Darren Solomon
COMPOSER / BASS / KEYS
Darren Solomon is a Brooklyn-based composer, producer, bassist and keyboard player. His professional career began at the age of 19, when he joined the touring band of R&B legend Ray Charles as his bassist. In the following years he became a busy musician on the New York scene and began working as a composer for TV commercials. He's scored over 500 national ads for clients like Google, AMEX, Pepsi, L'Oreal and MnM's, earning a Best Music Clio and a Cannes Gold Lion.
Darren is Creative Director and Partner at Quiet City Music + Sound, a music production house with studios in New York and San Paulo, Brazil.
Maintaining an avid interest in the intersection of art and technology, Darren created the crowdsourced web-based music project "In Bb 2.0", which became a viral hit, featured on NPR, CNN, and the Evolution of The Music Video series at BFI, London.
As a venue for his songwriting and production, he created the project Science for Girls, which was featured in Electronic Musician and KCRW's Song of The Day.
Other highlights in a diverse career include producing the music for the H&M x Balmain runway show, composing the theme to A&E's Parking Wars, teaching masterclasses in production and composition and SUNY Purchase (where he is a Visiting Artist), and curating for the inaugural season at the innovative Brooklyn venue National Sawdust.
Darren maintains a busy schedule performing electronic music, exploring applications for music in new media, composing for dance companies, and curating and producing live shows.
music for ads
I've written the music for over 500 national TV commercials for brands including Coke, Samsung, Honda, Google, M&M's, Verizon, Dell, AMEX, L'Oreal, Geico, and a memorable one for K-Y Jelly. Here are a few examples.
live performance
I regularly perform live around the city, here are some clips!
H&M x Balmain Runway Show
I produced the music and DJ'd the show, working with Balmain Creative Director Olivier Rousteing and choreographer Normann Shay.
Hip Hop Tribute to Miyazaki
A night of Hip Hop inspired by Miyazaki films, here featuring Baxter P Wordsworth.
Aether Dance Company
Original score for motion capture dance company Aether, performed live at National Sawdust.
I wrote Everything Bad But Forever, a program written in p5.js that generates an infinitely long drug commercial. Using a data set of the text from 75 actual drug ads, it algorithmically creates weird and horrifying side effects and recites them over a random selection of stock footage. The drug names are generated from a data set of 100 actual product names. Here's some footage of its output.
remixes/mashups/tidbits
This is Science For Girls.
I wrote, produced, and performed most of the album, and each track has a different singer.
Read an article in Electronic Musician about the production of the album.
tours
I got my start in music when I joined Ray Charles' band, playing bass on tour with him for two years. I later worked with jazz, latin, and pop artists around NYC and on tour. Here are a few clips, including work with Ray Charles, Olivia Newton-John, and Barry Manilow.