Shawn Patterson
Shawn Patterson is an Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy nominated Composer, Songwriter and Music Producer.
Selected Credits
Originally hailing from Athol, Massachusetts, Patterson’s lifelong 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.
Shawn attended Berklee College of Music and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; where he was selected to study privately and perform with legendary jazz musicians Dr. Billy Taylor and Max Roach. As a jazz, blues, rock guitarist and bandleader, Shawn played shows and lead various bands (including trio, duo and solo settings) while writing compositions in his free time. In 1987, Patterson attended and graduated from the Grove School of Music in Studio City, California. While attending Grove, Shawn studied orchestration and arranging privately with Roger Steinman. After relocating to Los Angeles in 1990, Patterson studied composition and orchestration privately with legendary Los Angeles Composer and Orchestrator, Jack Smalley. Patterson soon found success writing music for film trailers around town.
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.
In 2013, Patterson was approached to write a pop song for Warner Brother’s upcoming animated feature, ‘The Lego Movie’. The song became so engrained within the film the Lego Corporation memorialized it as their global theme parks’ official song playing it throughout the parks, property hotels and even restaurants. Patterson was asked to perform Everything Is Awesome at the 30th Annual ASCAP Film & Television Music Awards. In addition to receiving the Academy Award and Grammy nominations (and multiple film festival award wins) for Everything Is Awesome, Shawn also received the Critic’s Choice Award nomination.
In 2015, Shawn was honored with the very first Variety Artisan Award at the 30th Annual Santa Barbara Film Festival for his contribution to film.
Patterson continues on his endless quest to explore musical styles in both song and score across film, television and theater mediums.
He lives in Los Angeles with his three kids and three dogs.