Welcome to the official web site of Grammy and multiple Emmy Award winning composer Brian Keane.
Multiple Emmy award winning composer, Grammy award winning producer, and noted guitarist Brian Keane has scored literally hundreds of films and television shows, and produced over 150 albums, mostly from his studio in the woods of Connecticut. His music has been hailed critically as "indelible and breathtaking" by the Los Angeles Times, "piercingly beautiful" by The New York Times and "masterful" by Newsweek, and he has been called a "musician's musician" by Downbeat, a "composer's composer" by The Hollywood Reporter, and “one of the most impressive musicians of the decade” by the editor of Billboard magazine.
Among Brian’s many enduring credits are “New York” the epic, multiple Emmy winning Burns documentary series that is among the biggest selling documentaries of all time, “Long Journey Home” which won a Grammy for it’s soundtrack in collaboration with The Chieftains, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello, Sinead O’Connor, and others, the classic “Winter’s Solstice” record series for Windham Hill which he produced, and his ground breaking ethnic recordings with middle eastern musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek, Irish musician Joanie Madden, and many others.
The first quarter of 2024 was spent working on Ric Burns' epic "Dante: Inferno to Paradise", a critically acclaimed four hour film about Dante's life and times, as well as his 700-year-old classic work "The Divine Comedy". The special aired on PBS, and is currently available to stream on Apple TV+, PBS, and others. A soundtrack album was released on Valley Entertainment/Warner Brothers distribution, and is available to stream on all major music streaming services.
German record label owner and producer Eckart Rahn, whom Brian has worked with for over 30 years beginning with the soundtrack for "Suleyman The Magnificent" (which introduced Turkish master musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek to his worldwide musical audience), asked Brian to create a synthesizer arrangement (in the tradition of the now almost 60-year-old "Switched-On Bach" records introdced by Wendy Carlos) of one of Johann Sebastian Bach's most noted contrapuntal works, "Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offer)" (BWV 1079), composed late in his life. Bach's son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, had been employed as a harpsichordist in the palace of Frederick the Great (himself a flautist and musical connoisseur). Frederick invited the “old Bach” to come to the palace and display his legendary skills in improvisation and counterpoint on the palace instruments.
Upon the older Bach’s arrival on May 7, 1747, Frederick the Great presented Bach with a difficult, chromatic theme that he had composed himself, and challenged Bach to improvise it into counterpoint. Bach would improvise the theme in three parts that day, but when Frederick challenged Bach to improvise it in 6 parts on the spot, Bach chose to return to Leipzig four months later to present a collection of 16 pieces weaving Frederick the Great’s challenging chromatic theme throughout each, including Ricercare 6, in which he met Frederick the Great’s challenge to weave the difficult counterpoint with 6 lines simultaneously. Bach called the collection Musikalisches Opfer (Musical Offering). The work is considered among Johann Sebastian Bach’s greatest accomplishments in contrapuntal composition.
Brian decided to take on the project for Eckart, both as a gesture of appreciation for their long friendship that had created so many memorable recordings, and because he found Bach’s Musical Offering BWV 1079 so intriguing. Brian wanted the project to convey the emotional intent, beauty, and genius of Bach’s original writing, without compositional embellishment, in a powerful new way that musically justified the undertaking.
Brian brought on Emily Wong, principal pianist for the American Ballet Theatre, and veteran of top-level classical music perfomances, to enter the Musikalisches Opfer into Pro Tools (using a MIDI keyboard). He then layered synthesizers for each voice of the counterpoint to develop, in a new way, the attack, sustain, and ambience of the original intruments in Bach's compositional intent to create a unique reimagining of Musikalisches Opfer to be released on Eckart's record label, Celestial Harmonies, by the end of this year.
Brian is currently working on orchestral adaptions and commissions of compositions of his own, and there is talk of two more episodes of Ric Burns' classic documentary on the history of New York City. Additionally, Ric Burns' critically acclaimed 2020 documentary "Oliver Sacks: My Own Life" (which Brian scored; soundtrack album available from Valley Entertainment/Warner Brothers) is currently enjoying a resurgence in art cinemas, as the original release unfortunately coincided with the COVID pandemic and ensuing lockdown.
Please enjoy this streaming link (click on image below) to DANTE Inferno to Paradise Part 2: Resurrection, the full soundtrack album, and feel free to share it with your friends!
button below to listen to a Brian Keane music sampler
