Headshot photo by Gaoyang Ganjin

Dave Porter is an Emmy® winning composer for film and television based in Los Angeles. He began his classical musical training on piano at age five, but it was his interest in electronic music as a teenager that led him to begin composing his own work. He studied both classical and electronic music composition at Sarah Lawrence College under John Yannelli and began his professional career as an assistant in Philip Glass’ recording studio in New York City.

Porter is perhaps best known for his enduring creative partnership with one of Hollywood’s most respected storytellers, Vince Gilligan. Beginning with the remarkable pilot episode of Breaking Bad in 2007, Porter has written the original music for all of Gilligan’s projects. He scored all 62 episodes of the ground breaking series and created its iconic opening theme. Actor and producer Bryan Cranston noted, “With his music, Dave Porter has created another character for Breaking Bad. Evocative and meaningful, Dave’s work is an essential part of the storytelling.” Porter also composed the original music for its equally acclaimed spin-off Better Call Saul and brought the Breaking Bad universe to the big screen with his score for El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.

Porter has since reunited with Gilligan to score Apple TV+’s massive hit series Pluribus, creating another iconic opening theme. His music from the first season yielded three Emmy nominations.. winning the Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music and Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Comedy or Drama Series (One Hour) categories, and was also nominated for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Original Dramatic Score). His Pluribus score also garnered two SCL Award nominations for Outstanding Original Title Sequence for a Television Production and Outstanding Original Score for a Television Production.

Additional credits include Marvel Studio’s Echo and James Franco’s The Disaster Artist. Porter also collaborated with creator and showrunner Rebecca Cutter on the Starz series Hightown, scored AMC’s boundary-pushing Preacher, produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and Sam Catlin, and scored more than 200 episodes of The Blacklist, one of the most successful television dramas of all time.

Porter has received ASCAP’s Composer’s Choice Award for Best Television Composer three times – first in 2013 at the award’s inaugural event, again in 2017, and most recently in 2026. He has been a World Soundtrack Award nominee for Best Television Composer in both 2017 and 2026. Always inspired by the evolving technology being producing music, Dave is also an accomplished studio engineer and mixer, with an Emmy win as Pluribus’ Score Mixer along with a CAS nomination as part of the show’s sound mix team. In 2019, Dave was bestowed the Citation Award from his alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College, in recognition of his creative achievements.