Biography

Forest Christenson is a Los Angeles-based composer for film, television, and games. Across fifteen years he has earned over a hundred screen credits as a composer, score mixer, and engineer.

He began at Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions, engineering on Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (whose mix won the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing), Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049, Wonder Woman, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and working alongside mixer Alan Meyerson. Under the mentorship of Rupert Gregson-Williams he moved into writing, contributing music to Aquaman, Abominable, The Alienist, and The Gilded Age before scoring on his own.

Before Hollywood, he worked in the Brooklyn experimental music scene: performing live violin with sound artist Lea Bertucci through augmentation-reverb systems of his own design; appearing with Christina Vantzou at the 2015 Wordless Music concert at St. Agnes Church, opening for Stars of the Lid in a set broadcast live by Boiler Room; and co-founding Seabat, a synth duo with John Also Bennett. Reviewers called his solo project Forest Walker "brilliantly transfixing" and "one of the more confounding and promising debuts" in experimental music.

With Rupert Gregson-Williams he co-composed Grandpa Was An Emperor, a documentary tracing the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie's dynasty, executive produced by Cynthia Erivo; critics called it "captivating, gripping and poignant." To Kill a Wolf, Kelsey Taylor's psychological thriller co-composed with Sara Barone, premiered at the 2024 Edinburgh International Film Festival and won the MASA Award for Best Feature Film Score of 2025, alongside a nomination from the Society of Composers & Lyricists. Critics described the film as "haunting and beautifully restrained," its music working in concert with the cinematography.

For television and games: additional music on HBO's The Last of Us and Amazon's Mr. & Mrs. Smith, both Emmy-nominated scores written with David Fleming; music for 2K's Mafia: The Old Country with BT, recorded with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra; additional music on DC's Superman and Netflix's LIFT; and main title themes and episode scores for four Korean drama series, including Sisyphus: The Myth, The Tale of Lady Ok, and Showtime! From Now On.

As a score mixer, his credits include Wonder Woman (Warner Bros/DC), Apple TV+'s Chief of War, and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Neon). His mix on The Blue Angels, the IMAX documentary produced by J.J. Abrams and Glen Powell for Amazon MGM Studios, was nominated for a Cinema Audio Society Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for Motion Pictures.