Music Production & Sound Design for Visual Media Programs Faculty

Music Instructor – Music Production

• Lincoln is a professional audio engineer, instructor and musician. He is a live sound engineer at the SF Jazz center working with artists such as John Legend, Wayne Shorter, and the Kronos Quartet. He is also an A/V technician, mixing multi-source audio for corporate environments at Google and Facebook.
• Lincoln has 20 years of performance and study of the bass guitar, double bass, music theory, rhythm, and sight-reading.

Education:

Bachelor of Science, Expression College for Digital Arts (Emeryville, California, Sound Arts)

Music Instructor – Music Scoring

• Eric is a part time music instructor at the academy of art university and has been teaching since 2013.
• Eric is a solo pianist with a collection of original pieces for piano entitled: Follow Your Heart.
• In addition, he is also a keyboardist and arranger for Niel Sedaka, South Street Players, Rachel Rodriguez, and Gringo Starzz.

Education:

Bachelor of Music, Belmont University (Nashville, Tennessee, Music Composition)

Music Instructor – Music Production, Sound Design

• Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics.
• Jeffrey is known for creative sound design and music in short form media and commercials, as well as abstract sound art and synthesis. He has worked as a professional sound designer and music composer for over 20 years.
• His projects have won various awards, including 2 Clio (2015) and 1 Cannes Gold Lion (2017) awards for music and sound. He has published 11 albums of original music.
• Jeffrey has been an instructor at the Academy of Art University since 2019, previously teaching music and sound at the Los Angeles Film and Recording Schools teaching film sound design and dialogue editing.

Education:

Bachelor of Arts, Stanford University (Stanford, California, Music, Science, and Technology)

Music Instructor – Sound Design

• Jim Diaz is a veteran game audio professional, sound designer, and educator with more than two decades of experience creating audio for interactive entertainment and media.
• His career includes senior audio and sound design roles with LucasArts, Sony PlayStation, Electronic Arts, Disney, SEGA, Zynga, and other leading game and entertainment companies.
• His production credits include The Last of Us Part II, Days Gone, LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy, the Star Wars: Battlefront series, Star Wars: Episode III, Iron Man 2, and Golden Axe: Beast Rider.
• As Audio Lead on LEGO Star Wars II, Diaz managed a nine-person audio team while contributing sound design, voice direction and recording, cinematic sound effects, and mixing.
• His professional work spans sound design, field recording, music and voice production, cinematic mixing, immersive audio, and game-audio implementation using industry tools including Unreal Engine, Unity, Wwise, and FMOD.

Education: Bachelor of Arts, Berklee College Music (Boston, Massachusetts, Music Production and Engineering)

Gunnard Doboze is a composer and educator whose music blends cinematic storytelling with cross-cultural and electronic influences. His work spans film scoring, contemporary composition, and music technology, with credits including Iron Ladies of Liberia, Saving Face (Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Short), and The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner, among others listed on his IMDb profile.

Based in San Francisco, Doboze teaches Film Music History, Music Production, and Film Scoring at the Academy of Art University, where he encourages students to explore the intersection of artistry, innovation, and sound design. Drawing on his studies of traditional Japanese music and his background as a wind instrumentalist, he continues to create and share work that bridges global traditions with modern media composition

Music Instructor – Music Scoring

• Jonathan Galland is a music composer from Paris, France, a recipient of numerous Art grants, and international music awards. Classically trained from a young age as a violinist and through the French music conservatories, he later found his calling in the field music of composition for motion pictures.
• Jonathan has composed music for animated shorts, feature films, advertising, Public Service Announcement (PSA), and figure skating shows featuring Olympic athletes, national champions, and performers from Disney on Ice, Stars on Ice, Holiday on Ice, Broadway on Ice, Ice Capades, and from Cirque du Soleil.
• He has also created original music for three-time Olympic figure skater and four-time World champion Kurt Browning. Jonathan was awarded an “Alien of Extraordinary Ability” Green Card (“Einstein” Visa) for his work as a composer.

Education:

Master of Fine Arts, Academy of Art University (San Francisco, California, Music Prod/Sound Design)

Music Instructor – Sound Design

• Gregory has been teaching music for 17 years.
• He worked on music compositions for Fresh TV and wrote the music for the short video series titled Lucas the Spider.
• Additionally, Gregory has also worked as an audio engineer for TraxByWAX.

Education:

Master of Music, California State University, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, California, Commercial Music)

Music Instructor – Sound Design and Music Production

• 23+ years experience as music artist, producer, composer and director.
• James is a top Hollywood Sound Designer, Supervising Sound Editor, and Re-recording Mixer.
• He is a Winner of Best Producer of the Year at the LA Music Awards in competition with Michael Jackson.
• James is also a sound designer on number #1 Box Office films with over $2.4 billion in box office sales. Additionally, James is a writer director composer producer and visual FX supervisor and has three featured films including his brand-new supernatural Science Fiction Film “The Other Side of Infinity”.
• James is a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, bass, drums, piano, and numerous woodwind instruments. He is also the owner of Vintage Steam – a company that designs and builds custom cars and motorcycles for films. James has been with the Academy of Art University since 2019.

Music Instructor – Sound Design

• Brian graduated from the Academy with BA in motion pictures in 1999. Immediately upon graduating he got a job at Skywalker Sound.
• While there Brian worked on some of the biggest blockbuster films such as Star Wars: Episode 1 and 2. Monsters INC, Finding Nemo, The Polar Express, and Million Dollar Baby.
• In 2006, Brian made the move back home to Los Angeles and continued to work on feature films at various places including Todd-AO and Warner Bros.
• In 2012, Brian made the jump into television at Universal. He worked on Psych, Homeland, Ray Donovan, and Bates Motel.
• Brian has 25 years of experience and is currently working on For All Mankind, Chicago PD, Chicago Fire, and Outlanders.

Education:

Bachelor of Arts, Academy of Art University (San Francisco, California, Motion Picture and Video)

Music Instructor – Music Theory & Harmony, Music Scoring

• MM from San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a DMA from Manhattan School of Music – both in Composition
• Jason has been with the Academy since 2011. He is a career pianist, composer, private instructor, music director, band leader, producer, and arranger working with Bay Area musicians and singers for over 25 years.
• He has written a music theory book entitled “The Elements of Music” published by Wooden Books and Bloomsbury, and translated into ten languages to date.

Education:

Doctor of Music, Manhattan School of Music (New York, New York, Music Composition)

20+ yrs. experience in music performance and theory instruction

Education: Master of Arts, San Francisco State University (San Francisco, California, Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts)

Doug Siebum holds a Master’s in Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts from San Francisco State University and has spent more than 20 years in sound. He did live sound for clubs, concerts, music festivals, theatre, and broadcast TV for sports. His first sound editing jobs was in house at an online radio station. While there, he started editing and re-recording mixing for film in his free time. He worked on some television shows, indie feature films, and short films, eventually moving to the SF Bay Area, where he would work at several of the local post houses. One of the highlights of his career was working as a Foley mixer on Star Wars Visions. He has had a number of newspaper articles written about his career as well as a chapter in the book Beyond Sound by Scott L. Phillips, Oxford University Press. In addition to doing sound, Mr. Siebum has worked as an LED board tech, camera utility, PA, stagehand, stage manager, AV tech, media reviewer, managed a DVD distribution warehouse, and more. One of his favorite gigs was working as a stagehand for The Doors with Marilyn Manson standing in for Jim Morrison at the Sunset Strip Music Festival. He was on stage about 10 feet away from the band when Marilyn Manson got on stage and the started playing People Are Strange.