Faculty

Michael McCuistion is an Emmy Award-winning composer who writes for film, television, multimedia and the concert hall. Nominated for 10 Emmy Awards and five Annie Awards, he also composed and conducted the music for the Oscar-winning short film My Mother Dreams The Satan’s Disciples In New York.

McCuistion holds a bachelor’s degree with highest honors in classical music composition and a master’s certificate in film music composition. He studied with film music legends Jerry Goldsmith, Irwin Kostal, Henry Mancini and David Raksin, receiving multiple scholarships and academic honors throughout his education.

Early in his career McCuistion orchestrated on many top Hollywood films, working with A-list film composers such as Carter Burwell, Danny Elfman, Elliot Goldenthal, Michael Kamen, Howard Shore and Shirley Walker. This led to McCuistion’s first composing assignment for Batman: The Animated Series followed by writing for many other iconic superheroes, resulting in music for Teen Titans, Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel’s Avengers Assemble and Young Justice, among many others.

McCuistion’s collaboration with the world-famous Griffith Observatory produced an original score and soundtrack for their planetarium production “Time’s Up”; this live multimedia presentation has been experienced by millions of visitors in the observatory’s Samuel Oschin Planetarium. His concert work “Jazz Moods” (for clarinet choir) premiered both in the United States and in Assisi, Italy at the International Clarinet Association’s ClarinetFest Convention. His music has been performed live in concert, often with McCuistion conducting, at the FMF Festival in Ubeda, Spain, Poland’s Krakow Film Music Festival, and twice at different editions of Tenerife’s Fimucité Festival in the Canary Islands.

McCuistion’s music can be heard in the recent movie Babylon 5: The Road Home, now streaming worldwide; soundtracks of his music from this and many other productions are currently available on all platforms. He has been interviewed extensively and participated in many different entertainment industry film music panels at various conventions. He has lectured on the art and craft of film music at the University of Southern California, Columbia College Chicago and Hong Kong Baptist University. A founding partner of Dynamic Music Partners along with Lolita Ritmanis and Kristopher Carter, he has recorded film, television and concert works in studios throughout the world. He presently resides in Los Angeles.