After completing university, Russ Landau moved to New York City, where he worked as a session musician and joined the Paul Winter Consort as their bassist. For more than a decade he traveled the world as a bassist, and as a producer of more than ten albums by the group helping Winter earn a Grammy. He went on to produce recordings for many other artists, ranging from blues rocker South Side Johnny to Irish vocalist Nóirín Ní Riain. Working in his Greenwich Village studio, he scored numerous projects including a short HBO film called Cat and Mousse, which was nominated for the Grand Prize in Short Films at the Cannes Film Festival. Later, he moved to Los Angeles, California to focus on film and television scoring. His first regular episodic scoring assignment was Steven Spielberg's SeaQuest DSV.