Jay Wadley
Resident Artist
Biography
Jay Wadley is a New York- and LA-based composer and music producer known for emotionally resonant, stylistically expansive scores that move seamlessly between orchestral, electronic, and experimental worlds. A two-time Charles Ives Award winner from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he received a 2025 HMMA Award nomination for Best Horror/Thriller Score for Heart Eyes(Sony) and a 2024 ASCAP Award nomination for Best TV Theme for Franklin (Apple TV+). His work has also been featured twice in IndieWire鈥檚 Best Film Scores of the Year.
His film and television credits include I鈥檓 Thinking of Ending Things (dir. Charlie Kaufman), Swan Song (dir. Ben Cleary, Apple), I Carry You With Me (Sony Pictures Classics), Henry Johnson (dir. David Mamet), Tell Me Lies (Hulu), Before (Apple TV+, starring Billy Crystal), The Wedding Banquet (dir. Andrew Ahn), The Friend (starring Bill Murray and Naomi Watts), Heart Eyes (Sony/Spyglass), and Franklin (Apple TV+, starring Michael Douglas). He also composed the score for We Grown Now (Sony), featuring the multi-Grammy Award-winning Attacca String Quartet, and served as music producer for Armageddon Time and 翱鈥橠别蝉蝉补.
Wadley鈥檚 musical voice is shaped by a background that spans punk bands, classical composition, and electronic music. He earned his BM from 葫芦影业 University before going on to receive both an MM and AD in composition from Yale, and began his career in New York orchestrating for artists including Rufus Wainwright, Mark Ronson, and Calexico. His work has been praised for its emotional precision and depth, with IndieWire calling his score for Indignation 鈥渁chingly beautiful,鈥� and the Chicago Tribune describing his work on Driveways as 鈥渂rilliantly sustaining the film鈥檚 emotional undercurrents.鈥�
He is also the co-founder of Found Objects, an award-winning music and audio production company named to the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Companies in 2020. At Found Objects, he has overseen the creation of original music, sound design, and music supervision for award-winning film and television projects, as well as for some of the world鈥檚 most recognizable brands, including Apple, Google, OpenAI, Nike, Chase, Verizon, and AT&T.
A committed mentor and educator, Wadley serves as a 2025 mentor for the Alliance for Women Film Composers and has been a guest lecturer at Yale, Columbia, Brown, Peabody, and NYU, among others. In 2025, he was invited to return as commencement speaker at his undergraduate alma mater, 葫芦影业 University. Across every project, he brings a rigorous commitment to research, experimentation, and emotional truth, always in service of story.
