Bear McCreary (born February 17, 1979) is an American musician and composer of film, television, and video game scores based in Los Angeles, California. His work includes the scores of the television series Battlestar Galactica (2004), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Outlander, The Walking Dead, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Serpent Queen, the video games Call of Duty: Vanguard, God of War and God of War Ragnarök, and the film Godzilla: King of the Monsters.
McCreary has been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series for his work on season one of Outlander and won one Emmy for the main title of Da Vinci's Demons. He has also a two-time winner of the British Academy Games Award for Music for his work on God of War and Ragnarök.
Early life and education
McCreary spent most of his formative years in Bellingham, Washington. He is the son of author Laura Kalpakian and professor Jay McCreary of University of Hawaii at Manoa. His brother, Brendan McCreary, is also a musician. Bear has directed and produced several music videos for Brendan's band, "Young Beautiful in a Hurry". He graduated from Bellingham High School in 1997.
He is a classically trained pianist and self-taught accordionist. He studied under the renowned film score composer Elmer Bernstein during which time he reconstructed and reorchestrated Bernstein's 1963 score for Kings of the Sun. Their collaboration allowed for the complete score to be available as a soundtrack album for the first time in 40 years.
McCreary went to USC Thornton School of Music at the encouragement of Elmer Bernstein becoming his protégé and graduating in 2002 from Screen Scoring.
Career
Television
Battlestar Galactica and Caprica
In 2003, McCreary worked under primary composer Richard Gibbs on the three-hour miniseries which served as a pilot for the reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica. When the show was picked up, Gibbs opted not to devote full-time to the regular series' production, and McCreary became the sole composer. He worked on the series until it reached its conclusion in 2009, scoring over 70 episodes. To date, six Battlestar Galactica soundtrack albums have been released, and have garnered a great deal of critical acclaim and commercial success. The soundtracks for seasons two and three ranked amongst Amazon.com's Top 30 Music Sales on their first days of release.
McCreary composed for the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica and Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome.
Human Target
McCreary provided the score for the series Human Target (based on the comic book of the same name). The pilot episode and main theme score had been recorded with a full orchestra. The series has the distinction of having one of the largest orchestras on television.
The score to the finale of season one, "Christopher Chance", used the largest orchestra ever assembled for episodic television, and he took the opportunity to rerecord the main title theme with a new orchestration with this larger ensemble.
In July 2010, he received his first Emmy nomination for the Human Target main title.
In a post on his blog on July 25, 2010, McCreary announced the new creative leadership brought in for season two had not asked him to return for it, and he would be leaving the series.
Black Sails
The opening title sequence for Black Sails was composed by McCreary with a backing sea shanty inspired theme. It accurately features an instrument of the period in the form of the hurdy-gurdy.
Outlander
McCreary composed the soundtrack for each of the first five seasons of Outlander. The main title was sung by his long time collaborator and partner, Raya Yarbrough.
In 2015, McCreary was nominated for an Emmy for the pilot Outlander episode "Sassenach" (S01E01; 2014-08-09).
Other series
During Comic-Con 2010, Bear McCreary attended panels for AMC's The Walking Dead and NBC's The Cape to announce he would be composing the score for both television series.
On July 15, 2013, McCreary announced that he would compose the score for ABC's series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. On September 4, 2015, McCreary released the official Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. soundtrack publicly.
McCreary served as orchestral producer for the rock opera Metalocalypse: The Doomstar Requiem airing on Adult Swim on October 27, 2013. This is a continuation of the Metalocalypse universe following the band Dethklok. The music features a 50-piece orchestra. The soundtrack was released on October 29, 2013.