Joel McNeely

Joel McNeely (born March 28, 1959) is an American composer, arranger, musician, and songwriter. He is a composer of film and television music.

Biography
Joel McNeely was born in Madison, Wisconsin. Both of his parents were involved in music and theater, and as a child he played the piano, saxophone, bass, and flute. He attended the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, studied jazz at the University of Miami, and earned a master's degree as a composition major at the Eastman School of Music.

Lucasfilm chose McNeely to compose the soundtrack to the 1996 Star Wars novel Shadows of the Empire. This was an experimental project where he conveyed general moods and themes instead of writing music to flow for specific scenes.

He is also known for conducting a series of re-recordings of film scores by Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, John Barry and other composers under the label of Varèse Sarabande, including those Herrmann wrote for Vertigo, Psycho and Citizen Kane. He also composed the score for The Avengers and the theme and music for FOX's Dark Angel. Additionally, he scored the movies Terminal Velocity, Iron Will (which was used in the teaser trailer to Toy Story, the theatrical trailer to Balto, and the VHS trailer to Mulan), Flipper, Gold Diggers, Samantha, Virus, and I Know Who Killed Me. He also scored a multitude of Disney animated films (Mulan II, Return to Never Land, Tinker Bell and many others).

Currently McNeely scores occasional episodes of the FOX animated TV series American Dad!, since the fourth season replacing Ron Jones who left to focus more on composing for Family Guy, including the episode with the Back to the Future parody, and the season five premiere (among others).

McNeely has produced both of Seth MacFarlane's studio albums, 2011's Music Is Better Than Words, and 2014's Holiday for Swing.

In 2017, he composed a score for MacFarlane's new series, The Orville, along with Bruce Broughton and John Debney.