Neal Merrick Blackwood has over 40 years experience as a film and music composer. Additionally, he has extensive background in the following: film scoring, production, recording engineering, composition and arranging. He is a classical musician, composer, conductor, orchestrator, arranger and producer.
Other skills include over-all contractor, scoring contractor, soloist contractor, choral contractor (adults and children), orchestra contractor, string section contractor, woodwind section contractor, brass section contractor, percussion contractor, piano contractor, world instruments contractor, solo vocalist contractor, vocal coach, recording engineer, mastering engineer, mix engineer and producer.
Through the years, Neal has worked under many Grammy Award winning production teams. Because of this, he has worked in world-renowned recording studios for many years. His compositions are distributed worldwide by Universal Music Group and Merrick Music.
Concurrently, Neal has been a voting member of NARAS (The Recording Academy/Grammy Awards). As a result, he has served as part of the NARAS Producers & Engineers Wing for many years. He has also been a member of the AES (Audio Engineering Society) and the AFM (American Federation of Musicians).
His music composer skills are often in demand around the world. Neal has worked with artists and clients that include: PBS, BBC, The Walt Disney Company, Paisley Park Records, Apple, The Suzuki Method, Warner Bros., Warner Classics, Universal Music Group, Decca Records, The Olympic Games, Grammy Award winning artist Bill Mize, Grammy Award winning artist Miriam Stockley, Award winning Scottish artist Julie Fowlis, Grammy Award winning Fox Lima (Enigma), Grammy Award winning Nashville Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Centaur Records classical recording artist Margaret Cornils Luke, etc. Neal studied Percussion Performance and Recording Engineering at Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. Simultaneously, he received his MM in Classical Composition and BM in Classical Percussion Performance from The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University.