My portfolio includes scoring, arrangement and composition work for video games, feature film and television. As a musician and producer I have released over forty albums of jazz, folk, electronic, punk and modern classical music. I am currently accepting new commissions.
Why Chris Schlarb?
The world is full of musicians, composers and producers. The hard part is matching the right person with the project they are best suited for.

Here is a quick example: if you want to approximate an orchestra of instruments with a single keyboard, I am probably not the right one for the job. My best work utilizes any number of unique, real world instruments including tabla, euphonium, mandolin, marimba and upright double bass. I thoroughly enjoy working with real instruments, in real spaces, with real musicians.

If your film, video game or album requires texture and atmospheric depth, unique or unusual live instrumentation, and thoughtful arrangement, I would love to hear from you. For the last decade I have explored the ambient, jazz, folk, electronic and modern classical genres as a member of both the American Composers Forum and ASCAP.

I specialize in taking small and medium sized budgets and turning them into expensive sounding recordings. I operate my own mobile recording studio and engineer most sessions, saving time and cost.

My work can be heard on this site and read about in the New York Times, All About Jazz, Time Out New York, Chicago Reader and Pitchfork.

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Seven Days

Last Thursday my wife and I had the incomparable pleasure of watching and listening to Herbie Hancock perform live in front of a tiny crowd of 200 people. And if one musical legend wasn’t enough, Joni Mitchell made an unannounced three song cameo and brought the house down and, honestly, me to tears. I wrote a review of the performance for L.A. Record which you can read here. UPDATE: Yahoo! has now posted the entire performance online.

That Saturday I was in the studio with L.A. band The Widow Babies and we recorded a forthcoming E.P. of epic proportions. I will say only this: The Lamb Lies Down in San Pedro.

Monday saw a vocal overdub session for local singer/songwriter Steve Gerstein and his girlfriend Caroline. I have been working with Steve on his debut album for a few months now and things have been going really well. It’s not my usual gig but I am enjoying the back and forth of experimental and more conventional pop music that have sent me ping-ponging lately.

I Heart Lung gathered on Tuesday for a mixing/recording session for Interoceans. We are coming dangerously close to finishing the album (see Thursday).

Last night I had a recording session with Awol One who laid down a monstrous verse and two choruses for the upcoming I Heart Lung remix album. More on that much later.

Today, Thursday, I recorded with Anthony Shadduck who is adding the final upright bass touches to Interoceans in what I think will be the final compositional element for this fearsome record.

I also synced up and processed a killer vocal track from Serengeti for that aforementioned I Heart Lung remix project.

Not a bad seven days.