5-time Grammy-Award winner and 10-time Grammy nominee Mervyn Warren is a highly accomplished film & TV composer, record producer, arranger, songwriter/lyricist, pianist, and vocalist.
Equally adept at various styles, Merv’s work spans the genres of film scoring, pop, R&B, jazz, orchestral, classical, vocal, country, and more. One of the industry’s most sought-after producers, his credits read like a who’s-who of pop, R&B, jazz, and country and include Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men, Barbra Streisand, Rascal Flatts, Michael Bublé, Chicago, Queen Latifah, Al Jarreau, and Faith Hill, among many others.
Merv has composed orchestral scores for many feature films – from comedy to drama to action – including the #1 film The Wedding Planner (Jennifer Lopez, Matthew McConaughey), the hit A Walk To Remember (Mandy Moore), and Honey (Jessica Alba). He also produced and arranged most of the Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum soundtrack for the film The Preacher’s Wife (Whitney Houston) – one of the biggest-selling inspirational soundtracks of all time.
Merv also composed the underscore and songs for the highly acclaimed film A Raisin In The Sun (Sean Combs, Felicia Rashad) – the first film made for television ever to be accepted into the Sundance Film Festival.
Merv was recently selected by Quincy Jones to produce and arrange a song for the upcoming Quincy Jones project.
Merv co-produced the first posthumous Michael Jackson single – This Is It and co-produced with Babyface the Billboard #1 R&B hit Last Night by Az Yet. He also produced a Billboard Top 10 hit – I Believe In You & Me (movie version) by Whitney Houston and penned a Billboard #2 Dance hit – The Power of One for Donna Summer.
Merv was an original member of Take 6, the a-cappella sextet that took the world by storm in 1988, recording two albums with them – one platinum, one gold. On those albums, Merv produced, co-wrote, and arranged most of the award-winning songs. With them he won four Grammy Awards, six Dove Awards, two Stellar Awards, and a Soul Train Award.
On his own, Merv earned an additional Grammy for the all-star Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration, as well as five additional Grammy nominations, a Dove Award (of three nominations), and two Gospel Music Workshop of America Awards, including one for Contemporary Producer of the Year.
Merv has written many arrangements for Quincy Jones, David Foster, and the late, legendary Arif Mardin, including extensive work on Quincy’s Back on the Block and Q’s Jook Joint and various recordings with Celine Dion, Brandy, Leann Rimes, The Manhattan Transfer, and others.
A native of Huntsville, AL, Merv was playing piano by age 5 and writing songs by age 10. In high school he formed a popular vocal group, and as a teenager, was regularly hired to arrange, play on, and sing on commercials and albums for local pop and country artists. He went on to earn two degrees in music, including a Master’s degree in arranging.