Christian Biegai

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Christian Biegai is a film composer, sound designer and saxophonist. He studied at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1995 followed by postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Music in London. During that time, his interest in film music composition grew, and he began writing film scores for students at the London International Film School. The study of symphonic orchestration and electro-acoustic composition followed with a Masters degree in Music at Rutgers University in New Jersey, United States.

Since then, he has written film scores for feature films, documentaries and animated movies. Little Gang's Production of Whistle (2002), directed by Duncan Jones, was premiered at the Lupo Fright Film Festival 2002 in London and was shown at festivals around the world, including several broadcasts on Film Four. In 2004, he refined his audio-post production skills under the leadership of Frank Verderosa at Planet V, New York. Working with digital artist and multimedia producer Helena Bulaja generated an inspired partnership. Results of this include composing and recording the score for the fairytale Regoch (2006), sound design for Yagor (2005), which can be heard on the CD-ROM release of "Croatian Tales of Long Ago, Part Two" and Helena Bulaja's latest project about Nikola Tesla, which features Laurie Anderson and Terry Gilliam amongst other artists. Christian composed the score for director Marc Meyer’s film Sunday, in August, which was broadcast on France 3, and won the Minister of Art Promotion Prize at the Film Festival in Dresden in 2005. The same year he teamed up with New York-based director Matthew Timms, sound designing and scoring the film How I know you (2005). Working at Park Road Post as an editor in 2006, Christian contributed also a string quartet piece for Academy Award nominee, Taika Waititi’s feature film "Eagle vs. Shark" (2007) alongside the original soundtrack by the Phoenix Foundation. In 2007 he composed the score for Marc Meyer's feature film debut: "Wir Sagen Du! Schatz."(2007) and the music for Paul Swadel's TV One New Zealand documentary "The Big Picture" (2007) in collaboration with Dave Whitehead and Riki Gooch. He recently completed the score for Brigitte Bertele's feature film debut: "Nacht Vor Augen"(2008), which premiered on the 58th Berlin International Film Festival 2008.

As a saxophone player, Christian has performed with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, clair-obscur saxophone quartet, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and the artist collective Edison Woods amongst others. He performed with Michael Nyman at the Berlin Film Festival 2000 where he premiered the film music for Fernand Leger's Ballete Mechanique (1924). In 2005 he recorded the score for 3:20, written for solo saxophone by Gerald Busby, best known for his soundtrack of Robert Altman's Three Women. After the collaboration, Gerald dedicated Speak for Christian, that he premiered in Carnegie Hall. In 2006, he performed with Antony and the Johnsons on their European Tour "Turning".