Friday Talks with Deschutes Public Library

A Composer’s Voice Across Mediums: Film, Games, and the Concert Hall

Friday, July 17, 10:00–11:30 a.m.

DESCRIPTION

As a composer working across concert music, film, television, theme parks, and video games, Oregon-born Chris Thomas moves between mediums that demand fundamentally different approaches to how music functions. A concert work stands on its own, a film score serves the story, and a video game score must respond in real time to player choice.

In this talk, Chris pulls back the curtain on how he writes for these different contexts, exploring what changes from medium to medium—and what doesn’t. Through stories from his own work, he traces how musical ideas take shape, evolve, and are shaped by collaboration, constraint, and purpose.

But beneath these differences lies a harder truth: writing for any medium isn’t just about mastering its rules. Technique can be learned. Trends can be studied. What actually determines whether music works is something less tangible—the composer’s ability to recognize their own voice, trust it, and bring something honest into the work. Across every medium, the most important throughline is not the format—it’s the composer’s voice.

ABOUT THIS PRESENTER

Chris Thomas, an Oregon native born in Pendleton and now based in Bend, is a world-renowned composer for film, theme parks, and video games, and a TED speaker. Raised in a musical family, he began playing piano as a toddler and chose the cello in elementary school—an instrument he still plays today with the Central Oregon Symphony. His early fascination with composers like Beethoven led him toward composition at a young age, supported by an unusual gift later identified as synesthesia, in which sound and color are experienced together.

He went on to study music composition and political science at the University of Oregon before being selected—one of just 12 out of 2,500 applicants—for the USC Scoring for Motion Pictures program. While there, he contributed to projects including Lost and began building a career composing for film, television, video games, and theme parks.

Chris has won a Hollywood Music in Media Award, an American Prize in Composition, and a Global Music Award. He has written music for several Emmy-nominated films, and for the film Woman Rebel, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. In television, he works as a composer, orchestrator, and conductor for productions such as Lost, CSI: NY, Found, The Kardashians, and Vice. In the realm of video games, Chris has worked with Fortnite, The Void (4D Games), Kitaru, and Hyde’s Haunt & Seek.

His work can be heard in theme parks around the world, including Evermore Adventure Park, Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm, Queen Mary Chill, Dreamland Theme Park (UK), Los Angeles Haunted Hayride, and Seismique. His concert music has been performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and the Hollywood Bowl, and his Malheur Symphony was the subject of his 2019 TED Talk. His works are published with Alfred Music, Walton Choral, Wingert-Jones Publications, and Carl Fischer Music.

Now living in Bend, Chris continues to travel regularly to Los Angeles while remaining active in Central Oregon’s music community. He notes that performing as a cellist with the Central Oregon Symphony continues to shape his work as a composer.

LOCATION

Deschutes Public Library at Stevens Ranch, Community Room 2, Bend