TOM HIEL
MENTORING
"It's not about playing difficult music. You want to find your own music and sometimes that is broken down in to simple melodies."
IMPROV
"Huge sounds can come from just improvising and playing around with even the simplest riffs, keys, and harmonies."
INSIGHT
Click on the picture above to hear Tom's Mentoring Session on film scoring, exploration and music theory. (with mentor Terence Young)
BIO
TOM HIEL is an Award Winning Composer for film, television and other media. He started playing the piano when he was 4 years old and subsequently started writing his own compositions. When he was just 13 years old, he won a 1st place award for his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, from the Minnesota Music Teachers Association, competing in the High School Division.
Mr. Hiel went on to tour the country with his solo piano and cinematic synthesizer compositions before settling in Los Angeles. Early breakout films Dark Side of Genus and Swimming With Sharks led to work on the Hit TV Show, The Practice. Other work on orchestrating, and providing additional music for such films as Red Eye, Angel Eyes, Cursed, Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Rugrats in Paris, Rugrats Go Wild and others.
Other notable films include A Plumm Summer (Henry Winkler, William Baldwin, Brenda Strong), Under Still Waters (Clifton Collins Jr, Jason Clarke, and Lake Bell) and the ESPN Documentary The ' 51 Dons.
Tom has an MFA in Composition from California Institute of the Arts. He also lectures in music and film at Cal State Polytechnic Pomona and Los Angeles College of Music in Pasadena.
Most recently, Tom has accepted the role of Assistant Professor of Commercial Music & Media at the University of Georgia to start a Film & Media composing major at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and assist with the new proposed MFA in Film Scoring
Listen to Tom's lecture on film scoring, exploration and music theory. (With 2019 Mentor Terence Young)
