Pete Calandra & Straight Up | Silent Kisses

Pete Calandra is a prolific composer and keyboard player whose solo albums are wonderfully diverse, spanning world music, jazz, contemporary jazz, new age, pop, and neo-classical. The thread throughout his music is the lyrical expressiveness of the compositions and purity and purposefulness of the musicianship. Three of his albums of original ambient music -- First Light (2015), The Road Home (2017) and Carpe Noctem (2018) were nominated for ZMR Awards. His jazz funk track, Neptune Beach was a 2023 Hollywood Independent Music Awards Nominee while another jazz based track, Bleecker Street, was the 2023 Clouzine Magazine “Best Jazz Funk” winner. In 2024 his track Mixed Emotions was a Hollywood Independent Music Awards Nominee.

As a Film & TV composer, Calandra scored over 100 films and wrote over 2000 compositions for television. He has composed music for every major television network including the FIFA World Cup Theme for FOX Sports, the Special Olympics World Games and Invictus Games Theme for ESPN, as well as writing music for the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS from 2015 thru 2020. He also garnered acclaim for composing the music to Jellysmoke, a film which won the Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award, and Unknown Soldier, a film which won the Los Angeles and Philadelphia Film Festivals and also was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.

Calandra has been immersed in the New York City music scene for most of his life. As a keyboard player he performed in the Broadway productions of Miss Saigon (for 10 years), The Lion King, Les Miserables, The Phantom Of The Opera, and Little Shop Of Horrors.In addition to his Broadway resume -- which includesfirst chair keyboardplayer positions for many of those productions -- he has also performed with the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, NY Pops Orchestra, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Don Cherry, Aretha Franklin, Allen Ginsberg, Annie Golden, Donna McKechnie, Lillianne Montevecchi, and he spent 16 years as the keyboard playerin the NYC-based Climax Band, the creative vehicle for artist and musician Larry Rivers.

Calandra's prismatic experience and artistry allows him to inhabit a multitude of genres, conjure up a diverse selection of moods and emotions, and work within a broad array of mediums. "I don't try to define anything because I find that,as a creative person, when you put something in a box, you limit the creative flow," Calandra says. In additionto his keyboard and compositional skills, he is also an accomplished guitarist and multifaceted studio engineer versedin the arts of tracking and mixing.

Currently, Calandra is on the faculty at the Aaron Copland School Of Music at Queens College, CUNY teaching Audio/MIDI, Film Scoring and Music Composition to both graduateand undergraduate students. He is also a Yamaha Endorsed Artist.

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