Paul Hepker

"Hepker co-composed the music for Rendition, Tsotsi (which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film) and the Dutch-South African film The Bird Can't Fly (all with Mark Kilian). He recently completed the score for Into the Light - a documentary exploring the AIDS crisis in Tanzania, which featured Kenyan singer Ayub Ogada. He has also composed the music for numerous Discovery Channel and National Geographic series: “Crash Files,” “Impact,” “America’s Deadliest Season,” “Into the Firestorm,” “Deadliest Catch”, “Raw Nature”, "Iditarod", "Herrings" and "Shark Lab" (NBC) - all for Original Productions. A long-time member of acclaimed Los Angeles theatre company Circle X, Hepker garnered an Ovation Award, two LA Weekly Awards, and numerous nominations for his work as composer or Musical Director on productions such as “Grendel,” “Laura Comstock's Bag-Punching Dog” and “Romeo & Juliet: Antebellum, New Orleans, 1839.” In 1999 he was a Finalist in the inaugural John Lennon Songwriting Competition and has had songs featured in, and included on the soundtracks for Tsotsi, Permanent Midnight, Soul Survivor, The Bird Can't Fly and Into The Light. Born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa, Paul Hepker trained as a concert pianist under Adolphe Hallis. He worked as a Musical Director at the National Theatres in Pretoria and Cape Town (“The Rocky Horror Show,” “Joseph”) and has performed or recorded with a number of prominent South African and international artists such as Shirley Bassey, Miriam Makeba, Ica Cube and Vusi Mahlasela. He wrote the voter education theme "Make Your Mark" for the first democratic elections in South Africa, which gave birth to a National TV gameshow of the same name. In the mid-1990's he toured the world as a member of Grammy-nominated band Johnny Clegg and Savuka (Juluka) before moving to Los Angeles in 1997 to pursue a career in composing for stage and screen."