Dustin O'Halloran

American post-classical pianist and composer Dustin O'Halloran entered the world in September 1971 and first pursued music as a guitarist. Interviews reveal that earnest piano study did not begin for him until college-level music coursework. At Santa Monica College he encountered Sara Lov, leading the pair to form the band Dévics. The quartet issued four albums and six singles on Bella Union from 1998 through 2006. While active in the group, O'Halloran deepened his commitment to the piano and later undertook formal training in Italy and Berlin. His initial solo releases, Piano Solos in 2004 and Piano Solos 2 in 2006, both appeared on Bella Union. That same year brought an invitation to compose the score for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. In 2009 he wrote music for William Olsen’s An American Affair, issued via the Filter label. The following year he provided the soundtrack for Drake Doremus’ Like Crazy, a feature that earned a Sundance Film Festival prize in 2011. February 2011 saw the release of Lumiere, his first recording for Fat Cat’s 130701 imprint, which drew widespread critical acclaim. The album placed O’Halloran’s piano amid contributions from the ACME Quartet, Stars of the Lid’s Adam Wiltzie, and composer Peter Broderick. June of that year brought Vorleben, a live solo-piano set on the same imprint. Three months later O’Halloran and Wiltzie debuted as A Winged Victory for the Sullen with an ambient neo-classical album on Kranky; their follow-up, Atomos, arrived in 2014.

Film-scoring opportunities continued to grow, prompting Milan to issue his 2013 drama Breathe In soundtrack. In 2014 he joined the regular roster of composers for the Golden Globe-winning series Transparent, headlined by Jeffrey Tambor, and received an Emmy the next year for its main theme. Additional screen work included a 2016 collaboration with experimental musician Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann) on the drama Lion, both the film and score earning Academy Award nominations. The year 2018 yielded scores for the six-part British serial Save Me, the American drama Puzzle, and the crime feature The Hate U Give. In 2019 O’Halloran issued the Sundoor EP, whose sole twenty-minute track originated as a site-specific piece created in 2017 for American artist Slater Bradley’s installation Sundoor at World’s End in Venice, Italy.