Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2013 | Page 46

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profile

Composer Marty O’Donnell ’77
is a man with a penchant for delight. Talk
to him about his wife of more than 30
years and their two daughters, his work at
video game developer Bungie, Inc., or his
experience as a Conservatory student at
Wheaton, and that delight shines through.
“Wheaton was a spectacularly great
experience for me,” Marty says.
Like his wife, Marcie Zieske O’Donnell ’77,
Marty began Wheaton as a piano student.
Although he excelled at the instrument,
in his junior year he made the difficult
decision to change majors.
In part you could blame his decision on the
band Led Zeppelin.

Find out the role
this award-winning
musical composer
for video games
will be filling on
Wheaton’s campus.

“I had a band back then, and we played
progressive rock,” Marty says. “We did
covers: Zeppelin and other complex stuff.”
Marty’s drummer noted his talent for
arranging popular songs for the band, and
encouraged Marty to write his own work.
Once Marty began composing, he knew
it was what he wanted to do with his life.

“I talked to Dr. [Harold] Best HOn and made
the switch from piano to composition,”
he says. “It was daunting to make that
change so late in college, but I raced to the
finish, cramming it all into the last year and
a half of school.”
The risk paid off. After Wheaton, Marty
graduated with honors from the University
of Southern California’s master of music
program in composition. He then returned
to the Chicago area and ran a commercial
music studio with his business partner
and friend, Michael Salvatori. One of their
many compositions was the “Flintstones
Kids” jingle for the children’s vitamins.
Eventually tiring of the time constraints of
commercials and film scores, Marty made
the switch in the 1990s to composing
exclusively for video games. He notes of
this long form, “It’s such a great opportunity
for storytelling.”
To date Marty is most recognized for his
work on Halo, a science-fiction game series
about an interstellar war between humanity

and an alliance of aliens. “The medium
of video games isn’t evil. The medium
itself can be anything,” he says. “I don’t
like gratuitous violence, but I do like Star
Wars.” The Halo soundtracks have not only
been enormous commercial successes,
but have also received numerous awards.
Mart