Joseph Trapanese is best known for his sleek score work for blockbuster films like “Tron: Legacy,” “Straight Outta Compton,” “Oblivion,” and the “Raid” series. As a composer, arranger, and producer for movie, television, theater, and video game music, he has collaborated with a number of mainstream musical acts. His first major break came in 2010 when he worked with Daft Punk on the sweeping digital soundtrack to Disney's “Tron” reboot/sequel. Trapanese followed that success by creating a score with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park for the American release of the 2011 Indonesian martial arts film “The Raid: Redemption” (he would continue without Shinoda in 2014 with “The Raid 2”). That same year, he helped with arrangements on a handful of tracks for M83's breakthrough hit “Hurry Up, We're Dreaming,” which led to the pair's collaboration on the 2013 Tom Cruise sci-fi epic “Oblivion”. For 2017’s “The Greatest Showman,” Trapanese worked alongside Pasek & Paul and John Debney, producing songs and co-composing the score.
Notable solo scores include “Only The Brave” (2017), the landmark rap biopic “Straight Outta Compton” (2015), the second and third installments of the “Divergent” series, “Insurgent” (2015) and “Allegiant” (2016); “Earth to Echo” (2014); USA’s “Unsolved” (2018); Amazon’s “Jean-Claude Van Johnson” (2017); ABC’s “Quantico” (2016-17) Freeform’s “Dead of Summer” (2016); EA’s video game “Need for Speed Payback” (2017); and Ubisoft’s video game “The Crew” (2014).
In the studio and in concert, in addition to Daft Punk, M83, and Mike Shinoda, he has worked with Dr. Dre, Dierks Bentley, Zedd, Kelly Clarkson, Kendrick Lamar, Moby, Aloe Blacc, Alessia Cara, Haim, The Glitch Mob, Active Child, Halsey, Sohn, John Newman, Dia Frampton, 3OH!3, Steven Price, and James Newton Howard.
Born in New Jersey, Trapanese earned his B.A. in classical composition from the Manhattan School of Music. He went on to study at UCLA for his M.A. in music for visual media and taught electronic music composition at the school from 2008-2011. In 2016, he became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is a founding member of The Echo Society.
