Jon Brion | Artist
Jon Brion is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and composer born 1963 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He performed with bands The Excerpts, The Bats, and The Grays before becoming an established producer and film score composer. His first band The Bats (not the New Zealand group of the same name) released a single and one album in 1982 before disbanding. Brion then moved to Boston and did session work as a guitarist, plus he was recruited into girlfriend Aimee Mann's backing band. Branching out into record production he worked on albums with names such as Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright, Robyn Hitchcock, Evan Dando, Sean Lennon and Kanye West. Brion also worked on rapper Mac Miller's album Swimming (2018), and completed production on Miller's posthumous album Circles (2020). In the late '90s Brion began working with film director Paul Thomas Anderson, writing and performing sound tracks for the films Hard-Eight, Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. Brion has gone on to become an accomplished film composer, noted for his use of early analogue sampling instruments, particularly the Chamberlin and Optigan, to create realistic emulations of instruments. He started out working with director Paul Thomas Anderson and scored his films, Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights and Punch-Drunk Love. He also scored the soundtracks for the movies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees, The Break-Up and the Disney/Pixar film The Blue Umberella. He earned Grammy Award nominations for his work on 1999's Magnolia and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. To-date he has released 11 studio albums, standouts include Magnolia (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004) and Synecdoche New York (2008). Brion contributed the music to Boogie Nights and had a cameo in the film as a moustached guitar player. Brion is renowned for his regular Friday-night gigs at the Los Angeles club Largo, playing a variety of instruments with occasional guest musicians and comedians.
Artist Website: jonbrion.net
Featured Albums: Jon Brion
Related Artists: Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith
Video Clips: Genius at Work, Jon Brion Live, Jon Brion Builds a Song, I was Happy Then
