Fredo Viola

I was born in London, England and spent my first five years living in England and Rome. After that my family moved to New York, then Los Angeles, where I spent most of my adolescent years, singing professionally as a boy soprano and studying art once my voice changed. Finally I moved back to NYC to attend NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

I studied to be a film director, and during this period discovered the music of Bartok, Shostakovich and Stravinsky, which had an immense effect on me. It has since developed into a passion for the operas of Benjamin Britten, Don Giovanni and most of the work of Alfred Schnittke. I also love the music of Belle and Sebastian, Boards of Canada, Amon Tobin's Permutations, Joni Mitchell, Harry Nilsson, Harry Nilsson (yes, again, I love him this much!) and Odetta. Gospel music rocks my socks off. Oh, and Bach. :)

Out of school first I tried editing and animation design, which I think I did pretty well, as it afforded me the opportunity to save enough money to set myself up with a pretty awesome little home recording studio. I then got to work on making my own music.

In 2004 I had one of my songs licensed for use in Jonathon Deme's Manchurian Candidate. Then I made my first music video, The Sad Song, which was a pretty huge hit on the net. I received emails from Roger Ebert, Massive Attack, Neil Gaiman, ABC News Now, and director Mike Binder, all offering opportunities.

In 2005 I completed recording and licensed five songs for Mike Binder's upcoming film "Man About Town" starring Ben Affleck, Rebecca Romijn and John Cleese.

In November 2005 I was flown to Bristol to begin a collaboration with Massive Attack, who are two of the most amazingly creative and kind folks I've ever met. Hope something fruitful comes of that.

That's it so far. I have a few interesting things in development, and my first show went really well! Hopefully there will be much more of that!