Composer/performer Nick DePinna’s creative music sits at a the intersection of the prescriptive and improvisational, the meticulous and the spontaneous, the machine and the dream. A protégé of James W. Newton Jr., he also trained formally in Western Art music composition with David Lefkowitz, Paul Chihara, and Ian Krouse, while simultaneously receiving mentorship from American artists of the African musical diaspora including Kenny Burrell and Jon Jang. His 2019 debut release of progressive big band music, Nexus Music, Vol. 1 (Orenda Records), was met with critical acclaim for both DePinna as a “splendid writer and arranger with an advanced point of view,” as well the “yeomanlike work of his excellent ensemble” (Jack Bowers, All About Jazz). His new music performer/composer collective, L.A. Signal Lab, was hailed by the L.A. Times as a group of “versatile performer-composer new-music Trekkies who cross genres with the graceful ease of the USS Enterprise traversing galaxies.” Nick’s commercial music can be heard on 1,000+ episodes of television, films, and video games. He is on faculty at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.