Some people want to spend their lives making music.
Jeff Brock ('72) doesn't have a choice.
"I just have music notes running through my bloodstream," says the founder of Brock Music Inc. in Nashville.
In fact, his creative juices run so thick he's had to find multiple outlets to express them.
At Brock Music (www.brockmusic.com), he has spent more than 30 years in the advertising and film music business. He also created Brock Music Productions Inc., a record and film scoring company; Insurrection Music (www.insurrectionmusic.com), a music licensing company; and Creative Caffeine (www.creativecaffeine.com), a state-of-the-art studio with a coffeehouse environment located in Berry Hill - a small area in the heart of Nashville bursting with recording studios and music publishers.
There's a reason pinning just one vocation on Brock is so difficult. "I don't want my identity to come from what I do for a living," he says.
As a senior music major at ACU, Brock didn't really have a firm career path in mind. He was confident he had accumulated four years of rich experience performing with the Big Purple marching band, stage band, ACU Orchestra, the Abilene Philharmonic, touring with the Hilltop Singers and directing his class and social club in Sing Song. And he had just become engaged to Joan Del Holland ('75).
"I was thinking more about marriage than a job," he laughs.
After graduating, marrying and moving to Dallas, one opportunity led to another and the couple wound up in Nashville so he could play trombone at Opryland. When the gig ran out after three months, Brock went to work writing radio and TV jingles at Nashville Sound Studios Inc.
"I eventually bought the company and it became Brock Music," he says. At Brock Music and Brock Music Productions, he and his staff compose and produce music tracks for TV networks, commercials and some film scores.
"I'll be watching TV and kind of tune out when a commercial comes on," he says. "Then I'll realize that was something I wrote or something we produced and I'll think, ‘Good. We're making
money.' "
Brock's passions do not end in the music world. He also has a love for architecture (he designs the exterior and interior construction of homes and commercial properties) and hopes to pursue a career in writing some day. And, passionate about missions, Brock is active in Open Doors, a ministry to persecuted Christians in other countries.
Through the course of his music career, Brock has discovered what having a natural gift means to a follower of Christ.
"Making music is a talent God gave me," he says. "We should all do whatever we do to the glory of God."
