Brian Woodbury is a Los Angeles composer, lyricist and bandleader. He writes art pop, quirky indie songs, post-modern concert music, comedy songs, country music, stage musicals, and music for children’s TV.
He has released 12 albums under his own name or one of his ensembles. Most recently he completed the 4-volume Anthems & Antithets magnum opus with the release of Volume 4: Rhapsody & Filigree, an album of art songs, experimental pop and progressive rock. Completed over the pandemic, each volume in the Anthems & Antithets series is a double album in a distinct musical mood: comic, confessional, political and arty.
His other bands include: The Variety Orchestra, a 17-piece post-modern jazz-latin-bluegrass ensemble; The Popular Music Group, a quirky pop band; Town & Country, a blue state country band with frontman Rob Shapiro; and avant funk band Some Philharmonic.
Mr. Woodbury’s musicals include Ghost-s, a comedy based on Ibsen’s Ghosts; Killa Vanilla, set on an undeveloped Hawaiian island; Sex, Ma and Apple Pie, set on a porn shoot; and Space Opera, about a right wing extremist colony on Mars. Mr. Woodbury is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
For TV, Mr. Woodbury wrote the theme song for Pepper Ann, and co-wrote the theme for Teacher’s Pet, both Saturday morning cartoon series on ABC. He was the supervising songwriter on Disney’s Book of Pooh and for Jim Henson’sBear in the Big Blue House, both on the Disney Channel. He was also a principal songwriter for PBS’s It’s a Big, Big World.
Mr. Woodbury began writing and performing at the age of 11. In college he studied musical comedy songwriting with Tom Lehrer, music composition with Bernard Rands and Pauline Oliveros, and jazz composition with Jimmy Cheatham. He has collaborated with Van Dyke Parks.
