Steve Wight
Associate Professor of Music in Commercial Music and Recording Arts
Steve Wight attended Cal Arts on the James Irvine Foundation Scholarship. At the request of his mentor, Pulitzer Prize winning composer Mel Powell, Steve was awarded an accelerated granting of the Master of Fine Arts degree in recognition of Musical Excellence. While at CalArts he taught Modal and Tonal Counterpoint and 20th Century Compositional Techniques as a Graduate Assistant. In addition to his primary focus, composition, he also pursued a secondary emphasis in conducting. He studied conducting with Keith Clark and Daniel Schulman, as well as in Master Classes with Herbert Blumstedt and Helmuth Rilling.
Wight has been active for over 20 years as producer, arranger, conductor, recording engineer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has composed concert music in a variety of media, as well as composing and arranging for records and television, including Saturday Night Live and The Man Show. His theme music for the Peabody Award winning radio series The DNA Files can currently be heard on NPR. Wight also arranged and orchestrated two theater productions: Johnny Guitar and The Musical, winner of the 2004 New York Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical.
Steve Wight works primarily out of his SSL-based personal studio, which features an extensive collection of instruments (Yamaha C7 concert grand, Hammond M1, turn-of-the-century upright tack piano, a wide array of 6-and-12-string acoustic and electric guitars, an Allen Woody Epiphone electric bass, Ludwig and Yamaha drums, and many other assorted toys), plus a large assortment of outboard equipment, mics, and plugins. Wiring for the studio is by Paul J. Cox Studio Systems, and the control room was tuned by Bob Hodas.
Wight’s musical influences are many and varied, but among the most important are The Beatles, George Martin, Todd Rundgren, Burt Bacharach, Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel.
Steve serves as Music Director at the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, and is committed to issues of social justice and equality. In 2006, he conducted his Songs Of Social Conscience for choir, strings, and piano, at the Fowler Museum of Cultural History on the campus of UCLA.
Steve Wight holds the Bachelor of Music from California State University, Fullerton.