Mark Kilian

Mark Kilian is most known for his ethnic flavored scores like the Oscar winning Tsotsi, Eye In The Sky (Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman,) Traitor (Don Cheadle, Guy Pierce,) Rendtion (Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhall, Reese Witherspoon,) the Merchant Ivory produced Before The Rains (Linus Roache, Jennifer Ehle,) Bless Me Ultima produced by Christy Walton of Walmart fame and the Mexican Film North By El Norte (Danny Trejo.)

However his versatility has also led him to score such diverse films as John Carpenter’s The Ward, Revenge Of The Green Dragons (executive produced by Martin Scorsese,), the quirky comedy Trust Me (Clark Gregg, Felicity Huffman, Sam Rockwell, William H Macy,) Repentance (Forest Whitaker, Anthony Mackie) and the first Pitch Perfect which he co-scored with Christophe Beck and which won a platinum album for soundtrack sales.

Most recently he scored Official Secrets (Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes,) Replicas (Keanu Reeves,) The Shanghai Job (Orlando Bloom) and the Carlos Santana produced documentary ‘Dolores’ which won a Peabody award.

His recent streaming work includes Eraser: Reborn, Wahl Street (Mark Wahlberg,) and Deep Blue Sea 3 for HBO and Ingrediente: A Restaurant Uprooted for PBS.

His TV work includes HBO’s 41, CNN’s President In Waiting,  ABC’s Killer Women and Daybreak, Fox’s Kitchen Confidential and Jake In Progress and Hallmark’s King Solomon’s Mines and Icon.  He has also written music for many high profile TV commercials including Apple, Toyota, Budweiser, American Express and Microsoft.

Kilian cut his teeth in Hollywood writing additional music, orchestrating and electronic production for movies such as The Matrix Reloaded, Red, The Animatrix, Elektra, and Copycat.

He has 3 albums out under the name The Gravy Street which have received airplay in Los Angeles and also 2 albums with the electronica duo (with Christophe Beck) Ape Quartet. He has also self released 4 album projects, Gethsemane, Love Like, Beyond Walls and Los Ancianos. He also did string arrangements for Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple) on his solo album Music For The Divine and a KCRW sponsored remix of an Ozomatli song with Anne Litt, as well as music for the Getty exhibition The Aztec Pantheon.

Kilian, a South African native, started his music career as a jazz pianist working in and around his homeland.  He played with The Brubecks, Shirley Bassey, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Airto Moreira.  After completing a degree in Jazz performance (cum laude) and a masters in composition, he headed for Los Angeles in 1994 to attend USC’s graduate program Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television.

“See a dog, hear a dog is not what film scoring is all about for me. I am my happiest when I can tell the story you’re not seeing on screen. I love to use weird and wonderful instruments that are not particular to the setting. When that kind of juxtaposition works, it is pure magic to me!”