Multiple Emmy, Peabody, and Academy Award winning composer, Grammy award winning producer, and world renowned guitarist, Brian Keane has scored literally hundreds of films and television shows, and produced over 180 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 creative and refreshing musicians of our time” by the editor of Billboard magazine.

Credits
Brian’s many enduring credits as a music composer include Ric Burns Emmy winning expansive history series debuting in 1999, with episodes added as late as 2026, New York A Documentary film, seen by over 60 million viewers, it is one of the biggest selling documentaries in the history of television, with a ten volume complete music soundtrack on Valley Entertainment, “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.

In a career that spans over five decades, Brian has been widely recognized as one of the founding pioneers of music in documentary film, having scored his first Academy Award nominated documentary in 1981, Over the Years, Brian Keane’s work has been enormously influential in history, contemporary, and sports documentaries, in ethnic music production, and as a composer and guitarist. Brian has scored the music to a huge number of Emmy, Peabody, and Oscar winning documentaries and films for nearly every network, and a who’s who list of award winning directors including Barry Levinson, Stephen King, Bill Moyers, Sheila Nevins, Susan Lacey, Judy Crichton, Ric Burns, Henry Hampton, Betsy West, Thomas Lennon, Ruby Yang, David Fanning, Ross Greenburg, Mark Shapiro, George Roy, Joe Lavine, Fritz Mitchell, and many others.

Early Years
Born January 18th 1953 in Philadelphia to a musical family, Brian's mother Winifred Keane was an avant garde composer, and his father, George Keane, a gifted Irish tenor and visionary philanthropic investment strategist. Brian's brother Geoffrey and sister Sheila were musical as well. Brian played his first professional job as a rock n’ roll musician when he was still a sixth grader in Westport, Connecticut, where he grew up. He studied with educators George Weigle, Bob Genualdi, John Hanulik, and privately with the late John Mehegan, a Julliard professor who was a pioneer in jazz and music theory,and then with Czech composer Karel Husa at both Ithaca College, and Cornell.

Brian began his professional career as a guitarist playing in clubs and as a sideman, rising to become a world class jazz guitarist, performing with many of the Jazz greats of the 1970's and 1980's, including Paco de Lucia, Joe Pass, Bobby McFerrin, touring worldwide and recording for several years in a guitar duo with Larry Coryell, and eventually becoming a Blue Note recording artist.

In the mid 1970's, while primarily working as a guitarist, Brian began producing recordings at his childhood friend Gary Scovil's recording studio in Norwalk Connecticut. It was while working there in the late 1970's that he met husband and wife directors Jim Burroughs and Suzanne Bauman. In 1981 Brian would score his first documentary Against Wind and Tide: A Cuban Odyssey for them, which was nominated for an Academy Award. A few years later Brian scored Suzanne Bauman’s film, Suleyman the Magnificent, which was released as a soundtrack CD on German Publisher, Eckart Rahn's Celestial Harmonies label, and a series of recordings followed leading to Brian becoming a top record producer of ethnic music and new age recordings for a variety of major record labels. He would go on to become a Grammy-winning record producer, and one of the most successful producers of the nineties, producing more than three dozen Billboard charting recordings in their various categories.

Award Winning Works
In 1988 Keane scored “Chimps: So like us” the Emmy winning and Academy Award nominated documentary that put Jane Goodall’s work in the public eye, for Oscar winning directors Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman. Their offices happened to be one floor down from acclaimed film maker Ric Burns, who, after producing the classic “Civil War” documentary with his brother Ken, 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 since, spanning over three decades.

In the early 1990’s, Brian worked with ABC news in developing music for the first prime-time contemporary news documentary series “Turning Point”, and later for "Hopkins 24/7" and "NYPD 24/7". Keane helped pioneer a path for the musical approach to contemporary documentaries which is still influential today.

Keane’s other documentary credits include several films for Oscar winning director Thomas Lennon including the Peabody and Emmy winning “The Battle over Citizen Kane” and the Academy Award winning film with co-director Ruby Yang “Blood of the Yingzhou District”, the multiple award winning films “The Donner Party”, “The Way West”, "Ansel Adams", and “Andy Warhol”, and his work on the multiple award winning PBS series “American Experience”, “American Masters”, “Frontline”, and “Nova”.

In 2012, Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson and Emmy-winning producer Tom Fontana lured Brian out of a brief retirement to score the dramatic television series "Copper", which became the highest rated show in the history of BBC America. Brian was nominated for a Prime Time Emmy award for "Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music" to "Copper". Other films Brian scored after "Copper" include "It's Time", for which Brian received his 20th Emmy nomination, the 75th anniversary of the American Ballet Theatre, "The Pilgrims", "Slim Aarons: The High Life", "The Chinese Exclusion Act", the award-winning ESPN sports series "Saturdays In The South", "One Day At Disney", "Very Ralph" for HBO (which won a Grand Award for his music at the 2020 New York Festival Awards), the award winning mini series "Dante: Inferno To Paradise" and "Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" which debuted to sellout crowds at the Telluride and New York Film Festivals, got picked up for theatrical distribution by Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist Films, and was given a 100% rating by both audiences and critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Ric Burns brought back 2 more 2 hour episodes of his famed New York a Documentary Film series in 2026 Episode nine “Shadows of there Past”. and Episode ten “The future of cities", 23 yeas after the Emmy winning 9/11 episode aired in 2003, and Brian’s iconic soundtrack was put out as a ten volume complete set on Valley Entertainment. Brian also contributed the music to “The Vanishing Song” a tribute film to Jane Goodall directed by Oscar winner Ruby Yang in 2026.

Music Library
In 2014, Brian developed a search system for his vast musical catalog of over 18,000 compositions, spanning his 40-plus year career. Because Brian was a pioneer in documentary film scoring, he had owned most of the music he composed, and by the time the industry realized that there was any long-term value, Brian was established as the top documentary composer in the entertainment industry. Because of this, Brian continued to lease most of his scores, and own them, throughout his career. After developing this library into a searchable on-line database for film and television professionals in 2014, along with employees Jonas Friedman, Jeff Frez-Albrecht, and Jamie Bahr, the library became active in 2015. Brian Keane’s on-line searchable music library has been growing rapidly since its inception among high end television and film editors, and network film producers alike.

Personal Life
With the exception of the two years spent scoring "Copper", Brian "semi-retired" in 2008. However, creating music is not exactly like a normal job. Brian has continued to be active, composing scores to various projects, giving lectures, mentoring other composers (some of whom have become quite successful in their own right), and, in 2017, following the death of his one-time musical collaborator Larry Coryell, played some tribute concerts, which led to Brian performing occasionally again. In 2023, Brian put together the remnants of a band that he had formed to get out of a recording contract with Blue Note Capitol records in 1993 after Brian’s composing and producer career became to in-demand to handle the time demands of being an artist as well. Brian called the band, The Bebop Headbangers from Outer Space., and the record was called “Attack of the Human Brain”. The original band featured the late Victor Bailey on bass, the late Rodney Holmes on drums, David Mann on saxophones, Randy Brecker on Trumpet, and with guest appearances by Tony Kadleck, and Freddie Hendrix on trumpet, Steve Davis on trombone, Ken Gioffre, Lawrence Feldman, and Ada Rovatti on tenor saxophones, micro synthesist Eduard Train, bassists Dave Anderson, Kevin Jenkins, and Leo Huppert. and drummers Thierry Arpino, Joe Bonadio, and Joel Rosenblatt.


In 2018, Brian sold out Carnegie Hall in a concert with long-time collaborator and Middle-Eastern master musician Omar Faruk Tekbilek. They followed that up with a sold-out European tour in 2019. With financial success, Brian has had more time for artistic musical projects, not necessarily commercially-inspired. Brian completed his 1984 symphony electronically in 2017 "A Speck In Time", and has helped out musician friends with their projects as well. In 2019, Brian staged a sold-out tribute concert with over 70 musicians, and made a documentary about his long-time friend and collaborater, guitarist Charlie Karp. Brian has also managed to find more personal time in his "semi-retirement" period.


Since 2020 Brian has written several symphonic works performed by major orchestras. In 2025, Brian set aside the entire year to record 3 symphonies including A Speck in Time, (which includes a movie being made with the symphony as the sole soundtrack), 1993’s A Middle Eastern Symphony, and 1998’s Edge of Discovery recorded with top musicians and engineers from around the world.

Brian’s studio is located in his first home in Monroe, CT which he bought in 1985, and converted into a recording studio in 1993. Brian married Susan St. Louis in 1987, who had a son, Chris Laskowski, born in 1971. They had their first son, Wylder, in 1987 and a second son, Dylan, in 1988. They lived in the studio at first (garnering its name “Little Big Feet Studios”), after which the family moved to Newtown in 1994, where they lived until Brian and Susan divorced in 2010. Brian commuted to the studio from Newtown for 15 years but eventually moved back in 2009. He has shared his home with actress, theatre producer and former high school classmate Bonnie Housner Erickson since 2015.

Although Brian toured throughout the world in his early career as a guitarist, and used outside studios until 1993 and after, most of Brian's composing career has taken place at his studio in the woods of Connecticut, near friends that he has known for nearly 70 years in some cases.