Award-winning Film/TV Music Director, Composer & Arranger Gains Success By Keeping It Close to Home and Making the Non-traditional Journey
Matthew Head creates Grammy-nominated as well as Emmy, NAACP Image, and Peabody Award-winning soundtracks while working out of the home he grew up in Marietta, Georgia. The family man’s work includes two seasons of OWN’s Greenleaf, BET’s Boomerang (produced by Halle Berry and Lena Waithe), two seasons of Carl Weber’s The Family Business on BET+, the upcoming P-Valley on Starz, and going it solo as a music producer after collaborating with Timbaland on Step Up: High Water Season 2. With over 75 credits, the film composer, music producer, and arranger has the unique ability to move an audience through music; to take a scene and accentuate key moments to increase the intensity of a line, word, glance, or motion.
“I don’t have your typical musical background and education that most composers have, which allows me to connect with the projects from a different space that directors and producers can appreciate,” Head says. “I am interested in using music to elevate and enhance the project instead of competing or overshadowing.”
The former elementary school teacher began playing piano at five and starting writing songs by the time he was 12. Head secured the position of music producer for OWN’s number one-rated show Greenleaf for two seasons and is Kenny Leon’s go-to guy for theater productions. In 2017, Head curated music for the reincarnation of Holler If Ya Hear Me and a star-studded production of Our Town that included Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo. Head’s work Wilmington of Fire, which examined the Wilmington Massacre, a bloody attack on the African-American community by a heavily armed white mob with the support of the North Carolina government, and then AJC’s Doctors & Sex Abuse documentary which helped earn that team a Peabody Award – furthering his reputation as the region’s Renaissance man. Head’s solid work ethic, efficiency, and his impeccable knack for knowing what soundscape will draw viewers in continues to bring in the work.
About P-Valley
Down deep in the Mississippi Delta lies an oasis of grit and glitter in a rough patch of human existence where beauty can be hard to find. This Southern-fried, hour-long drama tells the kaleidoscopic story of a “little strip club that could” and the big characters who come through its doors —the hopeful, the lost, the broken, the ballers, the beautiful and the damned. Trap music meets film noir in this lyrical and atmospheric series that dares to ask what happens when small-town folk dream beyond the boundaries of the Piggly Wiggly and the pawnshop.
P-Valley is a raw and brutal tale that finds beauty and admiration in an unconventional place: the Pynk strip club. The series centers on four pole dancers: Mercedes (Brandee Evans – BET’s The Bobby Brown Story, Games People Play), Miss Mississippi (Shannon Thornton -Power, CW’s Dynasty), Gidget (Skyler Joy – Ma), Autumn Night (Elarica Johnson – Blade Runner 2049), and the gender-fluid owner of the Pynk, Uncle Clifford (Nathaniel Nicco-Annan – NBC’s This is Us, Showtime’s Shameless). P-Valley reveals an internal view of the Pynk beyond performers’ stage names and eroticized dancing. Although pole-dancing clubs can be reduced to sexualized entertainment catering to male consumption, the Pynk provides economic opportunities, artistic & acrobatic performance, sisterly camaraderie, and constant gendered power negotiations. The aspirational potential of the Pynk is tempered, however, by tough choices, competition, domestic violence, drug use, and murder.
– Created by showrunner award-winning playwright Katori Hall (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical)
– Soundtrack features theme song performed by up-and-coming Atlantic rapper Jucee Froot and also includes original songs from cast members
