Composer Jake Monaco’s musical fingerprints can be found on some of the biggest film scores of the past decade. His most recent film scores include Jerry and Marge Go Large for director David Frankel starring Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening, the Disney+ family feature Flora & Ulysses directed by Lena Khan and Think Like A Dog starring Megan Fox and Josh Duhamel. His prior film scores include: Netflix’s Dumplin’ starring Jennifer Aniston for director Anne Fletcher, Fox’s action comedy Keeping Up With the Joneses starring Isla Fisher, Jon Ham, Zach Galifianakis and Gal Gadot, Fox Searchlight’s comedy Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie starring Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Rebel Wilson and Jon Hamm, and the Fox action comedy Let’s Be Cops starring Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr (co-scored with Christophe Beck).
Monaco’s music can also be heard in many family-favorite animated series such as the recently released Pixar for Disney+ series Cars on the Road, Pretzel and the Puppies for Apple TV+, the musical animated series Do Re & Mi for Amazon starring Kristen Bell, Forky Asks a Question for Pixar and Disney+ based on the newest character from Toy Story 4, Netflix and Dreamworks Animation Television’s DinoTrux, Facebook Watch original adult-animated series, Human Discoveries, with voice talent by Anna Kendrick, Zac Efron and Lisa Kudrow and the TV series, Be Cool Scooby Doo for Warner Bros. Animation.
Jake’s journey into scoring began with writing the music for the classroom comedy Struck by Lightning, the romantic comedy Playing It Cool starring Chris Evans and Michelle Monaghan, President Obama’s re-election film, The Road We’ve Traveled, narrated by Tom Hanks, Illumination Shorts Yellow is the New Black and Santa’s Little Helpers and Piper the hit Pixar short (an Oscar front-runner in the animated short category) the score for which Jake arranged, orchestrated and produced. Monaco’s work also includes the Warner Bros. Animated comedy Scooby-Doo! and the Gourmet Ghost, Warner Bros.’ family feature A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish, the Disney+ Pixar Sparkshort OUT and Short Circuit Reflect, the Warner Bros. romantic feature A Cinderella Story: Starstruck, and the Apple TV+ animated series Eva the Owlet.
As a producer and composer of additional music for Christophe Beck, Monaco has contributed to the animated magic of Frozen, the record-breaking laughs of The Hangover trilogy, the furry hijinks of The Muppets, the real-life drama of Waiting for Superman and many others. Most recently Monaco co-scored Like a Boss with Beck, starring Salma Hayek and Rose Byrne, and Walkaway Joe, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
Monaco grew up in New Jersey and New Hampshire, and revealed his heart’s bearing toward music as early as age 2 when his parents took him to the circus and he walked right past the clowns and animals to the band pit. He studied composition and music technology at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and started the band NE3 opening for bands like Maroon 5—before enrolling at the film scoring program at USC. There he began his fruitful and ongoing collaboration with Beck.
“I’ve always loved storytelling through music, which is why songwriting came so naturally,” says Monaco. “I found it difficult to conjure up inspiration for a piece just for the sake of writing music. So when I finally made the connection between music and film, it just clicked and I fell in love.”