Bernstein Family Music
Emilie and Peter Bernstein are musicians. They are also related. They have composed scores for Movies, TV Shows, Documentaries and Indie Projects. Separately they have orchestrated or composed scores for some of the biggest names in movie making including Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Shawn Levy and Todd Haines, to name just a few. They have worked on every legendary recording stage in Hollywood, New York and London, as well as around the world in Prague, Berlin, Paris, Dublin and Rome. They are based in Los Angeles, CA where their hobbies include researching sounds for their next projects, doing deep dives into new tech, and of course, exercise.
Emilie A. Bernstein
Emilie Adamson Bernstein is an American composer, orchestrator, songwriter and movement specialist. As an orchestrator she worked most extensively with composer Elmer Bernstein, as well as with composers Christopher Lennertz, John Frizzell, Peter Bernstein and Shawn Murray. She has provided orchestrations on over 29 movies including Oscar nominated scores for Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence and Tod Haynes Far From Heaven. She was also the lead orchestrator on two Call of Duty campaigns, World At War in 2008 and Black Ops in 2010.
While pursuing her orchestration, Emilie also began composing- mostly focusing on songwriting for her band Story of M, but also providing theme music for TV shows, as well as some independent and student films.
In 2011 Emilie pursued her other passion as a movement specialist, and opened a pilates studio (Good Body Pilates) in Santa Monica, CA. There she was able to combine her knowledge of movement and her love for music by working with musicians at her studio as well as becoming a faculty member for the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive (LAFCI), working with young conductors to connect their bodies and their movement to the music they are communicating.
In 2022 Emilie began a musical partnership with her older brother, the film and TV composer Peter Bernstein. This has allowed her to move back to her first love of writing music. Between the two siblings they have over 40 years of experience in the film music industry, both as composers as well as orchestrator/arrangers. Peter and Emilie recently finished a 3 part documentary series for Discovery+ to be released in the winter of 2023.
Emilie looks for projects that uplift- whether by their content or by the people making the content. She is interested in working with under represented groups as she herself has often been the only woman in the room and understands the challenges that can come with being “the first” or “the only”. She enjoys collaboration and the process of breathing life into a project through music.
Peter M. Bernstein
Peter M Bernstein is an American composer and conductor. He has composed scores for over 500 feature films, miniseries, long-form television and episodes. The first breakthrough project was The Ewok Adventure for LucasFilm (1985) and its sequel Ewoks: The Battle For Endor (1986). Soon after came his first T.V. series, 21 Jump Street (1987-1991). It was not only a huge success, it was also one of the very first shows recorded in a home studio using synths and sampled material.
He is the son of Elmer Bernstein, the Academy Award winning film composer whose credits include The Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, To Kill a Mockingbird, Ghostbusters and hundreds of others.
He began his professional career at 14 as a rock n’ roll bass player and was a band member, session player, arranger and record producer for the next 20 years. He began his composing career by working for other composers as an orchestrator and arranger while still working in the rock n’ roll world. He worked on all of his father’s scores from 1974-1986. Orchestration credits from the era include Animal House, Trading Places and Ghostbusters, as well as the scored portions of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video. He was the “score consultant” for Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2020).
He has conducted concerts of Elmer Bernstein film music throughout the world. These include Celebrating Bernstein at Royal Albert Hall as well as Ghostbusters and The Great Escape with the scores performed live to picture.