Christophe Beck was musically gifted as a child learning the piano and becoming quite proficient with the instrument. It would seem that music runs in his family since his brother James who is best known as the alter-ego of the pianist Chilly Gonzales. Indeed the pair of brothers co-wrote two musicals during their student days. At the USC Thorton School of Music, he was taught by Jerry Goldsmith among others, before graduating and going on for further study and work experience as an apprentice for Mike Post. From then on his career was similar to that of other media composers. He started out in Television where Mike Post was particularly active and experienced. As a Television composer, Beck had a reasonably long stint as the main composer for "F/X: The Series" and then providing some of the episodes of "The Practice" along with composers such as Marco Beltrami. The series which secured his reputation more than any other was "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which ran for many seasons from 1997 to 2003 and spawned the spin-off series "Angel".
It was at this point where Beck's movie career was also starting to take off. Like many film composers Beck's career trajectory started out with roles such as orchestrator or providing additional music, before getting the job as principle composer for lower budget movies or those going straight-to-video. Under the composer credit Christophe Beck scored a string of comedies including several rom-coms. These included the likes of cheerleading movie "Bring It On" and "The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy" both released in 2000, and leading up to "Big Fat Liar", "Stealing Harvard" and "The Tuxedo" in 2002. In 2003 he scored a couple of wedding themed movies with "Just Married" and "American Wedding" and also the remake of "Cheaper by the Dozen" starring Steve Martin. He stepped away from Romantic Comedies in 2005 with "Elektra" and "Two for the Money" starring Al Pacino before reverting to his core genre with the remake of "The Pink Panther" which also starred Steve Martin as the accident prone Inspector Clouseau.
A measure of a composer's success must be when they are asked to return to score film sequels, and by this measure Beck was certainly successful with "The Pink Panther resulting in a sequel. Beck scored the original "Garfield" movie in 2004 based on the comic strip created by Jim Davis, and then returned for the sequel "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" 2 years later. Some years later he performed a similar comeback trick with "The Muppets" and then "Muppets Most Wanted", and there were also two "Hot Tub Time Machine" movies. Sticking with the comedy genre "The Hangover" managed to produce a trilogy of films all scored by Beck. The composer's big break came in 2013 with the animated musical "Frozen" which required a skillful integration of the music score with the songs written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez. Naturally the success of this musical also resulted in a sequel "Frozen II" plus further spinoff releases turning into a franchise. While Beck had no direct contribution to "Frozen" the Broadway Musical it features the song track "Vuelie" which was adapted by Beck from a work by Danish composer Frode Fjellheim who based the track on music from Scandinavian cultures.
Following "Frozen" Beck has continued with various comedies and sequels, he scored the animations "The Peanuts Movie" and "Trolls", Sci-fi movie "Edge of Tomorrow" with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, and dipped a toe into the Marvel Universe with the superhero movie "Ant-Man" and its sequel "Ant-Man and the Wasp". Beck was also among the ranks of the many composers contributing their time and skills to "A Symphony of Hope" in aid of Haiti after the island's earthquake. With the advent of streaming services and the further blurring of the distinction between film and TV, Beck seems to have returned to the world of television while remaining within the Marvel Universe for "WandaVision". Musically this series was notable for its skillful adoption of TV themes and styles from various decades with The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Bewitched among the explicit references, and these involved Beck working once more with the talented songwriting Lopez duo. To my mind the best thing about the whole series was the End Credits, so mysterious (and slightly Hitchcockian) feeding the "what is happening?" aspect of the early episodes, but really also setting out Wanda's theme and hinting at the big MCU style that is to come later in the series.
The composer's official web-site is at www.christophebeck.com, and here is the Christophe Beck Youtube Channel.
Here are some suggested film and TV scores by Christophe Beck:
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