David Ari Leon

David Ari Leon (born December 12, 1967) is an American music supervisor, composer, songwriter and musician.^[1]

David Ari Leon
Leon at the 2012 Comic-Con
Background information
Born	(1967-12-12) December 12, 1967 (age 57) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation(s)	Composer, musician, songwriter, music supervisor
Years active	1990–present
Labels	Vitamin Records, SoundMind Music
Website	SoundMindMusic.com

Leon's first professional music credit was in 1990 working with Danny Elfman on the feature film Nightbreed.^[2] He is best known for writing and supervising music for Marvel Entertainment on titles including Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk.^[3] He is a songwriter on the themes to the Marvel series The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and The Super Hero Squad Show, and composed the main title music to the shows Xyber 9: New Dawn and Mr. Bill Presents.^[4] Leon was also commissioned by NASA to be the music supervisor on their video "29 Days on the Edge" about the James Webb Space Telescope which NASA released in conjunction with the launch of the space telescope in 2021.^[5]

Featured music

Leon has been featured as a music artist on NPR's syndicated programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered in ten episodes between the years 2005 to 2018.^{[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]}

He was also featured on the album "Rockabye Baby! Baby's Favorite Rock Songs,"^[16] which was available exclusively at Starbucks March 23 – April 19, 2010. The album reached #3 on Billboard's Kids Albums chart,^[17] #18 on the Billboard Independent Albums,^[18] and #111 on the Billboard Top 200.^[19] It contains a version of the Rolling Stones song Ruby Tuesday that Leon performed and produced for the Rockabye Baby! series,^[20] which also features the artists Björk, Journey and Kanye West.

Education and early career

College

In 1990, Leon received a B.A. degree from UCLA in music composition, where he focused on piano performance, film scoring and electronic music production. While attending the university, he did internships with Academy Award-nominated composers, Mark Isham and Danny Elfman, the latter of which resulted in Leon's first feature film credit on the Clive Barker film Nightbreed.^[21] Immediately following his completion of university, Leon worked on Days of Our Lives, garnering him an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Music Director."^[22]

Marvel and Fox

In 1994, Leon began working for New World, the parent company of Marvel at that time, as Music Director and composer on the TV series Valley of the Dolls.^[23] The following year (1995) was the start of his work for Marvel as composer and music supervisor on the show Spider-Man, along with other titles for Fox Kids.^[24]

Leon subsequently held a Vice President of Music title for Fox from 1997 to 2002. During that time, he received music supervisor credits on many film and television projects for Fox such as the miniseries Les Misérables starring John Malkovich and the primetime series State of Grace, starring Frances McDormand.^[25]

Recent works

More recently, Leon performed and arranged songs for a series of albums on Vitamin Records by artists including Neil Young, The Cure, R.E.M. and Pink Floyd.^[26][27] He has also music supervised and written music for a series of interactive and Motion Comics for Marvel, starting with The Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon,^[28] and including the recent Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was the first digital comic to have an interactive soundtrack. Other more recent work for Marvel includes Leon being the music supervisor on eight films co-produced by Lions Gate including Thor: Tales of Asgard and The Invincible Iron Man.^[29] 2019 found Leon writing a series of songs for the successful Netflix Original series, Super Monsters. While continuing his TV music work on shows such as the Emmy winning ABC show Sea Rescue and the Emmy nominated ABC show The Wildlife Docs, Leon also currently scores music for popular titles for EA and other interactive companies. Games with Leon's music include hit titles such as Contre Jour,^[30] Superman,^[31] Snoopy Coaster and Woody Woodpecker,^[32] which garnered Leon a Hollywood Music in Media Award nomination for his original score to the title.^[33] Leon's music was also included in the educational project Kiwaka, a game exploring the concept of tangential learning.^[34]