Van Dyke Parks is an arranger and composer best known for writing the lyrics to a certain lost classic by the Beach Boys – but that’s not even the half of it. His first arranging job was on The Jungle Book (his addition, “The Bare Necessities,” scooped an Academy Award nomination); and back in the ’70s, he started the world’s first record-company video department at Warner Bros. In recent years, he’s woven his expressive arrangements around the music of Rufus Wainwright, St. Etienne, and Joanna Newsom, for whom he orchestrated her second album, 2006’s Ys. Parks’ music, by turns elegiac and psychedelic, stretches into the bygone age of a lost America and bursts into the wide-open plains of whatever he chooses to do next.

In his 2013 Red Bull Music Academy, Parks delved into the art of arranging, the Smile sessions, his work with Skrillex, and much more.