About Me
Born in Germany, Helmut Calabrese is an Italian-American composer operating primarily in the greater New York City area. For over forty years, Dr. Calabrese has composed music for all genres. He has traveled the world participating in concerts as an orchestrator and premiere events as a composer. He is a natural musical dramatist skilled in using emotional and sensuous sonorities to carry scenes and develop characters in feature films and short films. Stylistically, he is defined as a polyphonic Neo-Romantic Eclectic Modernist composer.
Dr. Helmut Calabrese leverages a lifetime of musical training in his work. After immigrating to the United States from Germany with his family, he began studying piano privately at the young age of ten. His endless passion and raw talent for the subject led to many musical pursuits—he began composing at eighteen and wrote his first opera at twenty-one. He also obtained many post-secondary degrees, including a Bachelor of Music in Composition from the University of the Arts and a Ph.D. in composition at New York University. Dr. Calabrese furthered his formal education with extensive film scoring training under film professor and composer Michael Rendish from the Berkley College of Music. Dr. Calabrese is a self-professed life-long learner. He is never finished honing his skills and adding to his musical knowledge.
Dr. Calabrese founded a music publishing business in 2003 under the name Calabrese Brothers Music Company. His orchestral music, colorful, emotional, and poignant, has been performed on many international stages. His transition to film music was a natural one, being commissioned in 2008 by the Italian film production team of Master Movies, s.r.l. On that project, he composed his first feature film score, entitled Il Gioco È Fatto?. His early work in the film industry led to international acclaim, earning numerous accolades and awards, such as the 2011 Terra di Sienna Film Festival, Best First Work, the 2012 Garden State Film Festival, Best Traditional Music Award, and ASCAPLUS Awards.
Dr. Calabrese is a collaborative professional who enjoys working closely with directors to capture their vision, enhance their characters, and bring depth to their scenes through dynamic orchestral scores. His firm belief in the power of storytelling through music has made a lasting impression on his peers. As quoted by the film producer/director Vahé Mansourian, Dr. Calabrese’s “commitment and creativity in composing film/TV music is inspiring and contagious. His ability to connect with my vision and film’s storyline made it very enjoyable to collaborate with Helmut. The quality and originality of his music speaks for itself.”
Dr. Calabrese appreciates the budgetary and temporal constraints of producers and other industry professionals. He works within the parameters set for him and boasts in-depth knowledge of many leading music software programs, such as Logic Pro. Dr. Calabrese is currently based in New Jersey. He travels nationally and internationally for work on an ongoing basis. When not creating and developing musical scores, Helmut enjoys cultivating his creativity by writing poetry, practicing yoga, and exercising in nature.
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