Chris Opperman (born November 20, 1978) is a composer who has recently emerged into the mainstream. Opperman is known mostly for his work orchestrating the music of guitarists

Steve Vai Steven Siro Vai (; born June 6, 1960) is an American guitarist, composer, songwriter, and producer. A three-time Grammy Award winner and fifteen-time nominee, Vai started his music career in 1978 at the age of eighteen as a transcriptionist for ...

and

Mike Keneally Michael Joseph Keneally (born December 20, 1961) is an American session guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist and composer. Early years and musical influences Keneally started playing music at the age of 7 when he received an electric organ for h ...

for their respective performances with Holland's

Metropole Orkest The Metropole Orkest (Metropole Orchestra) is a jazz and pop orchestra based in the Netherlands, and is the largest full-time ensemble of its kind in the world. A hybrid orchestra, it is a combination of jazz, big band and symphony orchestra. Com ...

. Opperman also performed on Steve Vai's first round of orchestral concerts and the song "Lotus Feet" was nominated for the 2006 Grammy Award for

Best Rock Instrumental Performance The Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance was an honor presented to recording artists for quality instrumental rock performances at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Award ...

. Also, "

The Attitude Song "The Attitude Song" is the sixth track of Steve Vai's debut solo album ''Flex-Able'', which was released in 1984. One of Vai's most frequently performed pieces, it appears on the '' G3: Live in Concert'' DVD, on the ''Live at Astoria'' DVD (with sp ...

" from Vai's '' Sound Theories Vol. I & II'' album was nominated for the 2008 Grammy Award for

. Raised in

Clifton, New Jersey Clifton is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Criss-crossed by several major highways, the city is a regional commercial hub for North Jersey and is a bedroom suburb of New York City in the New York Metropolitan Area. As ...

, Opperman graduated in 1996 from Clifton High School where he participated in the school's marching band on the coronet. However, Opperman has several albums of his own music which is essentially a cross between 1990s

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from Popular culture, mainstre ...

and his favorite 20th-century

composers A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Classical music, Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. E ...

(

Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...

Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century clas ...

Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...

, and Zappa). His main instrument is the

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

. However, he has also been known to play the

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

and the

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

on occasion, and will rarely sing. Opperman lived in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, from 2000 to 2008, when he moved back to New Jersey, where he earned a master's degree in music theory/composition from

Montclair State University Montclair State University (MSU) is a Public university, public research university in Montclair, New Jersey, with parts of the campus extending into Little Falls, New Jersey, Little Falls. As of fall 2018, Montclair State was, by enrollment, ...

in May 2010. Opperman now works as an adjunct professor at Montclair State University and the

Mason Gross School of the Arts Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater, Digi ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

, where he is earning his Ph.D. in music composition. In 2019, Opperman ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for his sixth album ''Chamber Music from Hell''. The album was produced by longtime bass player for

Dweezil Zappa Dweezil Zappa (born Ian Donald Calvin Euclid Zappa; September 5, 1969) is an American rock guitarist and occasional actor. He is the son of musical composer and performer Frank Zappa. Exposed to the music industry from an early age, Dweezil dev ...

, Kurt Morgan. It is a contemporary classical concept album about a posthuman civilization and the music that follows. One of the pieces, "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?" was inspired by the paper by philosopher

Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom ( ; sv, Niklas Boström ; born 10 March 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the rev ...

and was featured in Prog Magazine UK. In 2020, Opperman collaborated with composer/conductor Eric Roth and the Fifth House Ensemble on a tour and album of chamber music from the videogame ''

Undertale ''Undertale'' is a 2015 2D role-playing video game created by American indie developer Toby Fox. The player controls a child who has fallen into the Underground: a large, secluded region under the surface of the Earth, separated by a magical ...

'' by

Toby Fox Robert F. Fox (born October 11, 1991), known professionally as Toby Fox (previously Toby "Radiation" Fox), is an American video game developer and video game composer. He is known for developing the role-playing video games ''Undertale'' and '' ...

called ''Undertale LIVE''.

Discography

Solo albums

# '' Oppy Music, Vol. I: Purple, Crayon'' (1998) # ''Klavierstucke'' (2001) # ''Concepts of Non-linear Time'' (2004) # ''Beyond the Foggy Highway'' (2005) # ''The Lionheart'' (2010) # ''Aphrodite Nights'' - Single (2011) # ''Studio House'' - EP (2013) # ''Chamber Music from Hell'' (2020)

With Steve Vai

# '' Real Illusions: Reflections'' (2005) # '' Sound Theories Vol. I & II'' (2007) # ''Playlist: The Very Best of Steve Vai'' (2009) # ''Naked Tracks, Vol. 5'' (2008) # ''Naked Tracks, Vol. 6'' (2013)

With Mike Keneally

# ''Dancing'' (2000) # ''Dancing with Myself'' (2000) # ''The Universe Will Provide'' (2004) # ''Parallel Universe'' (2004) # ''Guitar Therapy Live'' (2006) # ''Wine and Pickles'' (2008)

Album Reviews

Klavierstückebr /> Concepts of Non-Linear Timebr /> Beyond the Foggy Highway

References

# Westergaard, Sean '' Chris Opperman at AllMusic.com'' # Cowen, Richard
The Record, May 22nd, 2010
' American male composers 21st-century American composers 1978 births Living people Montclair State University alumni Montclair State University faculty 21st-century American male musicians Clifton High School (New Jersey) alumni Musicians from New Jersey People from Clifton, New Jersey Rutgers University faculty {{US-composer-20thC-stub