Sam Cardon (BA '93)

"My mother came into the room to rush the girls off to school because she heard their piano pieces being played," he recalls. "She looked over at the piano and it was me playing them."

With musical ears and fingers, Cardon started his music lessons before he started his school lessons. It was a good thing starting so early because the growing boy soon became more interested in playing sports outside than practicing his scales inside. At 11 years old, when his piano teacher had a stroke, Cardon took it as an opportunity to end formal training.

When he came to BYU, he still tried to avoid a career in music. With the idea that no one could make a living in the music field, Cardon tried to be practical with an accounting major.

"I did accounting for exactly one year, and I hated it so much that I thought, 'Anything is better than doing this.' So, I started taking music classes and eventually, I switched over."

Cardon left BYU with a degree in media composition. However, getting the degree wasn't an easy task. The biggest challenge for anyone in a creative field is the level of intensity and attention required—it's all-consuming. That and the unpleasant reality of deadlines, which can only be beat when the pain of creating is exceeded by the pain of not delivering.

Learning from his mentor K. Newell Dayley (BA '64), a man who is single-handedly responsible for dozens of music professionals, Cardon received the training he needed and the confidence he required to become the musician he is today.

Most of all Cardon remembers the nurturing feeling of BYU that helped him along his musical path. He remembers he had the proper environment to fail because he knew that once he did, there would be someone nurturing there to build him back up again. The most important lesson Cardon learned while at BYU, was that making mistakes doesn't mean life is over—just try again. So, Cardon has been failing, trying again, and succeeding ever since.

Now an Emmy award-winning media composer, Cardon has written music for 20 feature films, 13 IMAX films, Good Morning America, and two Olympic Games. Proving his college-self wrong, he is making a successful career in the music field—one that takes him all around the world.

One of his projects was writing music for an IMAX film on a Hindu sect in India. As part of the composing experience, Cardon found himself in an Indian monastery for five weeks. His creative team consisted of 12 saffron-robed, shaved headed monks.

"I became absolutely comfortable in that setting," he explains. "They were really concerned that I understood where they were coming from, and so I attended Hindu temple services and went about learning everything that I could. Getting that deep into a new culture and getting that deep into a religious experience was a highlight, in addition to the music itself."

Cardon's career has not only led him to foreign countries across the world, it has also led him to the nerve-center of the world—the 1998 Olympic Games in Calgary. Collaborating with Kurt Bestor (BA '93) on the promotionals for the winter games, he had what he calls a mind-blowing experience. As they worked on site, they were given footage in the morning that they would compose music for the evening broadcasts.

Getting used to the crazy pace, Cardon and Bestor prepared all they could for the closing ceremony. However as the day went on, producers kept coming in with their favorite pieces of music to include in the closing credits. With bits of "Canadian Sunset" and pieces of the "1812 Overture," the two composers frantically worked to blend all the random requests.

Cardon and Bestor literally played some of the instruments as the credits were broadcast because they hadn't finished the recordings on time. So as they played to their recordings and their engineer mixed the two live, Cardon remembers the experience as one that gave him character and confidence.

"I just remember sitting at the closing ceremonies and knowing that my music was being broadcast to a couple billion people," he says. "There's something magical about the games because it's all about something grander and nobler than any individual. It's about the triumph of the human spirit, and you really do get swept up in that. It's the biggest day there is."

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