Devin Roth Making It in Hollywood

If you happen to tune in to Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas on December 16 (NBC at 8 PM), you might want to pay special attention to the musical settings. The nine new songs have been composed by Matthew Sklar and Christopher Guardino, AND they have been orchestrated by NEC’s own Devin Roth, who received his M.M. in Jazz Composition in 2012.

Devin moved to Los Angeles shortly after graduation to pursue a career in music composition for film and television. And, two years later, he’s doing it!

Elf, which follows upon the 2003 film Elf, starring Will Ferrell, and the Broadway production Elf: The Musical, is an hour-long, stop-motion animation special that focuses again on the ungainly Buddy (the Elf of the title), voiced over here by Jim Parsons. Others in the voice cast include Mark Hamill, Ed Asner, Jay Leno, Matt Lauer, Kate Micucci, and Rachael MacFarlane.

Elf isn’t the only impressive project on Devin’s resume. He recently worked on the music for Fox Animation’s film, The Book of Life, which is currently in theaters. On that project, he served as a MIDI programmer and orchestrator for multiple Academy Award winning composer, Gustavo Santaolalla and composer/orchestrator Tim Davies. That entailed using virtual instruments on the computer to create orchestral mockups of the music to be approved by the director and producers prior to recording with the London Symphony Orchestra. You can hear the music recorded by the LSO at iTunes.

Want to find out more about Devin’s doings? Check out his IMDb page.