Underrated Composers
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Carter Burwell was born on 18 November 1954 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Carol (2015), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). He has been married to Christine Sciulli since 1999.Always giving us a beautiful melancholy sound that pulls you into the drama and even the comedy.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Michael Andrews, also known as Elgin Park, is an American multi-instrumental musician, producer, and film score composer. He is best known for a cover version of the Tears for Fears song "Mad World", which he recorded with Gary Jules for the Donnie Darko soundtrack, and which became the 2003 UK Christmas number one. He is a founding member of the San Diego soul-jazz band The Greyboy Allstars, where he goes by the moniker Elgin Park.After joining The Greyboy Allstars following the dissolution of his band The Origin, Andrews fell into film score composition by chance in 1998 when The Greyboy Allstars were asked to score Jake Kasdan's first feature Zero Effect and worked on the music for the highly regarded (though short-lived) TV series, Freaks and Geeks. In 2000, Richard Kelly commissioned him to do the soundtrack for the film Donnie Darko. Its original score album went on to sell over 100,000 copies (in part because of Andrews's remake of Tears for Fears' "Mad World", featuring Gary Jules), and Andrews became a composer to watch. He has since gone on to compose scores for the movies Out Cold, Nothing, Cypher, Orange County, My Suicidal Sweetheart, Me and You and Everyone We Know, The TV Set, a segment of Paris, je t'aime, Unaccompanied Minors, Bridesmaids, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Daddy's Home among others.A promising composer when he did the highly creative music for Donnie Darko has been now been reduced to making music for crappy comedies.- Composer
- Music Department
- Executive
Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael Abels is well known for his genre-defying scores for the Jordan Peele films 'Get Out,' 'Us,' and 'Nope.' The score for 'Us' won a World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics Choice nomination, multiple critics awards, and was named "Score of the Decade" by The Wrap. Both 'Us' and 'Nope' were shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Original Score, and 'Nope' won Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film at the 2023 Society of Composer and Lyricist Awards.
In 2022, Michael Abels' film music was honored by the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Middleburg Film Festival, and the Museum of the Moving Image. Other recent media projects include the films 'Bad Education,' 'Nightbooks,' the docu-series 'Allen v. Farrow,' 'Breaking' (Sundance 2021), and 'Landscape With Invisible Hand' (Sundance 2022), his second collaboration with director Cory Finley. Most recently, Abels composed, produced, and/or orchestrated all of the on-screen performances for Searchlight's 'Chevalier.' Upcoming projects include Amazon's 'The Burial,' and a series for Disney+.
In 2023, Abels was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for the opera, 'Omar,' co-composed with Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens. The New York Times hailed OMAR as "an ideal of an American sound," and named 'Omar' among the 10 best classical music performances of 2022. Abels' creative output also includes many concert works, including the choral song cycle 'At War With Ourselves' for the Kronos Quartet, and the Grammy-nominated 'Isolation Variation' for Hilary Hahn. Abels' other concert works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and many others. Some of these pieces are available on the Cedille label, including 'Delights and Dances' and 'Winged Creatures.' Recent commissions include 'Emerge' for the National Symphony and Detroit Symphony, and a guitar concerto 'Borders' for Grammy-nominated artist Mak Grgic.
Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, gaming and streaming media.Starting with the film Get Out I'm already loving his music.- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Marco Beltrami was born on 7 October 1966 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for I, Robot (2004), World War Z (2013) and Knowing (2009).Despite usually just being a hired gun, some of his work like in 3:10 to Yuma and Snowpiercer are truly astounding.- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Harry Gregson-Williams is one of Hollywood's most sought-after and prolific composers whose long list of film and television credits underscore the diverse range of his talents. He most recently wrote the music for "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" both directed by Ridley Scott. In addition, he wrote the music for Disney's live action feature film "Mulan" which was directed by Niki Caro with whom he worked previously having scored her film "The Zookeeper's Wife." Gregson-Williams also co-wrote the original song "Loyal Brave True" for "Mulan" performed by Christina Aguilera. He and his brother, composer Rupert Gregson-Williams, wrote the original score for both seasons 1 & 2 of the HBO drama series "The Gilded Age". He also co-wrote the original score for the Netflix documentary "Return to Space" with his friend Mychael Danna, directed by Oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin for which he received an Emmy nomination.
Upcoming 2023 releases include "Meg 2: The Trench" starring Jason and directed by Ben Wheatley and Aardman's animated feature "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" directed by Sam Fell and the action thriller "Retribution" directed by Nimród Antal and starring Liam Neeson. Gregson-Williams was the composer on all four installments of the animated blockbuster "Shrek" franchise, garnering a BAFTA Award nomination for the score for the Oscar-winning "Shrek." He received Golden Globe and Grammy Award nominations for his score for Andrew Adamson's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." He has collaborated multiple times with a number of directors including Ben Affleck on "Live by Night," "The Town" and "Gone Baby Gone", Joel Schumacher on "Twelve," "The Number 23," "Veronica Guerin" and "Phone Booth", Tony Scott on "Unstoppable," "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," "Déjà Vu," "Domino," "Man on Fire," "Spy Game" and "Enemy of the State", Ridley Scott on "The Martian," "Prometheus," "Exodus: Gods and Kings," "Kingdom of Heaven," "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci", Bille August on "Return to Sender" and "Smilla's Sense of Snow", Andrew Adamson on the "Shrek" series, "Mr. Pip" and the first two "Narnia" movies, and Antoine Fuqua on "The Replacement Killers," "The Equalizer," The Equalizer 2" and "Infinite". Some of his more recent film projects include Disney Nature's feature film "Polar Bear" which streamed exclusively on Disney+ in 2022, "The Ambush" directed by Pierre Morel, "Life in a Day 2020" directed Kevin Macdonald, "The Meg" directed by Jon Turteltaub, Aardman's "Early Man" directed by Nick Park for which he received an Annie Award nomination and Disney Nature's "Penguins." His television credits include "Whiskey Cavalier," the miniseries "Catch-22" co-composed with his brother Rupert Gregson-Williams and additionally he wrote the main title theme for "Electric Dreams" and earned an Emmy nomination for the episode entitled "The Commuter." Over the past two decades he has scored three of the five games in the highly successful "Metal Gear Solid" franchise for Konami as well as "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" for Activision, which became the top-selling video game of 2014 and earned him various music gaming awards. Throughout his illustrious and successful career, Gregson-Williams has also collaborated with a diverse array of recording artists such as Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Tricky, Peter Murphy, Flea, Hybrid, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Trevor Horn, Trevor Rabin, Lebo M., Perry Farrell and Tony Visconti.
Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams earned a music scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, at the age of 7 and later gained a coveted spot at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama, from which he recently received an honorary fellowship. He started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers, and then went on to compose his first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and friendship with composer Hans Zimmer led to Gregson-Williams providing music for such films as "The Rock," "Armageddon" and "The Prince of Egypt" and helped launch his career in Hollywood.
In 2018, Gregson-Williams received the BMI Icon Award, in recognition of his unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers, as well as the Society of Composers & Lyricists' prestigious Ambassador Award.The composer of Narnia: The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe brought a score that gave Lord of the Rings a run for its money.