Joachim Horsley

Recent projects for Joachim include orchestrating/arranging for John Legend’s All of Me Tour and orchestrating Ben Folds’ Piano Concerto. He scored the Lionsgate film Rapture-Palooza. Working with composer Anton Sanko, Horsley orchestrated and conducted the feature films Ouija, The Possession, and Rabbit Hole as well as the epic seven-part global programing event Great Migrations, which aired on the National Geographic Channel and won a News and Documentary Emmy® for music and sound. Horsley has scored many independent films including the documentary Unattached, which won the Silver Medal at the Student Academy Awards®. He has arranged and conducted orchestras for many recording artists including The Pet Shop Boys on their recent release Elysium.

His work has screened at film festivals all over the world, including Sundance, South by Southwest, Cannes, Telluride, Palm Springs and Tribeca. Horsley’s work can be heard in television shows, commercials, and on-air promotions on NBC, ABC, HBO, TruTV, A&E, The Biography Channel, The History Channel, The Travel Channel, and the Peabody Award-Winning Onion News Network (TheOnion.com).

Horsley grew up in a musical family with as much appreciation for Bach, Wagner and Chopin as for The Beatles, Chuck Berry and Stevie Wonder. As a teenager, he began to record and perform his own compositions, learning a broad range of instruments and styles in the process. Horsley played piano in hotels and jazz clubs and continued to explore jazz arranging and composition at Skidmore College in New York. There he studied with Chris Brubeck, son of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, before graduating in 2000 with a BA in Music with a focus in Composition and Recording Engineering. He continued his composition and orchestration studies with Samuel Adler in Berlin, Germany. Between 2000 and 2005, Horsley and his brother Erich toured with ‘America’s Only Double-Piano Rock Band’ LittleHorse, which has won praise from many national publications including Keyboard Magazine and National Public Radio. In 2007, Horsley was awarded the Grand Prize Winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for his song “I Want Your Love.”

Horsley has recorded and produced two albums of his own music and three albums with his band LittleHorse.

In addition to piano, Horsley plays organ, bass, guitar, ukulele, mandolin, charango, percussion, and sings. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and 2 children.