Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, Danny Elfman, Herman Stein, Ronald Stein, John Debney, Harry Manfredini, Henry Mancini, John Ottman, Gustav Holst
Patrick Phillips was born on February 7th, 1979 in Bristol Tennessee. By age 7 Phillips began composing, his instrument; a toy pipe organ that was given as a gift for Christmas. After winning against 17 conducting contenders his 8th grade year, Phillips was offered a chance to conduct his peers in band at the in the final concert of the year. This would become the ’spark’ Patrick needed to pursue a career in composing and conducting. “It’s actually kind of funny…” explains Phillips, “I hated band and wanted out rather badly, but my parents wouldn’t let me quit... I credit them for keeping me involved so deeply, and for my success today.”
By the next year, at a mere 14, Patrick had assembled his own 35 piece wind ensemble that rehearsed after school for 1 hour and a half performing film themes from the schools library that were rarely touched otherwise. The "North Mesquite Pops" went on throughout his freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year even while carrying out his Drum Major duties. Patrick reflects on his band director... "Mr. John Kline is hands down the most influential musician in my life... He really took me under his wing, and was everything a teacher should be... Patient, caring, and understanding... He pushed me, and I'm glad he did."
In 1997 Phillips became host of a local television talk show, “The Patrick Phillips Show!” and while his program was quite the change from a career in music, Patrick never lost sight of the one thing that brought him happiness… “Music.”
In 2000 Patrick was asked to compose music for an independent feature called “Holdings of the Heart” and this would be his first score. Following the success of “Holdings” Phillips went on to write for the Garland Civic Theatre, composing more than 9 scores over the course of 2 years, and becoming music director of “A Grand Night for Singing” the following year.
In 2003, Phillips founded The DFW Pops, and it was here that his years of work began paying off. The group performed for more than 250,000 people at the Plano Balloon Festival in 2004, and accompanied several pageants.
After a move to Austin Texas in late 2004, Patrick decided it was time for Austin to have it’s own “Cinematic Symphony” and began recruiting for “The Austin Wind Symphony” a nontraditional wind symphony in every sense of the word, Phillips even added strings to the mix of winds to create maximum “score” impact… “The truth of the matter is this… It’s allot easier to recruit for a band than it is an orchestra… Great string players are hard to come by and typically want to be paid, so I assembled a great group of winds, knowing that in the very near future, the group would need certain instruments to bring out the richness of certain film scores”.The Austin Wind Symphony is going strong in it’s second year with Patrick at the helm.
In 2006 Phillips began writing music for “Star Trek New Voyages: To Serve all My Days” starring Walter Koenig. During this period of time Patrick would write many “Star Trek” pieces, with everything from fan film trailers, to openings to Spanish “Trek”. This year, (2007) Patrick returns to his writing to pen a score for a monster movie titled “KILLER WEED”. “It’s fun to write for a movie that is based on the old b-monster movies of yesterday, I am excited to begin working on it. Austin is a hippie town, and the notion of "Killer Weed" is simply too fun to not write for... Patrick also has many other projects headed his way in the months to come… Including a return to “STAR TREK”… Stay tuned!”
