Nathan Halpern is a composer and singer/songwriter from New York City. His most recent film score was for Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (HBO Films), winner of the 2013 Emmy Award for Best Arts and Cultural Programming, the Peabody Award, and numerous festival awards. Screenfanatic said of the film: "a mesmerizing, incredibly moving piece of cinema, perfectly matched by the electrical charge of Nathan Halpern’s score;" New York Music Daily said: "A chillingly Lynchian soundtrack...Halpern is a master of noir." He also scored Robert Redford's All the President's Men Revisited, which has been nominated for the 2013 Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Nonfiction or Documentary Special.
Halpern made his film scoring debut in 2011 with Renee (ESPN Films / 30 for 30), whose music was lauded as an “excellent score” by The Huffington Post and “a hauntingly poetic score” by The Examiner. Other recent film scores include In So Many Words (from Director Elisabeth Haviland-James, producer of HBO's The Loving Story); Here one Day; Makers: Women Who Make America (PBS/Narrated by Meryl Streep); and All the President's Men Revisited (Discovery/Produced and Narrated by Robert Redford). He has contributed music to the PBS documentary films Circus, Half the Sky, and Lincoln@Gettysburg. He was commissioned to write original music for the documentary Amnesty International: 50 Years (Show of Force), as well as a series of commercial spots for Sony, Kodak, Neiman Marcus, and The New York Times. He recently scored The Poisoner's Handbook for American Experience, airing 1/7/14 on PBS. His next film, Rich Hill premieres at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2013, Halpern was commissioned to create a sound/music installation at New York City's Lexington Armory, commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the first International Exhibition of Modern Art in 1913. The Armory performance was presented in collaboration with SITU STUDIO (environment/installation) and Processional Arts (performance installation). He also created the original soundscape for the avante-garde theater piece Antebellum by GOGOL ANNEX, which premiered at the New Orleans Fringe Festival in 2013, and will be runs January 2014 at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg Brooklyn.
Halpern spent his early music career touring the USA and Europe with his art-punk band The Flesh (Kanine Records, Gern Blandsten Records), and is currently recording his debut solo album with co-producer Martin Bisi (Brian Eno, Sonic Youth), supported in part by a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
