From Piano and Beach Blanket Babylon to Pokémon: A Musical Journey

November 10, 2019

Ed Goldfarb sees and hears differently. Where you and I might be just talking, he is hearing background music and seeing the notes in a manuscript. Ed shares with us his journey from professionally accompanying performances as a youth to creating live music for years for Beach Blanket Babylon in the Bay Area in California . . . to creating hundreds of motifs and a multi-location production team around hundreds of Pokémon episodes and films. He uses different senses and experiences along with collaborative music tech to build series music in his own unique way.

Guest: Ed Goldfarb, Madcap Labs Composer/Musician/Producer/Educator

Ed Goldfarb has scored more than 300 episodes of television and four feature films for the internationally beloved Pokémon anime and movies. He’s also collaborated with legendary film director Francis Ford Coppola on numerous projects including Apocalypse Now Redux. In the previous century, Ed was Music Director of San Francisco’s Beach Blanket Babylon, tried to produce hits (most successfully for Boyz II Men) and, before that, received a degree in Music Composition from the University of California, Berkeley. Ed lives in Marin County, CA, with his family, where, in addition to operating his studio Madcap Labs, he plays piano at an Italian restaurant on Wednesdays for dinner and tips.