Nathan Kelly

Nathan Kelly is an American composer in Los Angeles, best known for working as an arranger for recording artists such as Andrea Bocelli, Jennifer Lopez, Dionne Warwick, Joss Stone, Kristen Chenoweth, Rod Stewart, The Tony Awards, and contributing orchestrations for various film and Broadway scores, including Newsies which was nominated for a Tony for Best Orchestrations.

Kelly studied music composition at the University of Texas and took further education at the Aspen Music School, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bowdoin, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest Film Scoring Program, Seattle. He studied orchestration with Danny Troob and Jonathan Tunick in New York City and with Thomas Newman in Los Angeles. He worked for David Foster in Los Angeles after studying film scoring at University of Southern California,

Kelly began his career as an intern at the Walt Disney Music Studiosin Kissimmee, Florida writing arrangements for the bands at Walt Disney World and proofreading. After graduating college in Austin, he moved to New York City and interned for the Oprah Winfrey Broadway musical The Color Purple. During this time, he worked as a pianist playing in the pit orchestras of Broadway musicals, including The Phantom of the Opera, The Wedding Singer, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Grease, Altar Boyz, Forbidden Broadway, and Radio City Music Hall. He then began arranging for musical artists such as Lea Salonga, Sarah Brightman, Audra McDonald, Jackie Evancho, Jim Brickman, Sparks, Imogen Heap, and Five for Fighting.

Kelly has participated in artist residencies across the United States: Ucross Foundation, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Academy of Music in Paris, Hambidge, Woodstock, Banff Music Centre, Helene Wurlitzer and Headlands Center for the Arts. His symphonic works have been premiered by the Orchestre de Paris, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Knox-Galesburg Symphony, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Austin Symphony Orchestra, League of American Orchestras, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Missoula Symphony Orchestra, Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Pops, The Hollywood Bowl, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Kelly has also collaborated with conductors such as Randol Alan Bass and André Previn.

Kelly moved to Los Angeles and attended the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at the University of Southern California, and was mentored by the film composer Thomas Newman. Kelly was selected to participate in the American Composers Orchestra composition contest from a national call for scores, and was a finalist in the Morton Gould Young Composers Contest. He was featured in ASCAP's "Playback" magazine. He was also selected to participate in the ASCAP/NYU and ASCAP/LA workshops for film composers and has worked for Marc Shaiman, Stephen Schwartz and currently for David Foster.