For the past 30 years multi-Emmy award winning composer/guitarist Brian Tarquin’s music has been heard by tens of millions on a plethora of television and film scores such as: CSI, Ellen, Extra, TMZ, 60 Minutes, Sex and the City, 20/20, SNL, Godzilla, Seinfeld, Cheers, Charmed, Good Morning America, The Watcher (Keanu Reeves), Desert Heat (Van Damme), The Sender (R. Lee Ermey), and National Lampoon’s Repli-Kate (Ali Landry) to name a few. He has won 3 Emmy’s for “Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series” and has been nominated for an Emmy 6 times. In 2022 the Josie Music Awards nominated Tarquin for “Best Guitarist” & “Best Producer” of the year. In 2019 Tarquin received a Global Music Gold Award for his release Orlando In Heaven for “Best Album.” Three years in a row (2016-2019) Tarquin received “Best Album of the Year” nominations from the Independent Music Awards for his releases: Guitars for Wounded Warriors, Orlando in Heaven, and Guitars for Veterans showcasing his guitar prowess alongside such world-class shredders as: Steve Morse, Larry Coryell, Billy Sheehan, Bumblefoot (Guns N’ Roses), Reb Beach (Whitesnake), and Chuck Loeb (FourPlay) to name a few.

In 2006 SESAC honored him with the Network Television Performance Award. Tarquin has graced the Top Billboard Charts with such commercial releases as: This is Acid Jazz, Vol. 2, Sweet Emotions, and Bossa Brava: Caliente on Instinct Records, followed by several solo jazz albums which charted Top 10 at Smooth Jazz Radio R&R and Gavin charts with such hits as “One Arabian Knight”, “Freeway Jam”, “Darlin Darlin Baby” and Tangled Web. Brian has appeared on 50 releases, has 32 million streams on Pandora, Spotify & Apple: selling over 140,000 records in his career.

In 2006, Tarquin opened his own boutique record label called BHP MUSIC/GUITAR TRAX RECORDS, specializing in instrumental guitar music. The label releases the Guitar Master Series featuring legends: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Allan Holdsworth and Zakk Wylde. Simultaneously he built Jungle Room Studios where he records many of the releases for his record label. Jungle Room is an extensive analog/digital studio located in the beautiful New York Catskill mountains featuring a classic 1980’s British Trident 24 recording console with analog tape machines as Otari MTR 90, an Ampex 440c and a plethora of delicious analog gear!

Brian’s weekly NPR radio show called Guitar Trax on WFIT 89.5FM on the Florida Space Coast is streamed on www.wfit.org. He hosts in depth interviews with world-renowned guitarists every Monday night from 10pm-Midnight.

Tarquin is also an award-winning published Author of the following published books.

· Survival Guide for Music Composers (Hal Leonard) – 2018 USA Best Book Winner Award
· Guitar Encyclopedia (Allworth Press) – 2014 USA Best Book Winner Award
· Guitar Amplifier Encyclopedia (Allworth Press) – 2017 USA Best Book Finalist Award
· Stomp on This: The Guitar Pedal Effects Guidebook (Cengage) – 2015 USA Best Book Finalist Award
· Insider’s Guide to Home Recording (Allworth Press) – 2015 USA Best Book Finalist Award
· Insider’s Guide to Music Licensing (Allworth Press) – 2014 USA Best Book Finalist Award
· Recording Techniques of the Guitar Masters (Cengage) interviews with Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, etc

Beginning:

Brian was born in New York City on December 2, 1965 at the New York Presbyterian Hospital on the upper east side. He is the son of the American Albanian abstract artist Pema Browne and Irish American disc jockey/literary agent Perry Joseph Browne. Pema is known for Ambush In November, part of the permanent collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum;[1] and Roads, exhibited at the 1964 New York World’s Fair at the Greyhound Pavilion. Perry was a disc jockey in the Marines for the armed forces in the South Pacific during World War II and worked as an announcer in Boston with the comedy duo Ray Goulding and Bob Elliott. Brian grew up on the upper east side in the apartment building named Park Lane Towers that would become the backdrop for the weekly opener for the popular 1970’s sitcom, “The Jeffersons”. He attended such prestigious Manhattan private schools as the Trinity School where Humphrey Bogart & Truman Capote attended and St David’s where John F. Kennedy Jr. graduated. Brian studied music composition at the Mannes College of Music and attended SUNY New Paltz College in the mid-eighties. After college Tarquin attended the Center for Media Arts in the Chelsea district in the late eighties to study Audio Production.

Early Career:

After audio production school he started as an assistant engineer at Far & Away Studios, owned by Geoff Gray in Goshen, New York. The studio was in a 200-year-old barn with a huge old fireplace and cobwebbed wooden slatted walls. Geoff was a great mentor and became a lifelong dear friend of Tarquin. After about a year Brian went to work for a 5th Avenue jingle house as an assistant engineer and sales rep. This was the next stage of his career where he discovered music production libraries and started to compose for them. Which led him to compose music for the 1992 and 1994 Olympics as well as popular television shows. This greatly helped Brian’s composing chops, which he continued to hone his craft and exploring new genre ideas.

 

This propelled Brian to move to California as he states in his book, Survival Guide for Music Composers (Hal Leonard Publishing), “Los Angeles offered me what I could not get in New York, the accessibility to music industry and as it turned out film and television production companies who needed music.” Within a few months he was working at the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather in L.A. on Wilshire Blvd. producing music for Barbie commercials. At this time Brian worked at Powerhouse Studios in the San Fernando Valley, while at night performing at The Roxy, The Whiskey A-Go-Go on Sunset, and the Baked Potato in Studio City. During this time, Brian recorded the track “Hollywood Shuffle” which was used on the popular show, Beverly Hills, 90210. He recalls, “I remember seeing my music used for the first time on that show, what a rush, they played it a sh*t load of times, it must of ran morning noon and night for the promos.” At this point Brian was living in Hollywood, on Sycamore between Franklin and Hollywood Blvd in Jim Morrison’s old apartment. Morrison used to escape from his Hollywood Hills home from the groupies and write poetry in this apartment. The building as a whole was a Rock N Roll historic monument reeking of the 1960’s, as bands like The Rolling Stones and Paul Revere & The Raiders rented apartments in the building. It was around this time Tarquin made the big switch from rock fusion instrumental to contemporary jazz instrumental after being inspired by the Acid Jazz movement from London in the nineties, as he went on to be signed by Instinct Records.