Alexander Burke

Alexander Burke^[1] (born 1983) is an established musical professional having worked as a film and television musical writer and composer, music supervisor and director, a musical performer as well as actor, producer, and writer.

Early life

Alexander was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Laguna Beach and Irvine, California with his parents who are both vested in the arts (his father is a well-respected painter^[2] and his mother was an art gallery curator before becoming a therapist). His grandmother, Flora Burke, was an accomplished actress (and an early inspiration to Alexander). Alexander always had a passion for music (he was considered a vibraphone prodigy) and while in high school joined Drake Bell’s band Drake 24/7 and went on to perform on the “Amanda Show”^[3] at the Palladium and other high-profile venues around LA and on TV. After high school, he went to Columbia College Chicago where he became the youngest musical director for the renowned Second City. Alexander was asked to be the musical director for “iO Theater 25 Anniversary Concert DVD” that included performances by Mike Myers, Amy Poehler, Tim Meadows, Andy Dick, Andy Richter and Rich Talarico (Rich later hired Alexander to be the composer of “Frank TV” on TBS – which would be his first TV gig). While in Chicago he was also busy doing Jazz gigs around town with Jazz legends such as Von Freeman, Chuck Hedges.

Career

After graduating from Columbia College Alexander decided to move back to Los Angeles where graduated from the University of Southern California’s film-scoring post-baccalaureate program and then quickly found work in television (being hired as part of the house band for the television pilot for Robert Townsend’s talk show “Night of Townsend” on TBS) where he met Eban Schletter (the composer of “Sponge Bob Square Pants”) and Grant-Lee Phillips (who was also part of the house band) and that relationship led to Alexander playing in Phillips band. These relationships lead to Alexander and Eban being asked to perform with, and open, for Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields' band “Dead Man’s Bones". During this time, Alexander became friends with Monique Powell (the lead singer of the band “Save Ferris”) through his neighbor Abby Travis (the bass player for “The Bangles”) and ended up playing on records for both of them and later joining the band “Save Ferris.” Alexander was a member of “Save Ferris” when they opened for Gwen Stefani at Irvine Meadows^[4] and for Mexico City’s infamous Ska Festival.^[5]

With his interests and successes broadening, Alexander has an impressive resume which includes tons of behind-the-scenes music work such as the Musical Director on projects such as “The MTV Movie Awards,” Co-Producing for Ben Lee’s album “Freedom,^[6]” and the first two “Garfunkel and Oats” albums; composer for the song "Back to the Start" for the Iron Man 3 soundtrack,^[7] the song “Love You Like This” for the Jason Bateman movie “The Gift,” the song “Undercover” for the TV series “The New Girl,” the theme song for the Broadway Video series “7 Min. in Heaven,” and the score for the documentary feature film “Haunters” (as well as its Music Supervisor). He has also worked with some of music’s biggest names and influencers such as playing keys on Kate Pierson’s (The B52s') album “Guitars and Microphones^[8]” (produced by Sia), playing piano and mandolin on the Billy Ray Cyrus albums “Change My Mind^[9]” and “Thin Line” (where he performed with him live at the Grand Ole Opry, The Tonight Show and at NASCAR to a crowd of over 80,000), playing piano on the Dionne Warwick record “Feels So Good,^[10]” performing live with Gary Neuman for a “Die Hard” commercial, recording the double platinum selling Dane Cook album “Isolated Incident,” accompanying Thomas Middleditch, Ed Helms and Michael Bublé for Bublé’s Xmas special,^[11] playing multiple instruments on Margaret Cho’s Grammy nominated musical comedy album “Cho Dependent,” playing synth Bass on the cult David Lynch/Chrysta Bell album “This Train” and with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings on the Matthew McConaughey led Lincoln television commercial to name just a few. Alexander is also an actor, Improv coach with Killian Mchugh’s Commercial Improv Class^[12] and has starred in two television pilots: “Hardin High” for MTV2 and the Scott Thompson (“Kids in the Hall”) produced “Husk Report.” Alexander also produced the American version of the Japanese anime series “Skip Beat” for 25 episodes as well as starred as the voice of Sho Devil and was produced by his corporation “Flip the Cat Productions.”

Currently, Alexander is busy with his band “Magnolia Memoir,^[13]” which he writes for and plays the keyboards along with Mela Lee who is the lead singer and co-writer. The video for their single “Odds and Ends” (from the album “Pale Fire”) has celebrity cameos from Will Forte, Doris Roberts, Fred Willard and Jorge Garcia. “Magnolia Memoir” is currently working on their 4th album “Steal the Stars” which is slated to drop in late 2018. Alexander is also scoring the Netflix TV series “A Mortified Guide,” composing two songs for the Sharon Stone feature film for Universal As I Wish and is co-writing (with celebrated children’s book author Richard Fairgray) a children’s book and animated short titled “Sweet Penny and the Lion” (with music for the short performed by Jill Sobule). He also played and engineered Jill Sobule's upcoming record "Nostalgia Kills" produced by Ben Lee.

Alexander is inspired by the musical greats like Jon Brion, T. Bone Burnett, and Johnny Greenwood and he hopes to continue to work on projects that inspire him which includes producing records, scoring films, playing music, writing music, screenplays, and more children’s books and traveling the world.

References

External links

• Official website
• Alexander Burke on IMDb