Brian became well established in producing prominent Irish artists including several RCA records for the female Irish traditional group Cherish The Ladies, Riverdance fiddling sensation Eileen Ivers, and others. In 1998, Brian collaborated with Chieftains founder Paddy Moloney composing and producing the music for the Disney and PBS joint production . The RCA soundtrack, featuring the Chieftains, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, and others, won the Grammy Award for best traditional folk album in 1998.
In 1997, Brian started working with Hollywood agent Bruce Teitell, and scored several feature films including The Vernon Johns Story: Road to Freedom with James Earl Jones, Stephen King's Night Flier for New Line Cinema, and Illtown for director Nick Gomez. Brian's continued scoring documentaries as well, with the award-winning Burns mini series and Shanachie double CD soundtrack , Thomas Lennon's Oscar-nominated and Peabody Award-winning The Battle over Citizen Kane, the award-winning PBS Nova series , and more award-winning American Experience documentaries for its new executive producer . American Experience won Prime Time Emmy awards for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series in both 1998 and 1999. Also in 1999, Brian scored the multiple-Emmy-winning Ric Burns series, which after the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001, became among the biggest selling documentary series of its time.
In 1996, Brian was asked to score Spirit of the Games, a documentary on the subject of the Olympics by the Emmy-winning director for HBO Sports. It began a long relationship with HBO Sports and a very successful run of sports documentaries including the Peabody-winning films , , , and , among others, all scored in the late nineties as part of a new series of documentaries entitled . Brian also scored HBO's Inside the NFL during that period.
2000s
By the year 2000, Napster and other downloading entities were beginning to take over record distribution, and several long established record companies went out of business. In the space of just a year, the record producing business that Brian Keane had enjoyed and accumulated over the previous decade and a half collapsed, along with most record companies. Brian was still among the most widely recognized composers for documentary film however, and by then, he had extended his notoriety to become a leading composer in the world of sports. In addition to continuing to score Emmy-winning documentaries like Ric Burns, Bill Moyers' collaborating with Chinese musician George Gao, and several more award-winning American Experience episodes for its new executive producer , Keane composed the music to many classic Emmy- and Peabody-winning HBO sports documentaries in the early 2000s including , , , , and . Brian worked with producer Ross Greenburg, directors , , and other Emmy-winning sports documentarians, and he composed a number of Emmy-nominated and Peabody-winning films for ESPN as well such as , , , and David Halberstam's for directors , , Neil Leifer, and others. Brian also scored several documentary specials for CBS Sports including, for which he won a music Emmy for his collaborative score with Cajun musician Buckwheat Zydeco.In 2001, Brian Keane became the first, and only composer in the history of the Emmys to sweep all the Emmy nominations for music composition in a single year, and he won Emmys in 2002, 2003, and 2004 for music composition as well. In 2005, Brian had three more Emmy nominations for music composition, and scored all five Emmy nominated films for best sports documentary that year, including the best documentary Emmy-winning Rhythm In The Rope for ESPN. In 2006, Brian scored Thomas Lennon and Ruby Yang's The Blood of Yingzhou District, which won an Academy Award for best documentary: short subject. In addition, Brian scored the Emmy- and Peabody-winning Ric Burns films for American Masters, and featuring Christopher Plummer Al Pacino, Liam Neeson, and others. In 2007, Brian received Emmy nominations for his scores to HBO's , and Johnson McKelvey's . In addition to all this, Brian Keane's compositions were being used in several major feature films, and being adapted for symphony orchestras throughout the world, including the London Symphony Orchestra, The Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, The Boston Pops Orchestra, and the Colorado Symphony Orchestra to name a few.
Brian enjoyed a nonstop series of successes in the entertainment business for over two decades, but by 2008, the era of reality TV, digital media, and multi channel cable television was coming of age. The high end documentary was falling out of favor due to the expense of making them. A 2007 writer's strike crippled the film and television industry. Budgets for live musicians were becoming a thing of the past, and the abundance of new cable channels meant smaller budgets and lower standards. Emmy judging was no longer monitored, and although Brian continued to score Emmy nominated films such as Ric Burns' for American Experience, HBO's , and , as well as the 2011 Academy Award nominated documentary The Warrior of Quigang for Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon, Brian decided not to work as much, even considering retirement, preferring to have a period of time that was more balanced with his private life. That period would only last a few years.
2010s
In 2012, after scoring Death and the Civil War, which won the Erik Barnauw Award and received an Emmy nomination for outstanding non-fiction program, Keane got a call from Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson to score the dramatic television series Copper, about an Irish cop set in 1864 New York. The Levinson Fontana produced series , and garnered Keane another Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Main Title Music. Copper was renewed for a second season in 2013, with the soundtrack, ', released via Valley Entertainment.Beginning in 2014, Keane returned to a "semi-retired" schedule. He launched his music library “ScoreToPicture.com” which was leased to several networks and movie studios, and continued scoring music at a more relaxed pace. He continued scoring more Emmy award-winning shows for ESPN, including Fritz Mitchell's ', which garnered Brian his 20th Emmy nomination for music, and worked on several other projects including the unusual festival film about the history of the National Enquirer, a commission to compose music for the 75th anniversary of the American Ballet Theatre, the joint BBC and PBS special of , a world music symphony commission resulting in finishing his first symphony “A Speck of Time”, he produced an early music soundtrack to the 1922 Douglas Fairbanks Sr. silent film of , and composed the score to an important film about racism and American history for the PBS, Ric Burns and Li Shin Yu film . In 2018 Brian returned to sports with the 12-hour series Saturdays In The South for ESPN. In 2019, he scored a debut feature documentary for the new Disney+ streaming service called One Day At Disney, Very Ralph, a documentary biopic about Ralph Lauren for multiple Emmy Award-winning director Susan Lacy, and , which debuted to sellout crowds at the Telluride and New York Film Festivals in 2019, and is slated to be distributed by Kino Lorber Films in association with Zeitgeist Films for theatrical release.
Keane also returned to performing on guitar occasionally in 2017 following the death of his one time duo partner Larry Coryell, playing numerous tribute concerts at first, and eventually playing a wide variety of concerts, selling out Carnegie Hall in April 2018 with Omar Faruk Tekbilek, and touring internationally again, after almost 35 years, in 2019.
2020s
In 2020, Brian helped make a film about his long-time friend and accomplished guitarist Charlie Karp. The documentary features a concert Brian produced in Charlie's honor, and is called Charlie and Us: The Charlie Karp Story.
In addition to performing some concerts, Brian continues to work on composing music with his long time engineer and others, helping out promising musicians with their music, and occasionally making appearances as a guest lecturer for universities and film festivals. Many of Brian's former employees, interns, and students have gone on to substantial careers of their own.