Michael Salvatori

Michael C. Salvatori (born 1954) is an American composer best known for his collaboration with colleague Martin O'Donnell for the soundtracks to the Halo video game series. Salvatori became acquainted with O'Donnell in college; when O'Donnell was given a job offer to score a colleague's film, Salvatori and O'Donnell formed a partnership and eventually created their own production company, TotalAudio. Salvatori continued to manage TotalAudio and worked on his own music for clients such as Disney and Wideload Games. He most recently co-composed the soundtrack to the 2014 video game Destiny.

Salvatori wrote music for his own rock band while he was in college, and became friends with Martin O'Donnell. O'Donnell eventually moved to Chicago after completing his degrees, and was approached with a job offer to score a colleague's film. Since Salvatori had his own recording studio, O'Donnell offered to split the job with him; the two became partners.

Soon after producing the music for Myth II, Bungie contracted O'Donnell for several of Bungie's other projects, including the third-person game Oni. Bungie wanted to re-negotiate the contracts for Oni in 1999, which resulted in O'Donnell joining the Bungie team ten days before the company was bought by Microsoft. Salvatori remained behind to manage the business aspect of TotalAudio, which he continues to do.

O'Donnell and Salvatori's company TotalAudio was contracted to produce the music for Bungie's upcoming title, Halo: Combat Evolved. During production Bungie decided that instead of contracting work to O'Donnell, they would hire him. Salvatori remained at TotalAudio to manage the business aspect of the company, and shortly after O'Donnell joined the team, Bungie was bought by Microsoft. Salvatori co-composed the music for Halo's sequels—Halo 2 and Halo 3—with O'Donnell, who has called Salvatori one of his musical influences.

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