Originally hailing from Athol, Massachusetts, Patterson’s life long passion for music started with his late father, Ronald Patterson, a multi-instrumentalist musician. As a child, Shawn was exposed to television shows whose music scores (and sometimes songs) became engrained in his head: ‘Star Trek’, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, ‘Lost In Space’, and ‘Starsky & Hutch’. But it was his introduction to John Williams’ legendary scores of ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Superman’ that initiated Patterson’s profound life long journey to become a score composer and a part of cinematic storytelling through music.

Over the years, Shawn has composed score and written songs in an enormous wide range of styles for a number of award winning episodic television shows and films such as: ‘El Tigre; The Adventures of Manny Rivera‘ (directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez, The Book of Life), ‘Robot Chicken‘ (which earned him multiple ASCAP Awards), and (along with Kevin Shinick) was a principle songwriter for the Warner Brother’s hit series, ‘Mad‘. During this time, Patterson began to write and create his first full-length stage musical (both book and song), ‘It Came From Wasilla‘ – a dark comedy about friendship through the delicate subjects of politics and religion.

In 2013, Patterson was approached to write a pop song for Warner Brother’s upcoming animated feature, ‘The Lego Movie.’ Details were sparse and he was given only a song title and some very general lyric direction. Shawn spent about six days writing the music and lyrics in his studio, bringing in a session vocalist, Sammy Allen to produce a polished demo. Once delivered, the song quickly became so engrained within the film’s production that the Lego Corporation memorialized it as their global theme parks’ official song playing it throughout the parks, property hotels and even restaurants. As a joke, Shawn also arranged a Bon Jovi-esque power ballad arrangement of his song and submitted it to the directors of the film. It landed its way at the last moment into the film’s end credits and soundtrack and Patterson was soon asked to perform this ballad version at the 30th Annual ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards. In addition to receiving the Academy Award and Grammy nominations (and multiple film festival awards) for ‘Everything Is Awesome‘, Shawn also received the Critic’s Choice Award nomination.

In the summer of 2014, Patterson was asked to compose the score and songs to DreamWorks TV Animation’s ‘The Adventures of Puss In Boots‘ for Netflix. Patterson’s fiery flamenco infused orchestral score received critical acclaim, earning him his very first Emmy Award nomination. In 2015, Shawn was honoured with the very first Variety Artisan Award at the 30th Annual Santa Barbara Film Festival for his contribution to film.