Festival co-director, conductor, music director
Web: esm.rochester.edu/directory/watters-mark
Emmy Award-winning composer and conductor Mark Watters has written music for film, television, and video games, led notable orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the London Symphony as a guest conductor, served as music director for two Olympics, and worked as a conductor for artists such as Beyoncé and Sting. Today, he serves as director of the Beal Institute for Film Music and Contemporary Media at Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and oversees the school’s Master of Music degree in Contemporary Media/Film Composition, where he teaches his students that it takes more than musical talent to break into composition for visual media.
“You have to convey your ability to deliver what people want,” Watters says. “That’s no different from having your own independent business in any field—you have to not just produce the product, but exude a professionalism that tells people they want to work with you and you can deliver.”
Watters says music that helps tell a story is what drew him into composing for visual media. “I’ve always been fascinated with what music can do in a film and how it can affect us psychologically. And it amazes me that if I assign 10 students to compose for the same scene—each piece can be different, but they can all work.”
Most recently, Watters contributed to an effort to celebrate Rochester’s deep ties to film music and the arts (thanks to George Eastman, founder of Kodak and the Eastman School of Music) by co-directing the inaugural Soundtrax Film Music Festival in October, which featured Spike Lee’s go-to composer Terence Blanchard. “The inaugural event had great turnout and noteworthy talent, and we think its success, dependent on funding, was enough to make this a yearly event,” he says.
