Andrew Petterson

Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Andrew began studying music in fourth grade as a clarinetist in the school band. In high school, he added trombone under private instruction and performed in orchestras and marching bands, as well as regional and state competitions.

Although classically trained, Andrew was drawn to film music after hearing John Williams’ original 1977 score to Star Wars. He began collecting orchestral film scores and spent countless hours studying their color, texture, form, and orchestration. He also explored the work of earlier film composers such as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, and Henry Mancini.

Primarily self-taught as a composer and orchestrator, Andrew scored his first film at age 20—an amateur project he took on simply for the love of contributing to someone’s film. He found early collaborators by placing an ad in the now-defunct filmmaker’s magazine Cinemagic (Starlog Press), which led to scoring several independent films around the country. In those early projects, Andrew worked without charging a fee, motivated by the chance to support emerging filmmakers and give them something rare at the time: a score written specifically for their film—rather than relying on lifted excerpts from well-known movies.

A local film and video producer later took notice of Andrew’s work and hired him to compose the opening theme for a cable series titled How to Buy a Used Car.

Andrew later moved to Los Angeles for a career opportunity. While working as a programmer at Activision Publishing, Inc., he offered to score one of the company’s video game projects and was brought on as composer. He also pursued formal study in film scoring and orchestration at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a focused personal interest. During his studies, he was awarded the Jerry Goldsmith/BMI Film Scoring Scholarship for his work on Four Scorpio Productions’ Law of the Ninja, and he also won the UCLA podcast theme composition contest.

Andrew has since returned to Tucson, where he continues to compose alongside his work in the tech field. He is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).