Jeremy Zuckerman

Jeremy Zuckerman
Zuckerman at San Diego Comic-Con in 2011
Born (1975-07-31) July 31, 1975 (age 51)
Newburgh, New York, U.S.
Education
Occupations
  • Composer
  • musician
Years active2001–present
Notable work
Websitejeremyzuckerman.com

Jeremy Zuckerman (born July 31, 1975) is an American composer of concert music, film and television music, music for modern dance, and experimental music. He is best known as the composer for the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, its sequel series The Legend of Korra, as well as other entries in the series' franchise.

Education

At age five, Zuckerman began learning piano with his mother as his teacher. As a teenager and into his early 20s, he played guitar and synthesizer in heavy metal and coldwave bands. Zuckerman studied jazz and computer music at the Berklee College of Music, where he earned a bachelor's degree. He earned a master's degree at the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied modern composition with a focus on computer music and sonic art with Morton Subotnick, Mark Trayle, and Tom Erbe.

Career

Film/TV

Zuckerman began his career as a television/film composer as one half of The Track Team, a music and sound design company based in Los Angeles. He started The Track Team in 2004 with co-founder Benjamin Wynn (a.k.a. Deru). Zuckerman created the music for the critically acclaimed Nickelodeon television series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, which won a Peabody Award in 2008. Zuckerman also solo composed the music for the Avatar sequel series, The Legend of Korra,Seven Havens, and for the Paramount+ feature film Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender. His score is also featured in DC's The Spectre, Jonah Hex, Green Arrow, and Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam, all of which were collaborations with the Joaquim Dos Santos, one of episode directors of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Together, Zuckerman and Wynn composed the music for another Nickelodeon TV series Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness, the work on which earned them four Daytime Emmy Award nominations and two wins. They also collaborated for indie feature films Just Peck and A Leading Man.

In 2017, Zuckerman and Wynn announced the dissolution of The Track Team to pursue their creative and professional paths independently.

Zuckerman went on to score the first three seasons of MTV and VH1's Scream, as well as the PBS documentaries Nature: Snow Monkeys and Nature: Yosemite. Other documentaries include Beartrek, Stuntman, and This Little Land of Mines.

His other notable film and TV projects include the 2020 Jeff Baena film Horse Girl, and an episode of the experimental Showtime series Cinema Toast; both of them are collaborations between Zuckerman and Josiah Steinbrick. The Cinema Toast episode, titled "Quiet Illness", is written by Aubrey Plaza, and is her directorial debut.

Zuckerman has also composed the music for director Natasha Kermani's films Lucky and V/H/S/85.

The Echo Society/Concert music

Zuckerman is a founding member of The Echo Society, a Los Angeles-based collective whose mission is to gather, inspire, enrich and connect the community through the creation and performance of new sonic and visual art. The Echo Society's other founding members include composers Brendan Angelides (a.k.a. Eskmo), Judson Crane, Nathan Johnson, Rob Simonsen, Joseph Trapanese, and Benjamin Wynn.

Zuckerman's music for The Echo Society concert series is predominantly chamber music, and the work "focuses on creating highly specific and controlled masses of sound using a combination of home-grown, semi-algorithmic processes and intuition. Using traditional orchestral instruments, these works explore complexity and transformation of sound and form, instead of the traditional melody/harmony paradigm."

The Echo Society's most well-known project in which Zuckerman was a part of was composing the score to the Darren Aronofsky's 2023 film Postcard from Earth, which also became the first film to be created for and presented at Sphere in Las Vegas.

Modern dance

Zuckerman has worked with choreographer Benjamin Levy on Everyone, Intimate, Alone, Visibly, "in which extended vocal techniques performed and processed in real-time by Jeremy, intersect with Levy’s choreography to form a complex gestural dialog." He also worked with Levy on Khaos, which was commissioned by the Scottish Dance Theatre. Zuckerman created the score for dancer/choreographer Lisa Wahlander's The Impermanent Sky, which was composed and performed live by Zuckerman using the audio programming language SuperCollider.

Theatre

Zuckerman composed the music to playwright Juli Crockett's theatre pieces [or, the whale], a spoken word opera which debuted in Los Angeles in 2001, and Orpheus Crawling, an experimental opera which premiered in 2007 at the New Original Works (NOW) Fest at REDCAT.

Discography

Awards/Achievements

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Jeremy Zuckerman Interview, 16 January 2016, archived from the original on 2021-12-15, retrieved 2019-09-01
  2. ↑ "Kung Fu Jesus music, videos, stats, and photos". Last.fm. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "Jeremy Zuckerman". Jeremy Zuckerman. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  4. ↑ "Jeremy Zuckerman CV 2016". Issuu. 19 January 2016. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  5. ↑ "Music Interview with the Track Team (part 1 of 3) :: AvatarSpirit.net". www.avatarspirit.net. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Jeremy Zuckerman". IMDb. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  7. ↑ "Avatar: The Last Airbender". www.peabodyawards.com. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  8. ↑ Jacobs, Mira (2018-09-21). "Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Adds Another Name From Animated Series". CBR. Retrieved 2020-05-30.
  9. ↑ Stevenson, Rick (October 9th, 2026). "Avatar: Seven Havens Makes One Huge Change That Improves On The Last Airbender And Korra". TV Line. Retrieved October 12th, 2026. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |access-date= and |date= (help)
  10. ↑ "How a Nickelodeon Cartoon Became One of the Most Powerful, Subversive Shows of 2014". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  11. ↑ "Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards - 38th Annual Cfreative Arts Winners Announced". Archived from the original on 2012-06-20. Retrieved 2012-06-18.
  12. ↑ "Daytime Emmy Nominations 2013: Ellen DeGeneres, The View & More". Hollywoodlife.com. 1 May 2013. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  13. ↑ "THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES ANNOUNCES The 41st ANNUAL DAYTIME EMMY AWARD NOMINATIONS" (PDF). Cdn.emmyonline.org. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  14. ↑ "THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF TELEVISION ARTS & SCIENCES ANNOUNCES WINNERS FOR THE 42nd ANNUAL DAYTIME CREATIVE ARTS : EMMY AWARDS" (PDF). Emmyonline.org. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  15. ↑ "Benjamin Wynn Awards". imdb.com. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  16. 1 2 3 4 5 "Jeremy Zuckerman". IMDb. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  17. ↑ "The Track Team". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  18. ↑ Otterson, Joe (2019-06-24). "'Scream' Series Moves From MTV to VH1 for July Debut". Variety. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  19. ↑ Horse Girl (2020) - IMDb, retrieved 2020-02-01
  20. ↑ Cinema Toast (TV Series 2021– ) - IMDb, retrieved 2024-01-04
  21. ↑ Gates, Marya E. (2 May 2021). "Shining a Light: Aubrey Plaza on Her Directorial Debut | Interviews | Roger Ebert". www.rogerebert.com. Retrieved 2024-01-04.
  22. ↑ "Jeremy Zuckerman | Composer, Sound Department, Music Department". IMDb. Retrieved 2024-01-04.
  23. ↑ "Our Mission". The Echo Society. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  24. ↑ "Bios". The Echo Society. 17 July 2014. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  25. ↑ Postcard from Earth (2023) - IMDb, retrieved 2024-01-04
  26. ↑ "The Las Vegas Sphere interior's first film is both mind-blowing and Disneyfied". Los Angeles Times. 2023-10-12. Retrieved 2024-01-04.
  27. ↑ August 16, Ann Haskins on; Dance, 2017 in (2017-08-16). "Music Center Dances To Cahuenga Pass". Cultural Weekly. Retrieved 2019-09-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  28. ↑ "NOW Festival | REDCAT". 2007-10-10. Archived from the original on 2007-10-10. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  29. ↑ "Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (Music from the Motion Picture)". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  30. ↑ Firriolo, Andrew (2026-10-09). "10 Fascinating Stories Behind The Music Of "Avatar: Seven Havens" And "Avatar Aang" From The Composer". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  31. ↑ "Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 3: Fire (Music From The Animated Series)". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  32. ↑ "Avatar: The Last Airbender – Book 2: Earth (Music From The Animated Series)". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  33. ↑ "Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 1: Water (Music From The Animated Series)". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  34. ↑ "Score Album for MTV's 'Scream' TV Series Released". Film Music Reporter. October 28, 2016. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
  35. ↑ "The Legend of Korra: Original Music From Book One". YouTube. Retrieved 2026-10-11.
  36. ↑ "egantic (remixes), by ginormous". hymen records. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  37. ↑ "Diamond Dave - David Lee Roth | Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  38. ↑ "Distant [feat. Lil k dick and emily dwyer], by Tommy MV$ERVTI". Retrieved 2022-10-25.
  39. ↑ "2019 DOC LA — Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival". docla. Archived from the original on 2019-10-21. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  40. 1 2 3 4 5 Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness - IMDb, retrieved 2019-09-01
  41. ↑ "Jeremy Zuckerman & Benjamin Wynn to Participate in PlayFest | Film Music Reporter". 17 July 2014. Retrieved 2019-09-01.
  42. ↑ "BsoSpirit - Premios GoldSpirit - XIII Edición (2013)". 2014-08-15. Archived from the original on 2014-08-15. Retrieved 2019-09-01.