Andrew Petterson

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

Although a classically trained musician, Andrew was drawn to film music after listening to John Williams’ original 1977 score to Star Wars. After that, Andrew bought every orchestral film score to every movie he saw, and spent hours listening to them, repeatedly, studying the color, texture, shape, composer’s style, and orchestration of the music. He would also raid his parents’ film score library to listen to the works of earlier film composers, such as Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Alfred Newman, and Henry Mancini.

Primarily a self-taught composer and orchestrator, Andrew scored his first film at the age of 20. Soon afterwards, a local film and video producer took notice of Andrew's work and hired him to compose the opening theme for a local cable series entitled How to Buy a Used Car. With limited access to the film scoring industry in Hollywood, Andrew created a demand for his services by advertising in the now defunkt, filmmaker's magazine Cinemagic, published by Starlog Press. Numerous replies were received, and Andrew ended up scoring several small films across the United States.

Andrew eventually moved to Los Angeles, California to pursue film scoring. His first project was writing music for a first-person shooter video game, developed by Activision Publishing, Inc. While studying film scoring at the University of Southern California Los Angeles (UCLA), he was awarded the Jerry Goldsmith / BMI Film Scoring Scholarship for his work on Four Scorpio Productions Law of the Ninja and also won the UCLA podcast theme composition contest.

Andrew has since relocated to his hometown of Tucson, Arizona and continues to work on small projects, and is just as proficient working in his home studio as he is with a live orchestra. Andrew is a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).