He has conducted for major recording artists ranging from Olivia Newton-John to Deadmau5, movies in concert such as Star Wars, Toy Story, Home Alone, Rocketman and the Harry Potter series, is the principal conductor of the Hollywood Symphony Orchestra,[1][2] is considered by the New York Times as the pioneer of original scores for film trailer music,[3] and has composed the music for numerous television series and films.

He studied percussion with William Kraft and Bernie Mattinson, and drums with Irv Cotler (drummer for Frank Sinatra), percussion with Ethnomusicologist Craig Woodson, composition with Harry Partch scholar Danlee Mitchell, synthesizers with Clark Spangler, and film scoring with Dominic Frontiere, George Duning, Buddy Baker, Fred Werner, Eddy Lawrence Manson and Earle Hagen.

[6] In his early film career, and like many of the young composers of the day, he ghost wrote the scores for numerous major motion pictures and hit television shows and orchestrated and supervised the recording sessions for many others.

After his highly decorated service with the United States Marine Corps, he returned to Hollywood as a musical director and arranger with recording stars Olivia Newton-John (in her U.S. debut), B.

Beal was also the conductor and arranger for the vocal groups The Establishment, The Kids Next Door, The Nabors Kids, The King Cousins, and The Doodletown Pipers, and worked on stage in Las Vegas and on the showroom circuit with such icons of the day as Phyllis Diller, Perry Como, Bobby Darin, Raquel Welch, Mitzi Gaynor, Leslie Uggams, Jim Nabors, Sally Struthers, Teresa Graves, Peggy Fleming, Frankie Avalon, and Ed Ames.

Beginning in the late 1970s, he composed original music for numerous hit television series, including Vegas with Robert Urich, Eight Is Enough with Dick Van Patten and Betty Buckley, Happy Days with Ron Howard and Henry Winkler, Laverne & Shirley with Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams, Goodtime Girls with Annie Potts and Georgia Engel, Legmen with Bruce Greenwood and John Terlesky, and Chicago Story with Dennis Franz and Craig T. Nelson.

[13][14] His list of major studio credits includes campaigns for such hit films as JFK, Titanic, The Matrix, Forrest Gump, The Last Samurai, Aladdin, the Star Wars trilogy, The Hunt for Red October, True Lies, In the Line of Fire, Patriot Games, The Mask of Zorro, Black Rain, Ghost, Finding Neverland, and hundreds more.

[15] Daily Variety box office results show the financial success of film campaigns to which he contributed original music is literally measured in hundreds of billions of dollars.

[43] Some of the well-known film trailers (for which John Beal wrote Trailer music between 1977 and 2007) cover a wide range of styles for films including Titanic, We Were Soldiers, The Last Samurai, Finding Neverland, Star Wars, Aladdin, The Matrix, Mean Girls, Planet of the Apes, Batman Beyond, Alaska, Being John Malkovich, Black Beauty, Black Hawk Down, Black Rain, The Bodyguard, Braveheart, Casualties of War, Chaplin, Clear and Present Danger, Conspiracy Theory, Cruising, Dead Again, Donnie Brasco, Fallen, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, First Blood, Flight of the Intruder, Ghost, Hamlet, Heathers, The Hunt for Red October, JFK, The Mask, The Mask of Zorro, Medicine Man, Miracle on 34th Street, Mr.