Jeff Beal

Jeff Beal’s enormous contributions to prestige television and award-winning documentary films have earned him 19 Emmy nominations, five statuettes and the loyalty of top filmmakers for both the big and small screen. Over the course of his distinguished career, he has collaborated with numerous established filmmakers including Al Pacino, Michael Mann, Tom Hanks, Ridley Scott, Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher, Ed Harris, and Beau Willimon.

Beal’s work in feature film includes Tate Taylor’s Breaking News In Yuba County starring Allison Janney, the Apple dramedy Raymond & Ray featuring Ewan McGreggor and Ethan Hawke directed by Rodrigo Garcia, Shock and Awe directed by Rob Reiner and starring Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Tommy Lee Jones and Jessica Biel, and the dramatic film Inside Game directed by Randall Batinkoff. Beal’s ongoing collaboration with Ed Harris has yielded scores for the actor’s directorial efforts, including the biopic Pollock and the western Appaloosa. Most recently, Beal scored the romantic period WWI drama Can You Hear Me and the inspirational drama Rule Breakers for which he won the HMMA for best original score for an independent film.  

Beal’s empathic music has complemented the real stakes of potent, high-profile documentary films and series such as Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, The Putin Interviews directed by Oliver Stone, Rather directed by Frank Marshall,  the powerful Netflix feature Athlete A, the Netflix mini-series Challenger: The Final Flight, Legendary Television’s Console Wars, Gamestop: Rise of the Players, Sell/Buy/Date executive produced by Meryl Streep, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s films The Grab and Blackfish, Jon Dunham’s feature Boston about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, The Sweet Life directed by Rob Spera, The Bleeding Edge directed by Kirby Dick, Generation Wealth and The Queen of Versailles both directed by Lauren Greenfield, Anthony DiMaria’s Sebring, Spirit of the Marathon, and John Chester’s The Biggest Little Farm. Most recently, he wrote music for Appian Way’s documentary Serling directed by Julian Tulis.

Beal’s diverse voice—informed by his conservatory training and jazz background has lead to scoring the critically-lauded Netflix series House of Cards earning him six Emmy nominations and two Emmy wins. His music has graced the prestige HBO period dramas Carnivàle and Rome and can currently be heard in the second season of HBO’s hit original series Winning Time: The Rise and Fall of the Lakers Dynasty. Beal’s other series credits include the horse-racing drama series Luck with Dustin Hoffman, the final season of Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom, the Naomi Watts/Billy Crudup drama thriller series Gypsy, R.J. Cutler’s latest docuseries Fight For Glory: World Series 2024, and the Peacock miniseries All Her Fault for which he won an SCL award for outstanding original title sequence for a television production.

Beal grew up near San Francisco, and immediately took to the trumpet and jazz music. He started composing in his teens, and pursued mastery of his instrument and writing craft at the Eastman School of Music in New York. He soon found the perfect home for his gifts in the arena of film and television and had his first breakouts with Pollock, the beloved ABC comedy Ugly Betty, and the long-running Monk series as well as Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie.

In addition to his screen music, Beal has written prodigiously for the concert hall, and his works have been performed by top-tier symphony orchestras and chorales around the world.

“With film music,” Beal says, “so much of what we do is taking place in the subliminal, covert, emotive, dramatic space. I’m always trying to find that magic where the music has a life and a personality enough so that it’s doing something, but also empathetic enough to the scene so that it doesn’t kill it—and actually works with it in a way that magnifies everything else.”