Anne Bryant is a composer, songwriter, arranger and producer of music for television, advertising and films. She is most known for composing the main theme of The Transformers animated series that ran from 1984 to 1987.
Bryant composed many of the songs in the Jem animated series, mainly those performed by the protagonist rock band Jem and The Holograms, including the Jem Theme.
Career[]
Anne Bryant started music at an early age; she wrote her first tune at the age of four. A year later, she got into the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the prodigy program. At the age of 10, she began studying jazz piano and songwriting seriously.
Hoping to become an arranger some day, at the age of 11 she contacted Peter Matz, who had an office in New York, and told him she wished to become an arranger and would like to watch him work in the recording studio. He agreed, and in the first session, she watched the recording of Barbra Streisand's first album. She soon became the gofer at Peter and Barbra's sessions, meeting Harold Arlen during that time, the songwriter behind "Over The Rainbow" and other hits, as well as Liza Minnelli, who let her write some arrangements for her and later introduced her to Judy Garland.
Bryant made a lot connections during this time, concurrently attending the New York City High School of Music & Art. She did her undergraduate studies at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, where she studied with Manny Albam and Rayburn Wright. In the third or fourth year there, Manny introduced her to Gerry Mulligan, for whom she did orchestrations.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, she worked as the head writer and music director for Spence Michlin's music ad agency, Michlin & Company, writing music for Joe Bacal's advertising company, Griffin Bacal, as well as his TV production company, Sunbow Entertainment. From 1983 to 1990, she and her assistant at Michilin & Company, Ford Kinder, made a music production company called Kinder & Bryant, with Bryant handling most of the music and arrangements, while Ford handled most of the business side, although writing too. Kinder & Bryant were given the chance by Bacal to provide the theme for the Sunbow produced The Transformers cartoon, and went on to become a major music provider for them. During this period, she composed the themes and songs for many other Hasbro funded cartoons, such as Jem, Visionaries, My Little Pony 'n Friends, Inhumanoids and Robotix.
Bryant and Kinder wrote about 160 feature songs for Jem, where Bryant did all of the arrangements and production. She has stated that she had to work in line with the scripts in order for the songs to advance the narrative of each episode. Their working process consisted on each writing a version of the song; then the producers would decide which one would go in the show. Through this process, most of the songs of The Holograms were written by Bryant, while Kinder wrote many for The Misfits. She has also stated that she wrote the songs for The Stingers.
Bryant cast Britta Phillips and Ellen Bernfeld in the main roles for the show, the former becoming the singing voice of the main protagonist, Jem, while the latter provided the singing voice of the main antagonist, Pizzazz (Bryant met Ellen while working in the jingle business back in 1976). When The Stingers were introduced in the third season, she also cast Gordon Grody as the singing voice of Riot, the new main antagonist.
Anne is currently a writer and multimedia artist working with film and video, music, art and design. She created MasterClick, a mathematical software for film composers and authored texts on the subject of finite timings. Alongside Ellen Bernfeld, she runs Gloryvision Ltd., which produced the albums Songs for Dogs and Songs for Cats. Bryant was also Director of Music at advertising firm The Joey Company.
Bryant went out of the spotlight for some time while working on her Masterclick program, until a lawsuit she placed against Sunbow and BMI for royalties over The Transformers theme and other music made news.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Bryant has stated on a few occasions that one of the songs she wrote for Jem she's most proud of is "Universal Appeal" by The Misfits.
See also[]
External links[]
- Anne Bryant at last.fm (source for "Career" section)
- Anne Bryant Talks About Her Love of Music - Interview at Seibertron
- IMDb
- The songwriter: Anne Bryant - Interview at Meetup