Reza Safinia
- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Reza is a multi-instrumentalist composer and producer raised in London and living in Los Angeles. Prior to working in film he was a songwriter and record producer/engineer with work spanning from pop to underground. He has toured with Destiny's Child and worked with artists as diverse as Dr. Dre, Britney Spears and underground UK rapper Akala.
His influences are a tapestry of romantic era classical music such as Debussy and Satie, Hip Hop, minimalist techno, and shamanistic music. His textured approach fuses orchestra with contemporary production, exploring soundscape as much as harmony and melding the two to serve the image in a tactile way.
Reza's love affair with music started at the age of five, when his aunt gave him a Barry White cassette... he was so entranced with every aspect of the music, from that famous silky vocal, to the sweeping string arrangements, rhythmic syncopations, the snare sound... He listened to that tape so many times, he had memorized every single arrangement of every instrument down to the cowbell on every song by his next birthday, when he moved onto Michael Jackson, but at this point Reza was already more interested in Qunicy Jones' production and decided that's who he wanted to be when he grew up! Shortly after that came a lifelong obsession with Prince which led to Reza writing his first songs on a Casio keyboard.
By his teenage years, Reza was making four track demos, delving deep into every genre of music, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Run DMC, NWA, Guns N Roses, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, it all started mixing in his mind, informing his own artistic palette. Over the years Reza became more and more influenced by both electronic ambient music, and romantic era classical music. On the one hand studying Schubert's impromptus and on the other studying Aphex Twin's approach to tweaking the hell out of a synth... all the while infusing the latent knowledge of soul, hip hop and rock from his younger days.
In addition to his passion for music, Reza is a fan of martial arts and dedicated yoga practitioner, inspired by the great violinist/conductor Yehudi Menuhin who was a student of B.K.S Iyengar, the legendary founder of Iyengar Yoga. Menuhin's interest in yoga and eastern culture informed his connection to music and spirituality, and Reza is a student on the same meditative path, connecting the dots between Daoism and counterpoint.
His influences are a tapestry of romantic era classical music such as Debussy and Satie, Hip Hop, minimalist techno, and shamanistic music. His textured approach fuses orchestra with contemporary production, exploring soundscape as much as harmony and melding the two to serve the image in a tactile way.
Reza's love affair with music started at the age of five, when his aunt gave him a Barry White cassette... he was so entranced with every aspect of the music, from that famous silky vocal, to the sweeping string arrangements, rhythmic syncopations, the snare sound... He listened to that tape so many times, he had memorized every single arrangement of every instrument down to the cowbell on every song by his next birthday, when he moved onto Michael Jackson, but at this point Reza was already more interested in Qunicy Jones' production and decided that's who he wanted to be when he grew up! Shortly after that came a lifelong obsession with Prince which led to Reza writing his first songs on a Casio keyboard.
By his teenage years, Reza was making four track demos, delving deep into every genre of music, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Run DMC, NWA, Guns N Roses, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, it all started mixing in his mind, informing his own artistic palette. Over the years Reza became more and more influenced by both electronic ambient music, and romantic era classical music. On the one hand studying Schubert's impromptus and on the other studying Aphex Twin's approach to tweaking the hell out of a synth... all the while infusing the latent knowledge of soul, hip hop and rock from his younger days.
In addition to his passion for music, Reza is a fan of martial arts and dedicated yoga practitioner, inspired by the great violinist/conductor Yehudi Menuhin who was a student of B.K.S Iyengar, the legendary founder of Iyengar Yoga. Menuhin's interest in yoga and eastern culture informed his connection to music and spirituality, and Reza is a student on the same meditative path, connecting the dots between Daoism and counterpoint.
