Hollywood’s Music Man Jon Burlingame brings his music expertise to USC

Speak with any composer and odds are they will know who Jon Burlingame is.

In the late ‘’“”s, Burlingame, a TV critic who had written for Premiere and the Emmys magazines, began interviewing composers. He soon stumbled into something no one else was doing — talking to the artists who made film music magic.

Burlingame has since established a reputation in the field and remains a go-to expert on all things film music. His musings on celebrated scores and composers can often be found in Variety.

He’s also shared knowledge via his published works, such as “The Music of James Bond,” which won ASCAP’S Deems Taylor award for outstanding music journalism, and “Music for Prime Time,” his latest detailing a history of music for television.

When he’s not interviewing composers, Burlingame can be found teaching the next gen of students about film, music and its history at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. Speaking with Variety, Burlingame recounts his career path thus far and what led him to education.

How did your time at USC begin? Buddy Baker, the legendary Disney composer, was running the scoring program at USC and needed someone to teach the history of film music to the young composers there — introducing them to all of the great composers of Hollywood history dating back to the early ’—”s. I thought it might be a fun way to utilize all this esoteric knowledge in my head, a kind of “side gig” in addition to my journalism work. I did a semester for him, liked it, and eventually convinced him to turn it into two semesters instead of one because there’s so much history to cover.

How long have you been at USC? I started teaching in ‘’’˜. I’m there one day a week now, teaching my history course and also co-moderating a composer forum, where we invite working composers to come in and talk to the students about what they’ll face in the “real world” of scoring films after they graduate. What would you say have been the highlights of your teaching? It’s endlessly rewarding. I get to show clips of classic scores through the decades, regale the students with fun stories about the composers, and show how the vocabulary of film music has broadened and changed through the decades. And the questions I get often force me to look more deeply into many topics that I thought I knew pretty well. In your tenure there, have any moments stood out for you? The best moments are always when composers who have gone through the program succeed in the business and even win big awards. Ludwig Göransson, now an Oscar, Emmy and Grammy winner, is one of our “success stories.” Bear Mccreary, Jim Dooley, Marco Beltrami and Christophe Beck are among USC scoring-program grads who have won music Emmys.

Over the years, I’ve also invited many top composers to talk to our students — including John Williams, James Newton Howard and Rachel Portman.