SESAC Magazine Fall 2006

Composer/multi-instrumentalist David Catalano sits at the head of a full-service music production company, Beach Street Music which has specialized in original composition and music scoring for the television industry since 1995. And while he wasn’t exactly born into the music business, he comes pretty close.

“When I was growing up, my parents owned a nightclub in rye, New York,” he explains, “so I was always around music. They’d bring me in and I’d listen to all these old jazz guys rehears and stuff.”

Jazz soon took a backseat to Rock ’n’ Roll, however. “The Beatles changed everything for me,” he says with a laugh. “I had to run out and get a guitar just like everyone else. I took some lessons but then I got a little older and I realized that there was a glut of guitar players.”

As the ’60s continued and new types of rock music began developing, Catalano yearned to enlarge his musical vocabulary. Soon he was steeping himself in R&B and Jazz and ultimately began taking orchestration lessons and increasing his instrumental prowess, learning sax, flute and violin.

“I’d wanted to write all my life but by the time I was 21 a lot of my friends were dying, literally, the obvious excessive dabbling with illicit substances that was going on at the time. I wanted no part of that, so I got out until around my late 20s.”

Catalano soon became involved with record production and found himself composing more than performing. By the early 1990s he “finally understood the value of copyright,” and began representing other songwriters via Beach Street.

“At some point money became more important than being an artist,” he says. “Now the best part of my job is servicing the clients we have.”

Those clients included the likes of NBC News, ABC College Football, VH-1 and MTV plus such network offering as “Saturday Night Live,” “Law & Order,” and “The Bachelor,” as well as “Maury,” “The Montel Williams Show” and “The Jerry Springer Show”. The Beach Street library currently consists of over 10,000 titles and is constantly expanding.

Working closely with its clients, the company develops custom music packages which can range from an individual tune to an entire music library for large projects. All compositions are recorded and mastered in its digital recording facility, located in a 100-year-old carriage house.

“It’s a strange thing to say but I love what I do not just because of the music but also because of the business end – and a music career has to be run as a business. That’s the most important part of it.”

BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN