Brian L.H. Gunter

About Brian

Early music just meant hammering out favorite simple tunes on the family piano, or writing the "score" to the space opera in his head on a Casio CT-420 (it had all the cool spacey sounds a kid could want in the mid 1980s). At age 9 Brian took up the Viola in the 4th grade orchestra, but it was short lived. He was drawn to deeper sounds, and took on the cello in the next year. He continued on with cello and sitting at the piano with a boom box (an ancient form of music listening device) playing albums over and over learning increasingly complex music by ear. By high school, Brian had taken an interest in guitar, being instantly inspired by rock bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains, so he took lessons from a friend's dad, an amazing guitarist named Orvil Ivie, in exchange for playing "roadie" at a few gigs.

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From then on Brian led parallel musical lives. One firmly rooted in classical orchestral music, and the other screaming ahead at 1000mph (that's a little over 1600kmh for all you metric folks) deep into rock and metal!  Brian also joined the church worship band playing guitar where he met film and broadway composer, arranger, and orchestrator Dave Metzger (Wish, Frozen, Lion King, Once Upon A Studio, Spirited, actually...just click here) who was playing keyboard in the band. When Brian showed interest in composing for film, Dave encouraged Brian and let him see what it looked like behind the curtain, and he was absolutely hooked!

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Brian went on to study music composition and cello performance at the University of Idaho's Lionel Hampton School of Music. While there, he performed with the cello in the symphony orchestra, the cello and bass choir, various other chamber groups, and solo performances. Outside of school hours you could find Brian playing guitar or piano in coffee houses, forming an originals and top 40s band, DJ-ing the 6am slot at the campus radio station, or working for the campus live sound and lighting company where he was also introduced to digital recording and Pro Tools for the first time. Brian even became known as the guy to hand a new piece of gear to so he'd figure it out, and teach it to everyone else.

From there Brian and his future wife, Dawn spent time in Seattle where he joined the Audio Production program at the Art Institute, and joined up with original Alt, and hard-rock bands. After a short time Brian started getting asked to sit in with other bands with his cello, and became a regular phone call for many of them, including Seattle producer, composer and musician Johnny Bacolas (Second Coming, Sleze, The Rumba Kings). Because of those relationships Brian is proud to have played cello on records for a number US and world artists such as Second Coming (the song Great Big Sleep for the Midnight Meat Train Soundtrack), The Crying Spell, Darin Isaacs (Amazed By You - recorded at the legendary London Bridge Studios!), The Adarna (Superman - Acoustic version arranged for 6 celli by Brian who also performed and recorded each part remotely from half-way across the country), INK (Ophelia), Sofi Alexandrou, The Rumba Kings, and more. At the same time Brian was composing and producing orchestral cues for various productions, from rock records, stage intros, and even theater performances of  Shakespeare's, The Tempest.

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Life can take some hard twists and turns, and Brian found himself getting further and further away from composing, and the dream of composing for film and television. There were a lot of hard times, and there was even at point where, as Brian puts it, "I had given up on ."

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We can fast forward to about 2020 when when Brian was diagnosed as neurodivergent. That means a lot of things to different people. Brian has this to say about it:

"For me it means I'm in the club of individuals with ADHD and also on the Autism Spectrum. I guess the trendy thing people are calling it now is AuDHD, but that's not an official term. It's a funny thing to be well into your adult life and learning about this for the first time. There are lot of feelings you don't know how to process, and processing the extreme emotional stress an atypical person deals with every day is difficult enough. In general, society has a certain perception of what these things "look" like, but there's a reason it's called a spectrum, and a reason I wasn't diagnosed as a child. I knew there were some things different about me, and anything that made those differences obvious to others I learned to hide away very well, and at a very young age."

"...so after learning this, and had finally started really digging in to understand what all this means I began to connect the dots from my life. I finally understood why I just wasn't like most folks, and what it was that pulled me away from the dream for a time. Without going on and on I'll say this; In the past few years since being diagnosed I have gained an immense new understanding of who I am, how I function, and how I learn."

"I've since returned to learning and studying music (on my terms) and I've been drawn back to that original passion for composing music to picture. And I've made more strides (leaps and bounds really) on this path in the past few years, than in all the years before combined. In a short time I have composed original music for 3 independent feature films, You Might Get Lost (2021) directed by Jim Eaves, who rang me back for his follow up feature The Apocalypse Box (2024) which was loads of fun, and worked with another talented director, Yvonne Winfrey on White Vinniga (2024). Yvonne has already started talking about the next one she wants me to score too! I also have an upcoming short film that will hopefully be released around May 2024 that I'm really very excited about. It's all been really something!"

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"Even in just the past few months I've written music I never imagined would come from me. I don't say that for any reason other than the fact it means I'm still on a road of discovery. The more music I compose, and the more I'm challenged in new ways, the more I learn about and connect with myself as a whole person. I no longer feel like I'm missing something. I'm still a different kind of guy, hahaha...but no longer missing anything."

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Brian is currently living in Spokane, Washington with this family. He composes and produces music from a his home studio, and in just the past year has produced music for productions ranging from Los Angeles, CA to London, UK.