Timo Chen is an Emmy-award winning Asian-American composer and multi-instrumentalist working often in the intersections of traditional, experimental, and world music. He has worked with many Hollywood film and television composers in a wide range of roles and projects from conductor, arranger, and additional music for shows such as the Netflix animated series Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles, the Paramount+ anthology series Why Women Kill, the NBC comedy Superstore, and the Freeform romantic comedy The Thing About Harry. His music is also featured in Universal’s Unfriended: Dark Web, Fox’s Series Lucifer, and PBS’s 62 Days.

Timo’s passion lies in stories from disenfranchised communities and working with filmmakers of those communities, particularly Asian-Americans. Following the 2014 Sundance Institute Composers Lab at Skywalker Ranch, Timo went on to score Jennifer Phang’s indie sci-fi Advantageous, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by Netflix. He continued to score independent and foreign films across the spectrum including Emily Ting’s, Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong and Go Back To China as well as Vietnamese films Kiss and Spell and Trung So (Jackpot), Vietnam’s 2016 Oscar submission for best foreign film which was also acquired by Netflix. In addition to marginalized narratives, Timo has also worked on important docuseries for KCET on complex issues of gentrification and climate change, City Rising, and Earth Focus.

Timo’s musical journey began at the USC Community School of Performing Arts (now the Colburn School) and continued at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He lived in Asia for several years studying Balinese Gamelan and Peking Opera while working as a session and touring guitarist and music director for Chinese recording artists Sandee Chan, Alex To, and Coco Lee. Timo further continued his conducting studies in 2018 when he was chosen as a fellow for the BMI Conducting Workshop in 2018. His working time is spent in his home studio in Los Angeles which also functions as a lab with hand-wired microphones, oscillators, and various altered instruments to create music with a unique sound in solid service of picture.