Biography

Taylor Joshua Rankin (b. 1991) is a filmmaker and composer of new music based in Los Angeles, CA.

Taylor’s music exists within the trend of contemporary classical composers who draw upon a depth of influences such as minimalism, avant-rock, experimental, micropolyphony, and tintinnabulation, inside of and extending beyond the world of new music.

Taylor’s joy in making music is to express a sort of emotional zenith with sounds of a dense and undulating world, existing in a space between gossamer and cacophony.

Taylor finds a strong harmony between the composition process and the process of filmmaking. Both require a clear vision and collaborative spirit to enact that vision, as well as the help of many, many, talented people along the way. His collaborators include professionals that have worked on projects for Lucasfilm, Pixar, Disney, Universal, Paramount, Marvel, and the independent film scenes in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Taylor’s films have garnered a wide array of acclaim and festival praise.

Taylor’s recent short film The Snow Leopard has won multiple awards for its directing and original music, and has screened at film festivals including the 24th Beverly Hills Film Festival®.

Taylor's music has been performed by ensembles across the United States, such as Grammy award winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion, The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Friction Quartet, and the NYU Marimba Ensemble.

Taylor's music has been programmed by the Current's concert series in Chicago, the Eastman School of Music, New York University, the University of Michigan, University of North Florida, University of Kentucky School of Music, Pittsburg State University, the Tutti Festival at Denison University, Composers Inc., the Presidio Club, The San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, Abchordis Ensemble, California State University East Bay, Stolen Time Ensemble, and PoP Up Magazine’s 2018 season in DC, NY, LA, Portland, Toronto, and Chicago, as well as the 2016, 2017, and 2018 Hot Air Music Festivals.

Taylor was recently named a finalist for the 2024 Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab. Taylor was also named a finalist for the 2024 I-Park Composers + Musicians Collaborative Residency with Hub New Music.

Along with being a composer, Taylor also works in post-production as a creative video editor for some of the top orchestras in the country. While at the San Francisco Symphony, Taylor cut the digital Soundbox concerts for Nico Muhly, Julia Bullock, Essa-Pekka Salonen, Claire Chase, Destiny Muhammad, and Jeremy Denk, as well as Nico Muhly’s Throughline, and Ligeti’s Clocks & Clouds and Ramifications. Recently, Taylor worked with famed London-based opera director Netia Jones on an hour long, multimedia, narrative, concert-film of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale.

Alex Ross of the New Yorker Magazine has written of Taylor’s creative editing work for the SF Symphony as “an astounding feat of editing”. Taylor’s work for the San Francisco Symphony has been featured in the New York Times, The New Yorker, the SF Chronicle and SF Classical Voice, and has led to a Grammy Nomination for the SF Symphony (Muhly, Throughline). Other notable clients include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The New World Symphony where he worked with world renowned conductor and artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas, and Berkeley Symphony.

Taylor recently received an honorable mention for his piece Touch/Still for cello and piano, by the Charles Ives Concert Series in Danbury, Connecticut. Taylor’s piece Half Light, was performed by Third Coast Percussion at the Tutti Festival in Denison University, Ohio, in March of 2019, and in Chicago at Constellation for their annual Currents concert series.

In 2010, during Taylor's undergraduate studies with Dr. Frank La Rocca, Taylor was awarded the annual Glen Glasow Fellowship Award for his overall body of work, and commissioned to produce a piano trio for the Redshift Ensemble. In 2015, Taylor was accepted on scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to pursue his Masters Degree in Music Composition under the apprenticeship of Grammy award winning composer, Mason Bates.

Mason Bates has praised Taylor as having a “great ear for harmony and texture”, and demonstrating “strong and compelling skills”. In 2016 Taylor began serving as a producer for the 2017 Hot Air Music Festival, a day long marathon of new music that operates annually at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In March of 2017 Taylor was awarded second place in the coveted Highsmith Orchestral Composition competition for his three movement work for orchestra: California Nocturnes.

In 2018 Taylor joined the list of composers for Pop-Up Magazine, an organization that tells stories with musical accompaniment live on tour across the country, performed by members of Magik*Magik Orchestra. With Pop-Up, Taylor has written and arranged music for storytellers such as Song Exploder’s Hrishikesh Hirway and film composer Jeff Beal.

Recently, Taylor worked on a series of transcriptions with composer Ted Herne, for an opera by Damon Davis currently being workshopped by the new music ensemble Alarm Will Sound.

In 2019 Taylor self-released his debut album of chamber compositions, titled Palettes. Comprised of 6 pieces, the debut album is a blend of mixed-genre, contemporary-classical music with post-minimalist influences, ranging from acoustic to electro-acoustic works for chamber groups.

Taylor’s newest album Sun, Will Grow (released in 2023) mixes complex acoustic writing of varied instrumentation while pushing the electronic and sonic capabilities of the modern recording studio. The album is part instrumental Contemporary-Classical music, part ambient, part electronic, and is chock-full of all sorts of processed sounds and evocative imagery. Taylor had the pleasure of collaborating with renowned collage artist Najeebah Al-Ghadban on a full series of collage art for each individual track on the album. Sun, Will Grow has garnered a wide array of accolades and press across the United States and overseas.

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Taylor now calls Los Angeles his home.