Shadow Economy by Blake Leyh

He had a solo operatic role at the age of 13, and sang with the Buckinghamshire Youth Choir, where he learned to sight-read music and began voice training.

After moving to California in 1978, Leyh studied at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where renowned electronic music composer Gordon Mumma was his advisor and teacher. He also played in several punk bands, as well as the Avant Garde Pop band Bande à Part. Leyh spent four years splicing tape, programming Moog and Buchla synthesizers, mastering the recording studio, and making 16mm films, in an independent major program of Electronic Music and The Cinema.

In 1983 Leyh moved to Los Angeles, and was surprised to discover his skills were in high demand in Hollywood, which was just beginning a massive wave of technological change. Leyh was one of the first people to routinely use a digital sampler in film post-production. After working on various low budget and independent films during the mid-eighties, he was hired in 1988 by James Cameron as the Sound Designer on The Abyss, which he worked on full-time for a year. The film was nominated for a Best Sound Academy Award, and Leyh won an MPSE Golden Reel award for his work.

In the early nineties Leyh turned his attention back to music and has since composed scores for more than a dozen feature films, including B-Movie schlock classics (American Cyborg), challenging independent dramas (Star Time), and award-winning documentaries (Twist Of Faith). In 1996 Leyh composed the score for the Sundance Jury Prize-winning documentary SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, which marked the beginning of a long term collaboration with filmmaker Kirby Dick.

In 1998 Leyh moved back to New York and again worked as a sound designer and sound supervisor on films by some of the East Coast's finest directors (Spike Lee, Ang Lee, John Waters, Jonathan Demme). He worked with Julie Taymor on her films Titus and Frida, and was the sound designer for her upcoming 2007 musical Across The Universe.

2001 saw the beginning of a new pursuit when Leyh became the music supervisor on HBO's dramatic series The Wire. Music supervising requires a deep knowledge of many styles of music, in addition to a thorough understanding of music licensing and copyright, and Leyh found he was uniqely suited for the task. He has since music supervised several independent features, as well as all four seasons of The Wire. He also composed the theme music for The Wire.

Since 1990 Leyh has released five CDs of original music. His early release were championed by Chris Douridas at KCRW in Los Angeles among others, receiving much airplay and becoming independent hits. The soundtrack CD for SICK: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist has become an underground classic, now selling for many times its original value. Music from Leyh's CDs has been licensed for many films over the years.

These days Leyh splits his time between Music Supervising, Composing, and Sound Designing, continuing to work on a wide variety of challenging projects. He lives in a brownstone in Harlem with his wife, filmmaker Leslie Asako Gladsjø, and his daughters Aiko and Ryo Leyh.

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