Forest Christenson
Forest Christenson is a Los Angeles-based composer whose work spans some of the most celebrated productions in contemporary film, television, and games. With more than ninety screen credits accumulated across fifteen years, he has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood's most versatile and technically accomplished musical voices — equally at home shaping intimate dramatic underscore and commanding full orchestral forces across the industry's largest stages.
Christenson's path to composing runs through the highest echelons of the film music world. He began his career at Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, where he served as engineer on landmark productions including Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk, Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman — which grossed over $820 million worldwide — and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. That immersion in world-class scoring practice, working alongside legendary mixer Alan Meyerson, formed the foundation of a sensibility as rigorous technically as it is musically expressive. He went on to develop his compositional voice under the mentorship of Rupert Gregson-Williams, contributing to Aquaman, Abominable, The Alienist, and The Gilded Age, before establishing himself fully as a composer and score mixer in his own right.
What sets Christenson apart from his contemporaries is the breadth and depth of a musical life that extends well beyond the scoring stage. Before arriving in Hollywood, he was deeply embedded in the experimental music underground — performing live violin with spatial sound artist Lea Bertucci in Brooklyn using custom live augmentation reverb of his own design; appearing with composer Christina Vantzou at the landmark 2015 Wordless Music concert at St. Agnes Church, Brooklyn, opening for Stars of the Lid at an event broadcast live by Boiler Room; and co-founding Seabat, a long-running synth-based performance duo with composer John Also Bennett, whose eight-album discography was published through the prestigious Mute Song label. His solo ambient project Forest Walker drew international critical praise upon release, with reviewers describing the work as "brilliantly transfixing" and "one of the more confounding and promising debuts" in experimental music. This sustained engagement with the outer edges of sound — spatialization, texture, atmosphere, and the unconventional — informs a compositional voice that resists formula and consistently finds unexpected paths into a film's emotional interior. His session violin work further reflects the range of his musical world: he appears on the Golden Globe-nominated Netflix series The Beast In Me — a psychological thriller starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, executive produced by Jodie Foster and Conan O'Brien — on the Netflix feature Fatherhood, and on Bloc Party's album Four, which peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart.
His feature film composing work reflects both ambition and range. His score for House of My Fathers — a magical-realist Sri Lankan drama that premiered in competition at the Busan International Film Festival and screened at BFI London, IFFR Rotterdam, the Geneva International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights, and the Nuremberg International Human Rights Film Festival — was praised by The Hollywood Reporter for its contribution to a film of "poised storytelling, polished technique and pointed social commentary," with reviewers specifically noting its ominous flute textures as a defining element of the film's atmosphere. He subsequently co-composed the score for Grandpa Was An Emperor (2023) — a documentary tracing the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie's dynasty, executive produced by two-time Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo, edited by Oscar-nominated editor Bob Eisenhardt, and co-composed with Rupert Gregson-Williams — with critics calling it "a captivating, gripping and poignant documentary" and "undeniably compelling." His score for the psychological thriller To Kill a Wolf, which premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh International Film Festival, earned the MASA Award for Best Feature Film Score of 2025 and a nomination from the Society of Composers & Lyricists in the Independent Film category. Critics described the film as "haunting and beautifully restrained" and "quietly absorbing," specifically noting how its music worked in seamless concert with the cinematography to deepen its atmospheric power.
His credits in prestige television and games are equally substantial. He contributed additional music to the Emmy-nominated scores for HBO's The Last of Us and Amazon's Mr. & Mrs. Smith, working alongside composer David Fleming. His music can be heard in 2K's critically acclaimed Mafia: The Old Country on which he collaborated with electronic music pioneer BT (Brian Transeau), a sweeping score performed by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and praised by reviewers for its cinematic Sicilian authenticity. He contributed additional music to DC's Superman and to Netflix's LIFT, and has composed main title themes and episode scores for four Korean drama series, including Sisyphus: The Myth, The Tale of Lady Ok, and Showtime! From Now On.
As a score mixer, his résumé reflects the same caliber as his composing work. His credits include Wonder Woman — which grossed over $820 million worldwide — Apple TV+'s Chief of War, the Jason Momoa-led historical epic that earned 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and was hailed by critics as "a brutal epic that recreates Native Hawaiian history with commendable authenticity," and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Neon, 2023). His work as scoring mixer on The Blue Angels — the J.J. Abrams- and Glen Powell-produced IMAX documentary released by Amazon MGM Studios — earned him a Cinema Audio Society Award nomination for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures, one of the industry's most prestigious recognitions in the craft.
What filmmakers who work with Christenson tend to remember is his instinct for listening — for sitting with a story long enough that the music feels less like something added to a film than something already living inside it. After fifteen years spent across virtually every role the scoring process offers, that quality of attentiveness, combined with the technical range to realize whatever he hears, has made him one of the most sought-after musical partners in the industry. He is currently in post-production on several projects and is available for feature film, television, and interactive media scoring engagements.