Biography

ROGER NEILL is a musical recording artist who creates scores for feature films and other media. He is an accomplished composer, conductor and multi-instrumentalist. His best known film scores include “20th Century Women,” “Don’t Think Twice,” and “Beginners.” Neill has scored major television productions such as Amazon Studio’s classical music dramedy “Mozart in the Jungle,” and the long-running Fox animated series “King of the Hill.”  Roger Neill has a vast, award-winning music catalog, including the soundtracks to more than twenty feature films, hundreds of television episodes, video games, commercials, and an opera.

Roger is the recipient of many ASCAP and BMI awards, as well as an Emmy for his work on “King of the Hill,” a Golden Globe for “Mozart In The Jungle,” and the LA Weekly Theater Critics Musical of the Year Award for his operetta “The Beastly Bombing.”  

A Southern California native, Roger hails from El Cajon, a cultural backwater of eastern San Diego County where gun racks outnumber surf racks. He began playing music at the age of nine, electric guitars and keyboards in garage bands, flute in youth orchestras. 

Neill is a graduate of the USC Music of School, and Harvard University, where he earned a Phd in Music Composition.

In the film scoring genre, Neill has been especially active in recent years, composing for major studios and independent production companies, with repeated collaborations with notable film directors.

In 2023 Roger scored “Zoey 102” for Paramount Studios (2023) for director Nancy Howard.

2022 brought “Darby and the Dead” for 20th Century Features (2022), his second film for director Silas Howard, after “A Kid Like Jake” (2018). 

Also in 2022 he scored “Three Months” for MTV Films (2022), starring Troye Sivan and Ellen Burstyn.

The documentary feature film “Sam Now” was completed in 2022, and it was won major awards at film festivals around the world. It is distributed by Criterion.

Director Rachel Goldenberg has collaborated twice with Roger, first with 2020 remake of “Valley Girl” for MGM, followed by HBO’s “Unpregnant,” starring Haley Lu Richardson.

2016 saw the release of “20th Century Women,” his second film with director Mike Mills, with whom he has also collaborated on multiple commercial campaigns and other projects. The Academy Award-nominated film, starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup and Lucas Jade Zumann, features a striking retro art-rock synthesizer score. It is among Neill’s best known music.

Mike Birbiglia’s film “Don’t Think Twice” was created in 2017.  DTT was produced by Ira Glass of “This American Life” fame.  Roger has contributed music to that series and many other of Ira’s projects, including his live shows and a shared project for Google. Roger recently scored Birbiglia’s podcast series, “The Old Ones.”

Roger has been worked extensively in game music, primarily in association with renowned game composer Jesper Kyd. Together they have collaborated on many blockbuster game titles, such as Assassins Creed: Revelations, Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, the State of Decay franchise, Heroes and Generals, and many others.

Music for animation has been a mainstay of Roger’s output, beginning with all 13-seasons of the hit series “King of the Hill” for 20th Century Fox television. That series was scored with orchestra and guitars at Fox’s hallowed Newman Scoring Stage. Roger has continued to compose for other animated shows, for Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, often with the subversive, experimental animator JJ Villard. These shows include “JJ Villard’s Fairy Tales” and “King Star King,” among many others.

As an arranger, orchestrator, conductor and collaborator, Roger has worked with a who’s who in the recording industry, including Beck, Michael Jackson, The Kronos Quartet, John Legend, Sondre Lerche, Mellow, Natalie Merchant, Spoon, Stereolab, David Sylvian and Kygo. Roger has enjoyed a long-term relationship with the French electronica duo AIR, on record and on stage. He was conductor and arranger for a legendary orchestral concert with AIR at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, followed by a similar concert at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.

Roger collaborated with auteur Sofia Coppola on her kaleidoscopic period drama “Marie Antoinette.” In that production he acted as music producer, arranger, and historic music consultant. He provided extensive research on the role of music in the court of Louis XVI. He acted in a similar role in Roman Coppola’s “Mozart In the Jungle,” working closely with Roman and fellow producers Jason Schwartzman and Paul Weitz as script consultant. He was also the conducting coach for actors Malcolm McDowell and Gael García Bernal. Continuing his profile as a classical music specialist, Roger created the interstitial classical music score for Chuck Lorre’s TV comedy “Mom.”

Neill an avid world music specialist, codified by his studies in Swahili music in Mombasa and Zanzibar with Ahmed Sheikh Nabhany, considered the father of Kiswahili scholarship. Among the many instruments Neill plays are piano, acoustic and electric guitars and basses, a multitude of flutes and other wind instruments, exotic percussion, and an ever-increasing collection of fretted stringed instruments including the charango, cavaquinho, ukulele, dulcimer and dobro, among many others. All these instruments and more have figured prominently in Neill’s music.

Roger was invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 2020, and The National Academy of Recording Arts in 2023.

Roger is represented by Evolution Music Partners.