Iranian-American James T. Sale was born in Washington D.C. to music-loving parents who introduced him to classical and modern orchestral music and film music.

Sale began writing music for feature films in 1995 with The Cheshire Cat and worked on his own until becoming Mark Mothersbaugh’s head writer, orchestrator, and conductor after working with Mothersbaugh on Herbie: Fully Loaded in 2005. Sale worked for Mothersbaugh for 12 years writing the vast majority of the scores for top-grossing films such as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 1 and 2, The LEGO Movie, Hotel Transylvania 1 and 2, 21 and 22 Jumpstreet, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Chipwrecked and Road Chip, as well as SAFE with Jason Statham, and Last Vegas. In 2014, Sale began a fruitful collaboration with director Sean Hanish with Return to Zero. He then scored Sister Cities in 2016 continuing with Saint Judy in 2019. In 2024, Sale scored Just A Bit Outside: The Story of the 1982 Brewers for Hanish which led the Milwaukee Brewers organization to recruit Hanish to create a memorial sequence for Bob Euker’s Memorial to be held at Brewers stadium August 24^th with Bob Costas as the Emcee.

Sale also writes music for the concert hall including a concert piece called Dark Music for Bass Clarinet and Small Orchestra which is being promoted by Bass Clarinetist Mark O’Brien of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. O’Brien is also premiering a new work with the British Clarinet Ensemble as soloist. The piece premiered in Dublin in August of 2024 and is called The Dublin Concerto. Sale has had chamber music performed in Los Angeles and Denmark. He has conducted orchestras in Los Angeles, London, Sydney, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.

In 2022, Sale won a Gold Remi Award for Best Feature Score at the Houston WorldFest International Film Festival for his score for the coming-of-age hockey film Playing the Crease. Sale is starting a new feature film about fans of the Green Bay Packers in September.

Sale has taught at USC, UCLA, and was the head of the Composing for Visual Media Department at Los Angeles College of Music before coming to the Peabody Conservatory.