Fred Emory Smith was destined to lead a life as a musician and composer. He began studying piano at the age of four and by the time he was eight, he had won the Yamaha’s national piano composition competition. While in high school, Fred entered the Young Musicians Competition and received first place for a marimba concerto, earning the “Clotilde Otranto” award. As a result of winning, He was able to perform Ney Rosauro’s Concerto No. 1 for Marimba with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra.

Fred’s drum corps experience included performing with the Arizona Academy in 2001, Santa Clara Vanguard Cadets in 2002, and the Santa Clara Vanguard in 2003-2005. He began arranging for Santa Clara Vanguard Cadets starting in 2013 and has won four Open Class Championships. Currently, Fred composes and arranges for various high school marching bands, indoor drumlines, and independent WGI percussion groups. For the 2019 season, Fred now works with the Blue Devils as their sound designer.

Outside of the marching world, Fred is an award winning composer working in various media genres in Southern California. Fred was trained at Berklee College of Music, where he received the Doug Timm Award for Outstanding Musicianship in Film Scoring.

Now having considerable experience working on many different films, TV shows, and video games, some of Fred’s work includes Transformers 3, Need for Speed: The Run, Disney’s Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, Star Wars: Forces of Destiny, Marvel’s Agents of Shield, Outlander, and Supergirl.

Fred has composed the music for two HBO TV shows, Grace and Halfwords, winning Best Composition for Halfworlds in the 2017 Apollo Awards. Another big accomplishment was to work as a music arranger for the 87th Academy Awards.

His current projects include working on the animated series Star Wars: Galaxy of Adventures for Lucasfilm and a new family adventure feature film entitled Rock ‘n Roll Eddie.

Fred resides in Huntington Beach, CA with his wife Sasha and son.