Ron Passaro is a composer based in New York City.
He has had a very diverse and rewarding composing career, which includes writing 3 full length musicals, orchestrating songs for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, writing a brass fanfare for the West Point Band, writing music for numerous commercials, the score to a Children’s Defense Fund tribute to Hillary Clinton, as well as scoring numerous films, licensing his music over 6,500 times and writing cues for dozens of popular TV shows.
These days, Ron is focusing on his musical theatre composing career first and foremost while making time to work on projects that he is passionate about.
He is also currently a composer at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop.
Recent notable works:
Ron completed three short musicals for Pixel Playhouse’s YouTube channel. Ron provided music and orchestrations, book and lyrics are by Julia Gannon and the audio was mixed and mastered by Audio Verite’s Shawn P. Russell. You can see all three of them below.
Ron recently finished up a national commercial for Spot Pet Insurance. In addition to writing the music for the song, he also handled the vocal recording (beautifully sung by Ashley Chiu), arrangements and production. The song was expertly mixed and mastered for TV Broadcast, Radio and YouTube advertising by Audio Verite’s Shawn P. Russell.
Ron recently completed the music for the musical “Queen of Mean – The Rise and Fall of Leona Helmsley” with collaborators David Lee and Alex Lippard. Ron and team are excited to be moving into formal production with Tovah Feldshuh (The Walking Dead, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Salvation) playing Leona. Tovah presented it in cabaret format to rave reviews at Feinstein’s/54 Below for 3 sold-out nights: July 5-7, 2018, it played Guild Hall in East Hampton on August 11th, and played the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center in Westhampton on September 15th. The show sold out Feinstein’s/54 Below again to standing ovations in February of 2019. The show played 2 sold-out shows at San Francisco’s Feinstein’s at the Nikko in September of 2019. The show sold out the Mizner Park Cultural Center in Boca Raton in January of 2020 and was invited back for 4 more shows in March of 2020.
Ron also recently completed the score to the upcoming feature documentary, “Studio in the Sky,” that he co-scored with Shawn P. Russell. In November of 2019 it was picked up by Mark Wahlberg’s production company, Unrealistic Ideas. More updates to follow.
Ron is honored to have scored the hit feature documentary, Queen Mimi, from Director Yaniv Rokah and Executive Producer Michael Shamberg (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained). The film was released in theaters April 15, 2016. Watch the trailer here. Watch it on Amazon Prime Video here.
Ron studied music and orchestration with Shirish Korde and Osvaldo Golijov at the College of the Holy Cross where he was awarded the Beethoven Prize for best original composition. He continued on to get his MFA at the Tisch Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program at NYU and studied small ensemble composition with Conrad Cummings at The Juilliard School. Ron also attended Hollywood orchestrator Scott Smalley’s Advanced Orchestration Course: “The Art and Craft of Orchestration for Film & TV.”
Ron Passaro is a proud member of ASCAP, the SCL, the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) and sits on the board of the New York Chapter of the Ravel Study Group.