“The clearest reason for music, for culture, is it gives us meaning.” Yo-Yo Ma (from Morgan Neville’s The Music of Strangers).

MEDIA COMPOSER

Composer Chad Cannon’s work can be heard in the Oscar-winning Netflix documentary American Factory, the BAFTA-winning PlayStation game Ghost of Tsushima (Iki Island Expansion), and the Peabody-winning HBO film Night is Not Eternal. He was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy for his score for Exposing Muybridge, featuring Gary Oldman, and has received 7 International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) nominations, including for Harbor from the Holocaust - with special guest performer Yo-Yo Ma. Other recent titles include The Rose: Come Back to Me (Tribeca premiere), Join or Die (Netflix), The Dating Game (Sundance premiere), The Carman Family Deaths (Netflix), Algiers, America (Hulu), Hidden Letters (Oscars shortlist), Tokyo Cowboy, and Illumination's Penglai, narrated by Scarlett Johansson.

ARRANGER & ORCHESTRATOR

Fluent in Japanese, Chad worked closely for 7 years (part-time) as a live concert arranger for Golden Globe-nominated composer Joe Hisaishi, acting as lead orchestrator for Hisaishi’s Studio Ghibli/Miyazaki world tour, which saw sold out performances at iconic venues such as Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall. He also created symphonic suites for Hisaishi and the New Japan Philharmonic, of legendary film scores such as Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Castle in the Sky, and Spirited Away. Other arrangement credits include PlayStation: The Concert (Europe tour in spring, 2025), PlayStation's Ghost of Tsushima and its sequel Ghost of Yotei, and pop acts such as Lukas Graham. He began his career as an assistant to renowned orchestrator Conrad Pope, gaining experience on heavyweight franchises such as Illumination’s Secret Life of Pets and Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy while absorbing the musical language of Oscar-winning composers Alexandre Desplat and Howard Shore.

CULTURAL AMBASSADOR

Chad founded Asia-America New Music Institute (AANMI), which produces cultural exchange concerts between Asia and the U.S. With AANMI, Chad created programs with some of classical music's most influential composers and performers, such as Davóne Tines, Matthew Aucoin, Kahchun Wong, Ryu Goto, Carlos Simon, Kojiro Umezaki, Xiaogang Ye, Hub New Music, and Narong Prangcharoen, in collaboration with hundreds of performers throughout Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and the United States. US programs have included residencies at Peabody-Essex Museum, Texas A&M University, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and Snow College. Because of his work with AANMI, Chad was named a tourism ambassador for Yanai City, a small town in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan, and regularly visits to perform in the city. For 5 years Chad was a part-time tour coordinator for Midori's Music Sharing program, which brings world-class chamber music to thousands of people in schools, refugee camps, hospitals, etc, throughout Asia. As a graduate student, he interned at Asian Cultural Council (ACC), supporting Asian artists doing residencies in NYC.

CONCERT COMPOSER

Chad’s commissions and collaborations include: Beijing Symphony, Mate Bekavac & Slovenia Philharmonic, Nuremberg Symphony, Barlow Endowment, Farallon Quintet, Hollywood Chamber Orchestra, Young Artist Chamber Players, Hub New Music, and 日本歌曲協会 (Modern Japanese Song Society). Substantial works include Dreams of a Sleeping World, a symphony in 10 movements for choir with woodwind soloist, Citizen 13660: Vignettes (for clarinet & string quartet), Beijing: City of Charming Light (for symphony orchestra), Sky Visions (for symphony orchestra), and Harlem, 1951, a song cycle for soprano & baritone, using excerpts of Langston Hughes’ poetry. The latter was praised by The New York Times as “subtle, agile," and with “vividness of emotion”, for a performance by Grammy-winner soprano Julia Bullock and celebrated bass-baritone Davóne Tines at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

COMPOSER-VIOLINIST / OCEAN ACTIVIST

In 2025 Chad created Music for the Ocean, a touring show for violin and piano (Hui Wu) with projected animation (by Emmy-winner Tim Rauch), sound and lighting design (by Will Chen and Evan Murnane, respectively). The project acts as a sort of “nature documentary for the concert hall” and is designed to help audiences fall in love with the ocean and marine life. It is partnered with Tela Coral, a nonprofit working on protecting critically endangered coral reef species in the Caribbean. With performances thus far in LA, Texas, Utah, Massachusetts, and Japan, the show has raised over $43,000 from audiences for Tela’s marine biology lab in Honduras, the first in the country. The show will continue to tour extensively in 2026.

EDUCATION / EDUCATOR

Chad graduated from Harvard cum laude with a degree in music & a citation in Japanese. He holds a master’s degree from Juilliard in composition and participated in the Sundance Composer Labs. He loves interacting with students and has taught guest lectures at Dartmouth, Hiroshima University, University of the Ryukyus, NYU, Claremont Colleges, Snow College, Mahidol University, Central Conservatory of Music (Beijing), Shenyang Conservatory, CUHK-Shenzhen, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hanyang University, Texas A&M, Waterford School (Utah), St. Andrews (Austin), American School in Japan (ASIJ), Kyoto Horikawa Music High School, Yanai High School, and Academy of Music (Ljubljana, Slovenia). He is also a U.S.-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP) Fellow, recently got into scuba diving, and swims with the U.S. Masters Swimming team at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles. His partner Sarah Ngo works at The Nature Conservancy.