Profile:Otto Hanson

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Background

Otto grew up singing Disney songs when no one was looking and banging out music on the piano by ear as a child. Otto's first piano composition was at age 7, inspired by a 1980's Top 40 song which has still not been identified to this day. The young composer's father, also a self-taught musician, was largely influential during this period of time, and eventually grew his passion into a recording studio that lived in the household family room. Otto's experience with electronic music began around 1994 and compositions became more complex. During this time Otto began playing the clarinet in the middle school band. At age 13 Otto composed a second (but first official) piano composition Wind. During senior year in 2000, the high school band instructor allowed Otto to run rehearsals with the band and later directed "Final Fantasy Medley", a full-ensemble arrangement-tribute, at the Spring Concert.

Otto attended the University of Oregon in the Fall of 2000 as part of the Music Composition program. In 2003 Otto decided to explore training for more employable skills, joined the Multimedia Design program and graduated in December 2005 with a degree in Digital Arts, but never stopped composing. Six months later, Otto was picked up by an Education Service District to serve as the agency's primary webmaster and in-house graphic designer.

Influences

Rock Music

Local H
Foo Fighters
System of A Down
Tool
A Perfect Circle
Does It Offend You Yeah

Electronic Music

Bjork
Boards of Canada
Deep Forest
Einhander OST

Video Game Music

Chrono Cross
P.N. 03
Tekken 3,Tag,4,5
Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2

Composers

Claude Debussy
Trevor Jones
Koichi Sugiyama
Koji Kondo
Peter Tchaikovsky
Igor Stravinsky

Compositions

Piano

Untitled - ~1990
Wind - 1997
Sneaky Fly in my Trash - 2002
American - 2002
Untitled - 2004
Untitled 2 - 2004
Untitled - 2007
Daydream Adventure - 2008
Untitled - 2008

Transcriptions

Serenade of the Doll (orchestra) - 2002

Arrangements

Final Fantasy Medley (band) - 2000