With his adventuresome spirit and vast musical gifts, violinist/composer Tim Fain who “plays like a virtuoso and thinks like a cinematographer” (Vanity Fair), has earned a reputation as a mesmerizing creator and performer. Widely known for his solo appearances on major stages and with some of today’s greatest orchestras and conductors, Fain is now coming into his own as a composer with an authentic voice, pushing the envelope and weaving cutting-edge technology into musical presentation. He has been recognized for his original compositions and scores for a vast array of projects in film/TV, VR, concert music, theater, and extended media, and for his performances and collaborations on the soundtracks for award-winning feature films.

Seen on-screen and heard on the Grammy-nominated soundtrack to the film Black Swan, Fain performed featured violin on the soundtracks to Oscar-winning films 12 Years a Slave (for which he co-arranged and performed all of the diegetic music for lead actor Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Moonlight, also subsequently performing the live score with orchestra at special screenings at the Million Dollar Theatre in L.A. and The Barbican in London. Fain’s violin playing is also prominently featured in Glass, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Don’t Look Up, Indignation, and in HBO’s Original Series Succession (where he also makes a cameo appearance).

Increasingly acknowledged for his original film music, Fain most recently composed the score for Munch, a feature film about famed Norwegian painter Edvard Munch which was nominated for the Göteborg Film Festival’s Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film and premiered on opening night at the Rotterdam Film Festival. He also wrote the music for stop-motion film Los Huesos, which won Best Short at the Venice Film Festival in 2021, and other notable short films including nothing, except everything. He scored the feature-length documentary Untouchable: Children of God and his own Swan Remix arrangement is used in award-winning Taiwanese dance film Salute. Fain has also written music in film media created for The North Face and Ralph Lauren.

In the concert music world, Fain recently premiered his violin concerto Edge of a Dream with conductor Jacomo Bairos and the Amarillo Symphony, with subsequent performances with other orchestras planned for the 2023/2024 seasons. Fain’s work for violin and orchestra, Resonance, was commissioned by Google/YouTube for a VR music video introducing its 360 stereoscopic VR capability to the world, recorded by The Knights (conducted by Eric Jacobsen), and was subsequently shown at The Sundance Film Festival. Other notable compositions include Shortest Way Home for solo cello; Glacial, a short work for violin and orchestra inspired by the melting of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier and used in an Earth Day campaign for The Sierra Club; another short work for violin and orchestra, Freedom, was created to support Made in a Free World, an organization helping to end modern slavery. His newest work Unraveling, for 17 looped and layered violins, is expected to be released on an upcoming studio album in late 2023.

In addition to his work on Resonance, Fain continues to be at the forefront of technology, working on a number of boundary-pushing projects including Metamorphic, a room-scale VR experience he created which also debuted at The Sundance Film Festival; The Interpretation of Dreams, a VR mini-series financed and released by Samsung which premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and Together as One, produced by Facebook/Oculus, in which Fain appears on-screen alongside dancers from the inclusive dance company Infinite Flow. Fain composed music for a virtual experience, Flock, which premiered at The Future of Storytelling in NYC; and Light, co-composed with the band MAE, was commissioned by Forbes and the city of Jerusalem, where it premiered as one of the first ever VR experiences to sync with a live musical performance; both works were also featured at SXSW.

Working with theatre artists Saori Tsukada and Nikki Appino, Fain composed the music for Club Diamond, a live experimental theater piece inspired by Western and Japanese silent film which was performed at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at MASS MoCA and at New York’s Public Theater. Fain’s work with Symmetry Labs on an LED light installation project was experienced at the Global Citizens Festival and was the subject of a documentary featured on BBC and PBS. He has also performed with Shimon, an improvising, marimba-playing AI robot, and has given a TEDx talk on the importance of emerging technologies for musicians and artists. Fain is also Director of Music at Studio Elsewhere, an organization dedicated to creating bio-experiential environments for healthcare, and since April 2020 has created adaptive musical scores and sound design for multisensory Recharge Rooms and other installations in healthcare facilities around the US to help hospital workers and staff.

His evening-length multimedia show Portals premiered to sold-out audiences on both coasts and internationally, and featured Philip Glass’ Partita for Solo Violin, written especially for Fain, and the program involved collaborations with Leonard Cohen, Nicholas Britell, Benjamin Millepied, Kate Hackett, Nico Muhly, and radio personality Fred Child.

Frequently touring throughout the world with composer Philip Glass as a duo partner, Fain’s other collaborations range from classical luminaries Pinchas Zukerman and Mitsuko Uchida to choreographers Benjamin Millepied and Bill T. Jones, composer Meredith Monk, film composer/pianist Nicholas Britell, jazz pianists Billy Childs and Ethan Iverson (The Bad Plus), and artists Bryce Dessner (The National), Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Iggy Pop, Joanna Newsom, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), guitarist Rich Robinson (Black Crowes), Rob Thomas (Matchbox Twenty) at Jazz at Lincoln Center, James Blake, rappers Das Racist and Rahzel, Lou Reed, and Christina Aguilera.

Fain has electrified audiences in solo performances ranging from the Pittsburgh and Baltimore Symphonies to the National Orchestra of Spain, the London Contemporary Orchestra, Curtis Symphony Orchestra at The Kimmel Center, and the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, and in unique performances all across the globe, including on-stage at the New York City Ballet, at The Vatican, and a performance for the Dalai Lama’s 80th Birthday.