Jeff Beal - House of Cards: Season 4 [2CD Music From the Netflix Original Series] (2016)

Trumpeter and composer Jeff Beal's music, much of it done for film and television enterprises, encompasses threads of jazz, classical, and new age sounds, and his best compositions feature a logically arranged synthesis of both improvisatory and composed elements. Beal was born June 20, 1963 in Hayward, California, and began studying the trumpet in the third grade, writing his first long-form composition while he was a student in high school, developing the merging of improvisation and classical composition that would become his professional signature. He studied composition and trumpet at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, graduating in 1985. Beal moved to New York City, where he recorded his first album, Liberation, for Island Records, the first of several solo albums. Relocating to Los Angeles, his skills at writing accessible orchestral compositions that allowed room for improvisation found him working increasingly in film and television scoring, beginning with his work on Ed Harris' directorial debut, Pollock, in 2001. His many credits in the field include the main theme for the USA Network series Monk, as well as scoring work on HBO's Carnivale and Rome, Ridley Scott's CIA series The Company, and for numerous films, including Appaloosa, No Good Deed, Little Red Wagon, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Wilde Salome, among others, as well as working on the Golden Globe-winning series Ugly Betty and Netflix's House of Cards television series. Beal conducts and orchestrates his own scores, and often performs on them. ~ Steve Leggett