Jessie Lasaten

Jessie Q. Lasaten is a Filipino composer and animation producer.

Early life and education

Lasaten attended elementary school and high school at the Saint Louis University in Baguio. During third grade, Lasaten realized that he was partially deaf in his left ear. He was a first-year political science student at the university when he gained the desire to pursue a career in music.
After graduating from Saint Louis, Lasaten proceeded to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he later graduated summa cum laude.

Career

After graduating from Berklee, Lasaten returned to the Philippines in the early 1990s and was hired as a jingle writer. In 1994, he was encouraged by Dodie Lucas of RoadRunner Network to become a film composer, and was eventually referred by songwriter Nonoy Tan to OctoArts Films. Lasaten's debut film score was for the film Loretta, which was later embroiled in the 1994 Manila Film Festival scandal.
Lasaten has been the resident composer for ABS-CBN and its film outfit Star Cinema, having headed by 2000 the Music and Sound Group of the ABS-CBN-owned post-production company RoadRunner Network. In 2000, he composed the musical score for the ABS-CBN television series Pangako sa 'Yo. In addition to his film scores, Lasaten has also composed music for several Christmas station IDs of ABS-CBN since the 1990s, such as the 2004 Christmas station ID he composed with lyricist Robert G. Labayen: "Sabay Tayo, Kapamilya".
In 2007, as CEO of Cutting Edge Productions, Lasaten began producing the animated fantasy film Dayo: Sa Mundo ng Elementalia, for which he also served as composer; it was theatrically released on December 25, 2008, as an entry to the 34th Metro Manila Film Festival. His company later provided additional animation for El Americano: The Movie, a 2016 Mexican-American animated film produced by Animex Producciones.