Chris Westlake’s early life was fed by a love of the guitar and a potent curiosity for different musical cultures. His pursuit of all things strummed was encouraged by his Cuban mother and American father, who was a guitarist in his own right having opened for “The Beach Boys”, “Blood, Sweat & Tears”, and “Dick Dale & the Del-tones.”
Soon after completing classical studies at USC’s Thornton School of Music, Chris was chosen as composer for “The Beat”, a feature length drama accepted at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Fusing elements of jazz and electronic music, this score brought Westlake to the attention of top music supervisor Bonnie Greenberg. Ms. Greenberg soon hired Chris to write and produce additional music for “Something’s Gotta Give” (2003), directed by Nancy Meyers.
Westlake enjoyed being able to compose for many genres, contributing music to projects such as “Desperate Housewives” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, followed by a trip to the Tribeca Film Festival for the independent foreign thriller, “Hacia la Oscuridad”, starring America Ferrera.
Pursuing a passion for animated film, Chris was selected by producer Chris Meledandri (Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who) to score three short films featuring the characters and cast of the animated mega-hit “Despicable Me”, starring Steve Carell.
Most recently Westlake’s music can be heard in the Joel Silver produced action/thriller “Transit”, starring Jim Caviezel, and the TLC docu-series “Little People, Big World”.
The demand for Westlake’s abilities are not only in the domain of film and TV; he was also hired by multi-platinum selling artists, Switchfoot (Columbia Records), to write string arrangements for songs on their gold selling release, Nothing is Sound.