John Debney

John Cardon Debney born August 18 1956 is an American composer and conductor of film television and video game scores His work encompasses a variety of mediums and genres including comedy horror science fiction thriller fantasy and actionadventure He is a longtime collaborator of The Walt Disney Company having written music for their films television series and theme parks He has also collaborated with film directors such as Jon Favreau Garry Marshall Tom Shadyac Peter Hyams John A Davis Brad Anderson Howard Deutch Mark Dindal Robert Rodriguez and Paul Tibbitt Debney has been the recipient of three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Academy Award nomination for his score for Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ 2004 The son of Disney Studios producer Louis Debney Zorro The Mickey Mouse Club John was born and raised in Glendale California nearby to Disney He began guitar lessons at age six and played in rock bands in college Debney earned his BA degree in Music Composition from the California Institute of Arts in 1979 After ending his career with Disney Debney worked for Mike Post Debney furthered his handson training by working with HannaBarbera composer Hoyt Curtin After this Debney went on to score television projects as diverse as Disneyland Star Trek The Next Generation Star Trek Deep Space Nine SeaQuest DSV A Pup Named ScoobyDoo The Cape The Lazarus Man Piggsburg Pigs The Further Adventures of SuperTed Doctor Who Cagney and Lacey Tiny Toon Adventures The Young Riders The New Yogi Bear Show Police Academy The Animated Series Fame Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future Dragons Lair Freshman Dorm Pop Quiz and Dink the Little Dinosaur for which he won an Emmy for Best Main Title In the early 1990s Debney began to score indie films and Disneyland attractions In 1991 Debney composed the music for Phantom Manor and Its a Small World also used at Disneyland from 1993 to 2002 in Disneyland Paris and SpectroMagic at Magic Kingdom In 1993 he scored his first studio feature the Disney comedy Hocus Pocus starring Bette Midler In 1994 Debney wrote Friends Forever with Greg Scelsa from Greg Steves album We All Live Together Vol 5 Debney has since gone on to have a career composing scores for many films including Cats  Dogs The Passion of the Christ Bruce Almighty I Know What You Did Last Summer Elf Sin City Chicken Little Liar Liar Spy Kids The Scorpion King The Princess Diaries and Predators Debney has also composed scores for the video games Lair and The Sims Medieval In 2010 he composed the theme music for the Nickelodeon television series Supah Ninjas He composed some of Disney Parkss Nighttime Spectaculars including World Of Colour Celebrate in Disneys California Adventure The Magic The Memories And You and Celebrate the Magic in Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom and Celebrate Tokyo Disneyland in Tokyo Disneyland as well as an arrangement of When You Wish Upon a Star as a fanfare for the Walt Disney Pictures logo from 1985 to 2006 Description above from the Wikipedia article John Debney licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia