Jose Manuel Cancela

SESAC composer Jose Manuel Cancela has signed with Different Direction Management for representation.

Jose Manuel Cancela is a 5x Emmy winning composer from Galicia, Spain and has worked on several high-profile projects. He was mentored under several veteran Film/TV composers like Different Direction Managements own Christopher Young & Javier Navarrete. He has a BA degree from the prestigious Berklee College of Music and studied the Equal Interval System (EIS) (also known as the System of Horizontal Composition method) of composing by Lyle “Spud” Murphy. Jose studied classical piano and jazz at the world-renowned Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Germany as well as at the Berklee College of Music, MA.

Jose’s unique sound seamlessly blends the traditional with contemporary sounds, instrumentation and other elements to further enhance the narrative on screen. he draws inspiration from his experiences from living on multiple continents and from his understanding of folk music from different cults such as Cuban, Flamenco, Celtic, Middle Eastern, and more.

Our client has worked with various talented artists, including Celia Cruz, The Backstreet Boys, Chick Corea, Andraé Crouch and more.

Here are just a few of the 175+ credits from Jose’s remarkable career, Film; Creed, Focus & Beautiful Creatures. Coming up is the thriller Viral from actor & director Blair Underwood. On the TV side, a few of his 100+ credits include, Amazon Prime’s The Last Narc, Nat Geo’s Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted, ESPN’s The Ultimate Fighter, The Olympic Games, NFL on Fox, Netflix’s Murder Mountain, Showtime’s Ray Donovan, Searching for Shohei: An Interview Special for 5x Super Bowl MVP Tom Brady’s company Religion of Sports, BET’s American Gangster: Trap Queens, CBS’s Undercover Boss, Discovery’s Bad Chad Customs, NBC’s Dateline, The History Channel’s Kingpin, HBO’s 24/7, Netflix’s Diagnosis, HBO’s Gonzaga: The March to Madness & many more. Jose has signed on to score a new TV series as well as several documentaries and films.

Cancela practices Transcendental Meditation and is a proud father to his autistic son. He’s a Bagpipe aficionado and is a member of the Composer’s Diversity Collective, The Society of Composers and Lyricists and has been a member of The Television Academy for nearly 10 years.