Most books on the subject of music for cinema (a small library, to be sure) are written either by practitioners with significant commercial credits (Fred Karlin, Jeff Rona, Sonny Kompanek) or musicologist/historians with significant academic credentials (Royal Brown, Claudia Gorbman). Andy Hill fits neatly into neither category, though there are elements of both in his background. He has been a film music executive, a music supervisor/producer, and in more recent times, an educator, graduate program director, and "trainer" of screen composers. What bridges these roles is an abiding passion for the craft and a great affection for those who practice it.
In 1986, armed only with a film degree from NYU, a motley collection of handwritten scores, and a desire to meet the men who had engendered his passion--men like Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, and Maurice Jarre--Andy made his way to Hollywood to make music for the movies, and wound up doing so in an unexpected fashion. As vice-president of music production for Disney during its "renaissance" period from 1987-97, he was on the scoring stage with his heroes from morning till night, each one becoming, in a sense, the master teacher he'd never found as a student. From every session, he took home a briefcase full of scores, and these scores became the foundation of coursework he would develop years later for institutions like Columbia College Chicago and the Berklee College of Music. Leaving Disney following the exit of Jeffrey Katzenberg, Andy continued supervising music for another ten years, earning a Grammy Award in 2000 for his work as a producer on Sony's The Adventures of Elmo In Grouchland. In 2006, as the industry spiraled toward the 2008 singularity, he left Hollywood for the mission that has taken him to Chicago, Spain, Belgium, Ireland and lecture halls throughout the EU to elevate the study of music for the screen and bring recognition to its creators.
Andy is currently dean of the Film Scoring Academy of Europe in Sofia, Bulgaria, a location of the Irish American University, and director of its MFA program in Music for Motion Pictures & Contemporary Media, and has also lectured for Pulse College, Dublin, the John & Joan Beal Institute at Eastman School of Music, the University of Edinburgh, HKU in Hilversum, Netherlands, and the University of Austria at Krems. He has been a regular guest lecturer for Krakow's Film Music Festival and Jan Kaczmarek's Transatlantyk Festival in Poznan, as well as conducting workshops for Fimucite (Tenerife) and Film Fest Gent (Belgium). After a spell in Nashville, he now resides in Sofia, from which base of operations he has developed a lecture and workshop series guided by the lessons in SCORING THE SCREEN.