Masters Of Soundtracks
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Gökhan Kirdar was born on 2 June 1970 in Aydin, Turkey. He is a composer, known for Anlat Istanbul (2005), Valley of the Wolves: Ambush (2007) and The Ambassador's Daughter (2019).- Music Department
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German-born composer Hans Zimmer is recognized as one of Hollywood's most innovative musical talents. He featured in the music video for The Buggles' single "Video Killed the Radio Star", which became a worldwide hit and helped usher in a new era of global entertainment as the first music video to be aired on MTV (August 1, 1981).
Hans Florian Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, then in West Germany, the son of Brigitte (Weil) and Hans Joachim Zimmer. He entered the world of film music in London during a long collaboration with famed composer and mentor Stanley Myers, which included the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He soon began work on several successful solo projects, including the critically acclaimed A World Apart, and during these years Zimmer pioneered the use of combining old and new musical technologies. Today, this work has earned him the reputation of being the father of integrating the electronic musical world with traditional orchestral arrangements.
A turning point in Zimmer's career came in 1988 when he was asked to score Rain Man for director Barry Levinson. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and earned Zimmer his first Academy Award Nomination for Best Original Score. The next year, Zimmer composed the score for another Best Picture Oscar recipient, Driving Miss Daisy (1989), starring Jessica Tandy, and Morgan Freeman.
Having already scored two Best Picture winners, in the early 1990s, Zimmer cemented his position as a preeminent talent with the award-winning score for The Lion King (1994). The soundtrack has sold over 15 million copies to date and earned him an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, an American Music Award, a Tony, and two Grammy Awards. In total, Zimmer's work has been nominated for 7 Golden Globes, 7 Grammys and seven Oscars for Rain Man (1988), Gladiator (2000), The Lion King (1994), As Good as It Gets (1997), The The Preacher's Wife (1996), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Prince of Egypt (1998), and The Last Samurai (2003).
With his career in full swing, Zimmer was anxious to replicate the mentoring experience he had benefited from under Stanley Myers' guidance. With state-of-the-art technology and a supportive creative environment, Zimmer was able to offer film-scoring opportunities to young composers at his Santa Monica-based musical "think tank." This approach helped launch the careers of such notable composers as Mark Mancina, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, and Klaus Badelt.
In 2000, Zimmer scored the music for Gladiator (2000), for which he received an Oscar nomination, in addition to Golden Globe and Broadcast Film Critics Awards for his epic score. It sold more than three million copies worldwide and spawned a second album Gladiator: More Music From The Motion Picture, released on the Universal Classics/Decca label. Zimmer's other scores that year included Mission: Impossible II (2000), The Road to El Dorado (2000), and An Everlasting Piece (2000), directed by Barry Levinson.
Some of his other impressive scores include Pearl Harbor (2001), The Ring (2002), four films directed by Ridley Scott; Matchstick Men (2003), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), and Thelma & Louise (1991), Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and A League of Their Own (1992), Tony Scott's True Romance (1993), Tears of the Sun (2003), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), Days of Thunder (1990), Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997), and the animated Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) for which he also co-wrote four of the songs with Bryan Adams, including the Golden Globe nominated Here I Am.
At the 27th annual Flanders International Film Festival, Zimmer performed live for the first time in concert with a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Choosing selections from his impressive body of work, Zimmer performed newly orchestrated concert versions of Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II (2000), Rain Man (1988), The Lion King (1994), and The Thin Red Line (1998). The concert was recorded by Decca and released as a concert album entitled "The Wings Of A Film: The Music Of Hans Zimmer."
In 2003, Zimmer completed his 100th film score for the film The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise, for which he received both a Golden Globe and a Broadcast Film Critics nomination. Zimmer then scored Nancy Meyers' comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003), the animated Dreamworks film, Shark Tale (2004) (featuring voices of Will Smith, Renée Zellweger, Robert De Niro, Jack Black, and Martin Scorsese), and Jim Brooks' Spanglish (2004) starring Adam Sandler and Téa Leoni (for which he also received a Golden Globe nomination). His 2005 projects include Paramount's The Weather Man (2005) starring Nicolas Cage, Dreamworks' Madagascar (2005), and the Warner Bros. summer release, Batman Begins (2005).
Zimmer's additional honors and awards include the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Composition from the National Board of Review, and the Frederick Loewe Award in 2003 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. He has also received ASCAP's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Hans and his wife live in Los Angeles and he is the father of four children.- Composer
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Jóhann Jóhannsson was born on 19 September 1969 in Reykjavík, Iceland. He was a composer and writer, known for Last and First Men (2020), The Theory of Everything (2014) and Sicario (2015). He died on 9 February 2018 in Berlin, Germany.- Composer
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A classmate of director Sergio Leone with whom he would form one of the great director/composer partnerships (right up there with Eisenstein & Prokofiev, Hitchcock & Herrmann, Fellini & Rota), Ennio Morricone studied at Rome's Santa Cecilia Conservatory, where he specialized in trumpet. His first film scores were relatively undistinguished, but he was hired by Leone for A Fistful of Dollars (1964) on the strength of some of his song arrangements. His score for that film, with its sparse arrangements, unorthodox instrumentation (bells, electric guitars, harmonicas, the distinctive twang of the jew's harp) and memorable tunes, revolutionized the way music would be used in Westerns, and it is hard to think of a post-Morricone Western score that doesn't in some way reflect his influence. Although his name will always be synonymous with the spaghetti Western, Morricone has also contributed to a huge range of other film genres: comedies, dramas, thrillers, horror films, romances, art movies, exploitation movies - making him one of the film world's most versatile artists. He has written nearly 400 film scores, so a brief summary is impossible, but his most memorable work includes the Leone films, Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966) , Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987) and Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988), plus a rare example of sung opening credits for Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966).- Music Department
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As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (25 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), American Film Institute (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema. He's led countless national and international orchestras, most notably as the nineteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993, helming three Pops tours of the US and Japan during his tenure. He currently serves as the Pop's Conductor Laureate. Also to his credit is a parallel career as an author of serious, and some not-so-serious, concert works - performed by the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Leonard Slatkin, James Ingram, Dale Clevenger, and Joshua Bell. Of particular interests are his Essay for Strings, a jazzy Prelude & Fugue, the multimedia presentation American Journey (aka The Unfinished Journey (1999)), a Sinfonietta for Winds, a song cycle featuring poems by Rita Dove, concerti for flute, violin, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, cello, bassoon and horn, fanfares for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a song co-written with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the Special Olympics! But such a list probably warrants a more detailed background...
Born in Flushing, New York on February 8, 1932, John Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first original composition, a piano sonata.
He attended both UCLA and the Los Angeles City College, studying orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert Van Eps and being privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, until conducting for the first time during three years with the U.S. Air Force. His return to the states brought him to Julliard, where renowned piano pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne helped Williams hone his performance skills. He played in jazz clubs to pay his way; still, she encouraged him to focus on composing. So it was back to L.A., with the future maestro ready to break into the Hollywood scene.
Williams found work with the Hollywood studios as a piano player, eventually accompanying such fare such as the TV series Peter Gunn (1958), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as forming a surprising friendship with Bernard Herrmann. At age 24, "Johnny Williams" became a staff arranger at Columbia and then at 20th Century-Fox, orchestrating for Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and other Golden Age notables. In the field of popular music, he performed and arranged for the likes of Vic Damone, Doris Day, and Mahalia Jackson... all while courting actress/singer Barbara Ruick, who became his wife until her death in 1974. John & Barbara had three children; their daughter is now a doctor, and their two sons, Joseph Williams and Mark Towner Williams, are rock musicians.
The orchestrating gigs led to serious composing jobs for television, notably Alcoa Premiere (1961), Checkmate (1960), Gilligan's Island (1964), Lost in Space (1965), Land of the Giants (1968), and his Emmy-winning scores for Heidi (1968) and Jane Eyre (1970). Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960) brought his original music to the big theatres, but he was soon typecast doing comedies. His efforts in the genre helped guarantee his work on William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966), however, a major picture that immediately led to larger projects. Of course, his arrangements continued to garner attention, and he won his first Oscar for adapting Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
During the '70s, he was King of Disaster Scores with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His psychological score for Images (1972) remains one of the most innovative works in soundtrack history. But his Americana - particularly The Reivers (1969) - is what caught the ear of director Steven Spielberg, then preparing for his first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). When Spielberg reunited with Williams on Jaws (1975), they established themselves as a blockbuster team, the composer gained his first Academy Award for Original Score, and Spielberg promptly recommended Williams to a friend, George Lucas. In 1977, John Williams re-popularized the epic cinema sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and other composers from the Hollywood Golden Age: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time, and spawned countless musical imitators. For the next five years, though the music in Hollywood changed, John Williams wrote big, brassy scores for big, brassy films - The Fury (1978), Superman (1978), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ... An experiment during this period, Heartbeeps (1981), flopped. There was a long-term change of pace, nonetheless, as Williams fell in love with an interior designer and married once more.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) brought about his third Oscar, and The River (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) added variety to the 1980s, as he returned to television with work on Amazing Stories (1985) and themes for NBC, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970). The '80s also brought the only exceptions to the composer's collaboration with Steven Spielberg - others scored both Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and The Color Purple (1985).
Intending to retire, the composer's output became sporadic during the 1990s, particularly after the exciting Jurassic Park (1993) and the masterful, Oscar-winning Schindler's List (1993). This lighter workload, coupled with a number of hilarious references on The Simpsons (1989) actually seemed to renew interest in his music. Two Home Alone films (1990, 1992), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Sleepers (1996), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Angela's Ashes (1999), and a return to familiar territory with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) recalled his creative diversity of the '70s.
In this millennium, the artist shows no interest in slowing down. His relationships with Spielberg and Lucas continue in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the remaining Star Wars prequels (2002, 2005), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and a promised fourth Indiana Jones film. There is a more focused effort on concert works, as well, including a theme for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and a rumored light opera. But one certain highlight is his musical magic for the world of Harry Potter (2001, 2002, 2004, etc.), which he also arranged into a concert suite geared toward teaching children about the symphony orchestra. His music remains on the whistling lips of people around the globe, in the concert halls, on the promenades, in album collections, sports arenas, and parades, and, this writer hopes, touching some place in ourselves. So keep those ears ready wherever you go, 'cause you will likely hear a bit of John Williams on your way.- Composer
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In the end of '70s and all through the '80s, he was the leader of the most popular Yugoslav band "Bijelo dugme" (from Sarajevo). They published more than 10 LPs, selling altogether more than 15 million copies. He was the first one to introduce "shepperd's rock" (a kind of folk-rock) into popular Yugoslav music. He plays guitar and sometimes sings. Very prolific composer, he turned more towards world music since he left Yugoslavia at the beginning of the war. He lives in Paris.- Composer
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Max Richter was born on 22 March 1966 in Hamelin, Lower Saxony, West Germany. He is a composer and actor, known for Arrival (2016), The Leftovers (2014) and Ad Astra (2019).- Composer
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Vangelis was a composer and performer who worked almost exclusively with electronic instruments. With Jean-Michel Jarre and Mike Oldfield in the 1970s, Vangelis was a pioneer in the instrumental music and a main influence in the creation of the musical genre "new age," a style related to spiritual, meditation, relaxing ambient sounds as well as sounds from outer space. He was probably most well known for his Chariots of Fire (1981), Blade Runner (1982), The Bounty (1984) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) soundtracks or for the tracks used in the documentary TV series Cosmos (1980) created, produced and hosted by scientist Carl Sagan. Vangelis was involved in many musical collaborations, most famously with British progressive rock band Yes's founding member Jon Anderson.- Composer
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Clinton Darryl Mansell is an English singer, musician and film composer known for his collaborations with Darren Aronofsky. He composed Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, The Wrestler, Noah, Ghost in the Shell, Peacemaker, Doom Patrol, Loving Vincent, Mass Effect 3, Titans, World Traveler, Smokin' Aces, Doom, The Hole, and Definitely, Maybe.- Composer
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Donald Davis is an American film composer and conductor who is known for composing the music of The Matrix trilogy, Enter the Matrix, The Animatrix, SeaQuest 2032, the Beauty and the Beast television series and Jurassic Park III. He did orchestration for films composed by James Horner, Randy Newman and Alan Silvestri.- Composer
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Sean Callery was born in 1964 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. He is a composer, known for 24 (2001), Jessica Jones (2015) and Star Trek: Generations (1994).- Composer
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Jeff Russo was born on 31 August 1969. He is a composer and actor, known for Fargo (2014), Ripley (2024) and Lucy in the Sky (2019).- Composer
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Jonny Greenwood was born on 5 November 1971 in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for The Master (2012), There Will Be Blood (2007) and Phantom Thread (2017). He has been married to Sharona Katan since 1995. They have three children.- Composer
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Ramin Djawadi is an Iranian-German film score composer known for composing the hit HBO series Game of Thrones and the Marvel films Blade: Trinity, Iron Man and Eternals. He also composed Clash of the Titans, A Wrinkle in Time, Pacific Rim, Westworld, Gears of War 4 and 5, Medal of Honor, Open Season 1 and 2, Jack Ryan and Warcraft. He won two Emmy Awards for Game of Thrones.- Composer
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Ludwig Göransson is a Swedish composer known for composing Black Panther, the Creed films, Venom, Fruitvale Station, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Turning Red, New Girl, Community, Top Five, Central Intelligence, 30 Minutes or Less and Tenet. He had a son from Serena McKinney, who was married to him since 2018.- Composer
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Tom Holkenborg, aka Junkie XL, is a Grammy-nominated multi-platinum producer, musician, composer and educator whose versatility puts him on the cutting edge of contemporary music, and whose thirst for innovation is helping to reimagine the world of composition.
A full-contact composer, Holkenborg is hands-on at every stage of the composing process, a multi-instrumentalist who combines a mastery of studio engineering, classical musical training and an innate sense of curiosity. He's as adept working with a 50 piece philharmonic orchestra as he is with a wall of modular synths, playing a bass guitar or building his own physical and digital instruments. His drive to reimagine what's possible and share that knowledge with the next generation of composers is what makes Holkenborg a unique force, and one of the most in-demand film composers in the world.
Tom's film scoring credits have grossed over $2 billion at the box office and include Mad Max: Fury Road, Deadpool, Black Mass, Alita: Battle Angel, Divergent, Brimstone, Justice League: The Snyder Cut, Godzilla vs. Kong, The Dark Tower, Tomb Raider, Terminator: Dark Fate, the record setting Sonic the Hedgehog and forthcoming projects including The 355, Army of The Dead, 3000 Years of Longing and more. He has worked with directors and producers including Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, James Cameron, George Miller, Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder and Tim Miller among many others.
An educator as well as a creator, Tom is committed to breaking down the barriers of entry in the world of film composition, creating the free SCORE Academy program in Los Angeles, a music composition program at the ArtEZ conservatorium in his home country of the Netherlands, and on YouTube, where he hosts his educational series StudioTime, which has been watched millions of times.
Tom is able to draw on his extensive knowledge of classical forms and structures while keeping one finger planted firmly on the pulse of popular music. When his eclectic background is paired with his skill as a multi-instrumentalist (he plays keyboards, guitar, drums, violin, and bass) and a mastery of studio technology, a portrait emerges of an artist for whom anything is possible. Outside of his own artistry Tom's desire to marry technology and classical composition to initiate change and evolution led him to partner with Orchestral Tools in 2019 to create Junkie XL Brass, his first sample library, making world-class sounds available to composers everywhere.- Music Department
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Thomas Newman is an American film score composer. He was born in Los Angeles. His father was notable film score composer Alfred Newman (1900-1970). The Newman family is of Russian-Jewish descent, and includes several other well-known musicians. Thomas' mother Martha Louis Montgomery (1920-2005) wanted her sons to have a musical education. Thomas attended regular lessons in violin as a child. An older Thomas received his musical education while attending the University of Southern California and Yale University. Thomas Newman graduated as Bachelor of Arts in 1977, and a Master of Music in 1978.
Thomas originally composed music for theatrical productions in Broadway, working with his mentor Stephen Sondheim. His uncle Lionel Newman asked him to compose music for the television series "The Paper Chase" (1978-1979, 1986), which was Thomas' first credit in a television production.
In the 1980s, Thomas first worked in film. Composer John Williams, a close family friend, hired Thomas to work in the music department for space opera film "Return of the Jedi" (1983). Thomas' main work in the film was orchestrating the music in a scene where character Darth Vader dies. Afterwards, Thomas was approached by film producer Scott Rudin and hired to work as a film score composer in his own right. His first work in the field was the film score of romantic drama "Reckless" (1984).
While he worked regularly as a film score composer during the 1980s, Thomas reportedly felt he had to retrain himself for a hard and demanding job. It reportedly took him 8 years to not feel fraudulent in his efforts. In 1994, Thomas received his first Academy Award nominations, for the film scores of "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) and "Little Women" (1994). He lost the Award to rival composer Hans Zimmer, who had been nominated for the film score of the animated film "The Lion King" (1994).
Newman was an established and increasingly famous composer in the 1990s. He received further Academy Award nominations, although he never actually won. Among his more notable works was the film score of the drama film "American Beauty" (1999), which earned Thomas both a Grammy and a BAFTA award. Newman had a good working relationship with the film's director Sam Mendes. Mendes has kept hiring Thomas as the composer for most of his films. The main exception being the comedy-drama film "Away We Go" (2009), which did not have a film score.
In the 2000s, Thomas continued working in high-profile films, such as "Road to Perdition" (2002), "Finding Nemo" (2003), and "Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events". By 2006, he had been nominated eight times for an Academy Award, while never winning it. He started joking about his lack of victories in public.
In 2008, Thomas was nominated for two Academy Awards, for both the film score and an original song for the animated film "WALL-E" (2008). He won neither, though the hit song "Down to Earth" earned him a Grammy Award. He continues to work regularly in the 2010s. Among his more acclaimed works were the film scores for spy film "Skyfall" (2012) and period drama "Saving Mr. Banks" (2013). He has continued being nominated for Academy Awards. As of 2020, he has been nominated 15 times for the Academy Award. He is the most nominated living composer to have never actually won an Academy Award, tied with Alex North. He has won a total of 5 Grammy awards.- Music Department
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Born on the 18th of July, 1972, in Cracow, Poland. In 1996 graduated the instrumental studies (specialization: cello), and then in 2000 graduated with merit from the composition class of Krzysztof Penderecki at the Music Academy in Cracow. At the same Academy, in the years 1999-2000, he was an assistant at the Department of Composition, Conducting and Musical Theory. His compositions were performed at the most important festivals in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Moldavia, Ukraine and Belarus. He also composed music for numerous drama plays and films - features, documentaries and shorts.
In 1998 he received the Creative Scholarship of the President of Cracow in the category of music composition. Two years later, at the 25th Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia he received the Golden Lions - individual award for the musical score to the film "Big Animal". In 2001 he was nominated by "Film" monthly to their Golden Duck Award for extraordinary achievement in film music. At the same time "Cinema" monthly included him on their list of top Polish film music composers. Also in 2001 his symphonic composition Hypnosis had its premiere in Berlin (the orchestra was Sinfonietta Cracovia, conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki), which was broadcast live by Deutsche Radio.
In 2002 he received Ludwik Award (a theatre award from the city of Cracow) for the score to "Kafka", and also Jancio Wodnik Award at Prowincjonalia Film Festival, for his score for the feature film "An Angel in Cracow". According to "Kino" monthly, his music for the controversial documentary "Evolution" (the film was awarded the prestigious Golden Gate Award at the 45th Film Festival in San Francisco) was "an achievement of an entirely original kind". In 2004 he created a new score for Fritz Lang's "Metropolis". A monumental 147-minute composition for an 90-piece orchestra, 60 choir and 2 solo voices ambitiously re-interpreting the silent movie from 1927.
In 2005, during the 14th Golden Knight International Film Festival in Russia, he received Golden Knight Award for best composer, for music for the film "Tomorrow's Weather".- Composer
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Daniel Pemberton was born on 3 November 1977 in the UK. He is a composer and actor, known for The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) and Steve Jobs (2015).- Composer
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Mica Levi is a musician and composer born in Guildford, UK and living in South East London.
She has previously written music for films including Under The Skin (2014, dir. Jonathan Glazer), Jackie (2016, dir. Pablo Larraín), Monos (2018, dir. Alejandro Landes), Zola (2020, dir. Janicza Bravo) and Mangrove (2020, dir. Steve McQueen).- Composer
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Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass worked in his father's radio store and discovered music listening to the offbeat Western classical records customers didn't seem to want. He studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics and philosophy, he went to New York's Juilliard school, drove a cab, and studied composition with Darius Milhaud and others.
At 23, he moved to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who taught almost all of the major Western classical composers of the 20th century. While there, he discovered Indian classical music while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western musical notation for a French filmmaker. A creative turning point, Glass researched non-Western music in India and parts of Africa, and applied the techniques to his own composition.
Back in the United States, Glass spent the late 1960s and early 1970s driving a taxi cab in New York and creating a major collection of new music. In 1976, his landmark opera "Einstein on the Beach" was staged by Robert Wilson to a baffling variety of reviews. His compositions were so avant-garde that he had to form the Philip Glass Ensemble to give them a venue for performance. Although called a minimalist by the Western classical mainstream, he denies this categorization. His major works include opera, theater pieces, dance, and song.
His work in film, beginning with Koyaanisqatsi (1982), gave filmmakers such as Godfrey Reggio and Errol Morris a new venue of expression through the documentary form. His many recordings have also widened his audience. He was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to compose "The Voyage" for the Columbus quinquacentennial in 1992. In 1996, he composed original music for the Atlanta Olympic Games, which, perhaps, made Glass almost mainstream. Glass remains one of the most important American composers. His music is distinctive, haunting, and evocative. Either performed by itself or in collaboration with other media, his compositions move the listener to unexplored places. More recently, a major reexamination of Glass's oeuvre has led him to be labeled the Last Romantic by the musical press.- Music Department
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As Danny Elfman was growing up in the Los Angeles area, he was largely unaware of his talent for composing. It wasn't until the early 1970s that Danny and his older brother Richard Elfman started a musical troupe while in Paris; the group "Mystic Knights of Oingo-Boingo" was created for Richard's directorial debut, Forbidden Zone (1980) (now considered a cult classic by Elfman fans). The group's name went through many incarnations over the years, beginning with "The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo" and eventually just Oingo Boingo. While continuing to compose eclectic, intelligent rock music for his L.A.-based band (some of which had been used in various film soundtracks, e.g. Weird Science (1985)), Danny formed a friendship with young director Tim Burton, who was then a fan of Oingo Boingo. Danny went on to score the soundtrack of Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Danny's first orchestral film score. The Elfman-Burton partnership continued (most notably through the hugely-successful "Batman" flicks) and opened doors of opportunity for Danny, who has been referred to as "Hollywood's hottest film composer".- Composer
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Angelo Badalamenti was born on 22 March 1937 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Lost Highway (1997). He was married to Lonny Irgens. He died on 11 December 2022 in Lincoln Park, New Jersey, USA.- Composer
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Trent Reznor is an American songwriter/musician/producer and sole member of multi-platinum act Nine Inch Nails, and now an Academy Award, Emmy and Grammy Award winning film composer. He began creating music as a child in Western Pennsylvania, first on piano and then taking up other instruments. He eventually moved to Cleveland, OH where he took a job at a local recording studio as an assistant engineer/janitor, recording his own material during unused studio time.
Those recordings became the first Nine Inch Nails album, 1989's Pretty Hate Machine. NIN soon developed a reputation as one of the best live acts in rock and joined the inaugural Lollapalooza tour in 1991. The Broken EP followed in 1992, garnering NIN's first Grammy Award (NIN has received twelve Grammy nominations and won two awards). In 1994, the breakthrough album The Downward Spiral was released and featured the radio hits "Closer" and "Hurt." The controversial music video for "Closer" was directed by Mark Romanek and is considered among the best music videos of all time having won various awards (it is one of the few music videos included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City). NIN's mud-covered appearance that Summer at Woodstock 1994 is now legendary. Also released that year was the Reznor produced soundtrack to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). He returned to film 3 years later, producing the soundtrack for David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997). In 1997, Reznor appeared on Time magazine's most influential people list, and Spin magazine named him "the most vital artist in music."
Five years later NIN's next album, The Fragile, was released - the double album debuted at number one. In 2002, "Hurt" was covered by Johnny Cash to critical acclaim; it was one of Cash's final hit releases before his death. NIN's next album, With Teeth, also reached number one in 2005 as did the single "The Hand That Feeds." Reznor broke new ground by posting the single's source tracks as a free download for fans to edit/remix/sample as they pleased and creating an online community for fans to share their creations. David Fincher directed the video for "Only," With Teeth's second single.
The concept album Year Zero was released in 2007 alongside an accompanying ARG (alternate reality game). Conceived by Trent Reznor and assisted in execution by 42 Entertainment, the ARG progressed through the album release and beyond, featuring no less than 29 websites, hidden messages within NIN merchandise, recordings and bar codes, hot lines, flier and poster campaigns, and even resistance cell "meetings" organized via calls made to pre-paid cell phones distributed to participants. Within two months, the ARG amassed 2.5 million cumulative site visits, 7.5 million cumulative page views and 2 million phone calls. Reznor has developed Year Zero into an HBO/BBC mini-series.
In 2008, free of contractual obligations, NIN released Ghosts I-IV, a 36-track instrumental album, NIN's first independent release. Soon after, a new studio album, The Slip, was released as a free digital download alongside a simple message: "Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me" - TR (In less than a year, it exceeded 1.8M downloads). Ghosts I-IV and The Slip were both released under Creative Commons licenses allowing extensive use of the material within independent film projects. Following these two releases, NIN embarked on the acclaimed Lights In The Sky Tour featuring groundbreaking production effects, layering and programming that allowed the performers to interact and control aspects of the show's visuals. The tour was recognized by the industry as one of the top-ten most creative tours of all time.
Over the course of his career, Reznor has also collected countless production and remix credits including collaborations with David Bowie, producing Saul Williams and the discovery and production of Marilyn Manson.
In 2010, Reznor composed his first film score; for David Fincher's masterwork The Social Network (2010). The score won the Academy Award for best score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. Additionally, he received a Critics' Choice Movie Award and a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for best score. He also scored Fincher's next film, the highly anticipated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011).
In addition to his continued work in Nine Inch Nails, Reznor is recording new music as a member of the group How to Destroy Angels.- Composer
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Michael Giacchino is an American composer of music for films, television and video games.
Giacchino composed the scores to the television series Lost, Alias and Fringe, the video game series Medal of Honor and Call of Duty and many films such as The Incredibles (2004), Star Trek (2009), Up (2009), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Jurassic World (2015), Inside Out (2015), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) and Coco (2017).
For his work on Up he earned an Academy Award for Best Original Score.- Composer
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In his ongoing, decades-long career as a composer, Alan Silvestri has blazed an innovative trail with his exciting and melodic scores, winning the applause of Hollywood and movie audiences the world over. With a credit list of over 100 films Silvestri has composed some of the most recognizable and beloved themes in movie history. His efforts have been recognized with two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, two Emmy awards, and numerous International Film Music Critics Awards, Saturn Awards, and Hollywood Music In Media Awards.
Born in New York City and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey, Silvestri first dreamed of becoming a jazz guitar player. After spending two years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he hit the road as a performer and arranger. Landing in Hollywood at the age of 22, he found himself successfully composing the music for 1972's "The Doberman Gang" which established his place in the world of film composing.
The 1970s witnessed the rise of energetic synth-pop scores, establishing Silvestri as the action rhythmatist for TV's highway patrol hit "CHiPs." This action driven score caught the ear of a young filmmaker named Robert Zemeckis, whose hit film, 1984's "Romancing the Stone," was the perfect first date for the composer and director. It's success became the basis of a decades long collaboration that continues to this day. Their numerous collaborations have taken them through fascinating landscapes and stylistic variations, from the "Back to the Future" trilogy to the jazzy world of Toontown in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" the tension filled rooms of "What Lies Beneath" and "Death Becomes Her", to the cosmic wonder of "Contact;" the emotional isolation of "Castaway", to the magic of the "Polar Express". But perhaps no film collaboration defines their creative relationship better than Zemeckis' 1994 Best Picture winner, "Forrest Gump", for which Silvestri's gift for melodically beautiful themes earned him an Oscar and Golden Globe nomination and the affection of film music lovers everywhere. This 35 year, 21 film collaboration includes such recent films as "Flight", "Allied" and most recently "Welcome To Marwen". Zemeckis and Silvestri are currently working on "The Witches" based on Roald Dahl's 1973 classic book scheduled for release in October of 2020.
Though the Zemeckis/Silvestri collaboration is legendary, Silvestri has scored films of every imaginable style and genre. His energy has brought excitement and emotion to the hard-hitting orchestral scores for Steven Spielberg's "Ready Player One", James Cameron's "The Abyss" as well as "Predator" and "The Mummy Returns." Alan's diversity is on full display in family entertainment films such as "The Father of the Bride 1 and 2", "Parent Trap", "Stuart Little 1 and 2", Disney's "Lilo and Stitch", "The Croods" as well as "Night at the Museum 1, 2 and 3" while his passion for melody fuels the romantic emotion of films like "The Bodyguard" and "What Women Want".
Most recently, Alan has composed the music for Marvel's "Avengers: Endgame." The film is the culmination of a partnership with Marvel that began in 2011 with Alan's dynamically heroic score for "Captain America: The First Avenger" followed by "Avengers". Since 2011 Alan's collaboration with Marvel helped propel "The Avengers" and "Avengers: Infinity War" to spectacular world-wide success.
Silvestri's success has also crossed into the world of songwriting. His partnership with Six-Time Grammy Award winner Glen Ballard has produced hits such as the Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated song "Believe" (Josh Groban) for "The Polar Express", "Butterfly Fly Away" (Miley Cyrus) for "Hannah Montana The Movie", "God Bless Us Everyone" (Andrea Bocelli) for "A Christmas Carol" and "A Hero Comes Home" (Idina Menzel) for "Beowulf".
Alan and his wife Sandra are long time residents of California's central coast. In 1998 the Silvestri family embarked on a new venture as the founders of Silvestri Vineyards. Their wines show that lovingly cultivated fruit has a music all its own. "There's something about the elemental side of winemaking that appeals to me," he says. "Both music making and wine making involve a magical blending of art and science. Just as each note brings it own voice to the melody, each vine brings it's own unique personality to the wine."
Their other great passion is the ongoing search for the cure to Type 1 Juvenile Diabetes. With the diagnosis of their son at two years of age (now 29) they continue to work the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and dream of the day this disease (and all of the suffering it brings to so many) will finally become a thing of the past.- Composer
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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.- Music Department
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Brian Theodore Tyler is an American composer, conductor, arranger and producer known for his film, television and video game scores. In his 24-year career, he has scored Transformers: Prime, Eagle Eye, The Expendables trilogy, Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron with Danny Elfman, Now You See Me, and Crazy Rich Asians, among others. He also re-arranged the current fanfare of the Universal Pictures logo, originally composed by Jerry Goldsmith, for Universal Pictures' 100th anniversary, which debuted with The Lorax (2012). He composed the 2013-2016 Marvel Studios logo, which debuted with Thor: The Dark World (2013), which he also composed the film's score. He composed the NFL Sunday Countdown Theme for ESPN and the Formula One theme (also used in Formula 2 and Formula 3). He scored seven installments of the Fast & Furious franchise, and the soundtrack for the Paramount TV series Yellowstone. For his work as a film composer, he won the Ifcma Awards 2014 Composer of the Year. His composition for the film Last Call earned him the first of three Emmy nominations, a gold record, and induction into the music branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As of November 2017, his films have grossed $12 billion worldwide, putting him in the top 10 highest-grossing film composers of all time.- Composer
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John Powell was born on 18 September 1963 in London, England, UK. He is a composer, known for How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014), Happy Feet (2006) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). He was previously married to Melinda Lerner.- Composer
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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.- Composer
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Tôru Takemitsu was born on 8 October 1930 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a composer, known for Harakiri (1962), Ran (1985) and Rising Sun (1993). He died on 20 February 1996 in Tokyo, Japan.- Music Department
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Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.- Music Department
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James Newton Howard attended the University of Southern California's music school, but dropped out to tour with Elton John, and eventually compose music for film and television. He started with Head Office (1985) in 1985. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards. He currently is a songwriter, record producer, conductor, keyboardist, and film composer.- Composer
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Mychael Danna is an Oscar and and Emmy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. His highly awarded works include the Oscar-winning score for Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012), and his many Genie Award-winning scores for director and longtime collaborator, Atom Egoyan.
His passion for presenting complex ideas in a musically accessible way began as Danna learned his craft at the University of Toronto. There, he was exposed to early- and world-music that later influenced his style. Danna earned the school's inaugural "Glenn Gould Composition Award" in 1985 and also began scoring for student theatre groups, as he launched his artistic partnership with Egoyan. Danna has scored all of Egoyan's films since 1987's Family Viewing (1987).
Danna's work on Egoyan's films, Ararat (2002), Felicia's Journey (1999), The Sweet Hereafter (1997) and Exotica (1994), secured him Genie awards from the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television; as did his score for Deepa Mehta's Oscar-winning film, Water (2005).
Danna earned the 2013 Golden Globe and 2013 Oscar for scoring Ang Lee's Life of Pi (2012), following his collaborations with Lee on The Ice Storm (1997) and Ride with the Devil (1999).
Life of Pi (2012)'s rich soundscape reflects a deeply transnational story with inventive cross-cultural arrangements: Indian sitars play French melodies, European play South Asian motifs, a church choir sings in Sanskrit, and a variety of other musical combinations soar alongside a full studio orchestra.
The highly awarded work embodies Danna's approach to composition-creating rich soundscapes to be appreciated by a wide audience.
Other celebrated collaborations include those with Bennett Miller on his multiple Oscar-nominee Moneyball (2011) and his Oscar-winning drama, Capote (2005); with Terry Gilliam on his Oscar-nominated The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009) and Tideland (2005); with Mira Nair on Vanity Fair (2004), Monsoon Wedding (2001) and Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996); and with Billy Ray on Breach (2007) and Shattered Glass (2003).
Danna's credits also include the Oscar-winning Little Miss Sunshine (2006), for which he shared a Grammy Award nomination for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album; Marc Webb's acclaimed romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer (2009); and James Mangold's Oscar-winning film, Girl, Interrupted (1999).- Composer
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Danny Bensi is a contemporary film composer and string player living in Los Angeles since 2018. He grew up learning the cello in Denmark, UK, Germany and Italy before arriving in the US to study music at Northwestern University. Teaming up in 2011 with his long time friend and band-mate Saunder Jurriaans, the two formed a prolific film scoring duo. Their film scores are known for bold unpredictability, uniqueness, and surprising timbres. Drawing from modern classical styles, their compositions are filled with atypical orchestrations, sensuous melodies, and visceral soundscapes.- Composer
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Composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, Oscar winner and seven-time Academy Award nominated, for his prolific filmography and his collaborations with Stephen Frears, Terrence Malick, Ang Lee, Kathryn Bigelow, Jacques Audiard, Wes Anderson, Roman Polanski, George Clooney or Matteo Garrone is one of the most worthy heirs of the French masters of film music.
Brought up in a cultural and musical mix thanks to his Greek mother and his French father who studied and got married in California, he grew up listening to French symphonists, Ravel or Debussy , world music and jazz.
He studied piano and trumpet before choosing the flute as the main instrument. As a free auditor in Claude Ballif's analysis class at the CNSM, he enriches his classical musical education by studying Brazilian and African music. He will record later with Carlinhos Brown or Ray Lema.
Passionate about film music, it's as much his musical sensitivity as his intimate approach to cinematographic language that will allow his privileged relationship with filmmakers. Inspired by the scores of Maurice Jarre, Bernard Herrmann, Nino Rota or Georges Delerue, it is after hearing the score of John Williams for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) that he decides to compose exclusively for the big screen.
During the recording of his first feature film he meets violinist Dominique Lemonnier. This is the beginning of an exceptional artistic exchange as she becomes her favorite soloist, artistic director and wife. With his strong sense of interpretation, his creative spirit and his singular violin playing, Solré inspired Alexandre's compositions, influencing his music in depth, initiating a new way of writing for the strings in the cinema.
Collaborator of Jacques Audiard since his first film, he creates for his works strong and singular compositions and he won in 2005 for The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) the Silver Bear of the Berlinale, and his first Caesar. He works in France with Philippe de Broca and Francis Girod but Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003) of Peter Webber, his 50th score for the film, he gets a first Golden Globe nomination and BAFTA and began his rise in Hollywood. Leading American career and European collaborations and remaining faithful to his directors, he composes among others Syriana (2005)'s scores of Stephen Gaghan, Birth (2004) of Jonathan Glazer, Coco Before Chanel (2009) by Anne Fontaine, Army of Crime (2009) by Robert Guédiguian, The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch (2008) by Jérôme Salle, Intimate Enemies (2007) or Hostage (2005) by Florent-Emilio Siri.
Prizes and collaborations with the greatest directors follow one another. In 2007, he received his first Oscar nomination for Stephen Frears's The Queen (2006) and won his first European Film Award. The same year, he won the Golden Globe, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, and the World Soundtrack Award for John Curran's score The Painted Veil (2006), performed by pianist Láng Lang. He composed in 2008 for Lust, Caution (2007) by Ang Lee and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) by David Fincher which will earn him a second Oscar nomination and a fourth Golden Globes and BAFTA nomination.
With his score for The Ghost Writer (2010) by Roman Polanski, he won in 2010 a second César and a second European Film Award. The same year he wrote the music of The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009) by Chris Weitz, whose album was a platinum record, and Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010) for which he won the BAFTA, the Grammy Award, and was nominated for the fourth time at the Oscars and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes.
In 2010-2011 he wrote the music of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011) which became the third greatest success of all time. He composed in 2011 nine partitions, The Tree of Life (2011) of Terrence Malick, Carnage (2011) by Roman Polanski, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) by George Clooney , which earned him another Oscar nomination, The Well-Digger's Daughter (2011) by Daniel Auteuil and The Ides of March (2011) by George Clooney.
In 2012 he worked with Kathryn Bigelow for Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Matteo Garrone for Reality (2012), Gilles Bourdos for Renoir (2012), Jérôme Salle for Zulu (2013), George Clooney for Moonrise Kingdom (2012) and Jacques Audiard for Rust and Bone (2012) for which he won a third Cesar. For his score of Argo (2012) of Ben Affleck, Oscar for Best Picture, it is named for the sixth time BAFTA, and for the fifth time at the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
He signed in 2013 the partition The Monuments Men (2014) from George Clooney, Venus in Fur (2013) of Roman Polanski, and was appointed to the BAFTAs and the Oscars for Philomena (2013) of Stephen Frears.
In 2014 he composed the music Godzilla (2014) of Gareth Edwards, and receives exceptional fact, two Oscar nominations for The Imitation Game (2014) of Morten Tyldum and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by George Clooney, for which he won a BAFTA, Grammy and Oscar.
Member of the jury of the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, he became in 2014 the first composer President of the jury of the Venice Film Festival. Crowning long years of collaboration, he directed the London Symphony Orchestra in December 2014 for a concert of his works at the Barbican Theater in London.
In 2018, Alexandre Desplat received a second Oscar, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for The Shape of Water (2017) of Guillermo del Toro.- Music Department
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Howard Shore is a Canadian composer, born in Toronto. He was born in a Jewish family. He started studying music when 8-years-old, and played as a member of bands by the time he was 13-years-old. He was interested in a professional career in music as a teenager. He studied music at the Berklee College of Music, a college of contemporary music located in Boston.
For a few years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Shore was a member of Lighthouse, a jazz fusion band. In the 1970s, Shore mainly composed music for theatrical performances and a few television shows. His most notable work was composing the music for the one-man-act show of stage magician Doug Henning. He also served as a musical director in then-new television show "Saturday Night Live" (1975-). He was hired by the show's producer Lorne Michaels, who was a close friend of Shore since their teen years.
In 1978, Shore started his career as a film score composer, with scoring the B-movie " I Miss You, Hugs and Kisses" (1978). His next film score was composed for the horror film "The Brood" (1979). Shore had a good working relationship with the film's director David Cronenberg. Cronenberg would continue to use Shore as the composer of most of his films, with the exception of "The Dead Zone" (1983).
In the 1980s, Shore also composed the film scores of works by other directors, such as "After Hours" (1985) by Martin Scorsese, and "Big" (1988) by Penny Marshall. He received more acclaim for composing the film score for "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), a major hit of its era. Shore was nominated for a BAFTA award for this film score.
By the 1990s, Shore was an established composer of high repute and worked in an ever increasing number of films. Among his better known works were the film scores for comedy film "Mrs. Doubtfire" (1993) and crime thriller "Seven" (1995). Shore received even more critical acclaim in the 2000s, when he composed the film score for fantasy film "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001). He won an Academy Award and a Grammy for the film score, and received nominations for a BAFTA award and a Golden Globe.
Shore continued his career with the film scores of acclaimed films "Gangs of New York" (2002), "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" (2002), and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003). He received his second Academy Award for the film score of "The Return of the King", and his third Academy Award as the composer of hit song "Into the West". He won several other major awards for these film scores. His film scores for "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy are considered the most famous and successful works of his career.
For the rest of the 2000s, Shore closely collaborated with director Martin Scorsese. Shore won a Golden Globe for the film score of Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004). In the 2010s, Shore continues to work regularly, mostly known for composing film scores for works by directors David Cronenberg, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Jackson. He was the main composer for "The Hobbit" trilogy by Peter Jackson, and the fantasy film "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse" (2010) by David Slade.- Composer
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Dave Porter is a Los Angeles based composer for film and television. He began his classical musical training at the piano at age five, but it was his interest in electronic music as a teen that led him to start composing his own music. He studied both classical and electronic music composition at Sarah Lawrence College under John Yannelli and started his professional career as an assistant in Philip Glass' recording studio in New York City.
Dave is perhaps best known for his enduring creative relationship with one of Hollywood's most respected figures - Vince Gilligan. Since the remarkable pilot episode of Breaking Bad in 2007, Dave has written the original music for all of Gilligan's projects. He scored all 62 episodes of that groundbreaking series and created its iconic opening theme. Actor/Producer Bryan Cranston stated: "With his music, Dave Porter has created another character for Breaking Bad. Evocative and meaningful, Dave's work is an essential part of the storytelling." Since then, Dave has also been behind all of the original music for Breaking Bad's equally acclaimed spin-off, Better Call Saul, and helped bring the Breaking Bad universe to the big screen with his original score to Gilligan's feature film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.
2024 will kick off a new chapter In Dave's career -- his first collaboration with Marvel Studios, Echo, will release on January 10th. The first project to be released under the new Marvel Spotlight banner, it will also be the first Marvel series with a TV-MA rating. "The Marvel team made me feel at home right away and have created a television series full of all of the hallmarks that inspire me -- real stakes, emotions, consequences, and a world in which all of the characters are always learning and evolving," said Porter on his collaboration with Marvel.
Other credits in recent years include working with James Franco on his masterful film The Disaster Artist and collaborating with documentary visionary RJ Cutler on Murf The Surf, a 4 part series produced by Brian Glazer and Ron Howard. He also loved working with creator/showrunner Rebecca Cutter on her groundbreaking Starz series Hightown, as well as AMC's boundary-defying series Preacher - produced by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg and Sam Catlin. Dave also recently wrapped up a decade long run as composer for the James Spader crime thriller series The Blacklist, one of the most successful television dramas of all time spanning more than 200 episodes.
Dave has twice been awarded ASCAP's Composer's Choice Award for Best Television Composer - at the inaugural event for the award in 2013, and once again in 2017. He was also bestowed the 2019 Citation Award by his alma mater Sarah Lawrence College for his creative achievements.- Composer
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Bear McCreary is a degreed graduate of the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music (in 'Composition and Recording Arts'). Bear McCreary was one of a small and select group of proteges of the late, many-honored film composer Elmer Bernstein. Although he is now firmly in the mainstream of film composition, many of McCreary's earliest soundtrack-music compositions were for independent motion picture productions.- Composer
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Jeff Beal is one of the most prolific and respected composers working in Hollywood today. He grew up studying the trumpet in the San Francisco Bay area, where he was immersed in the sounds of the 70's jazz, classical, and the rock & pop music scene. His prodigious talent in composition lead to many works for both big band and orchestra during his high school years. In his teens, his compositions were performed by the Oakland Youth Symphony under maestro Kent Nagano, the Monterey Jazz Festival All Star big band, and others.
After high school, Jeff went to the Eastman School of Music to study composition with Pulitzer prize winner Christopher Rouse, Rayburn Wright and Bill Dobbins. During the Eastman years, he was awarded an unprecedented 11 student awards from Downbeat Magazine for his compositions and trumpet playing. It was at Eastman Jeff also studied film scoring, and met the producers of what would become his first film assignment, Cheap Shots (1988).
Before moving to Los Angeles, Beal lived in New York City and San Francisco, where he pursued a career as a jazz recording artist and composer. His debut recording "Liberation" for Island Records was considered an underground classic by the New York jazz community. Beal would continue to release a total of seven solo recordings, and frequented as a guest artist on other recordings.
In 1993, after his "Concerto for Jazz Bass" was recorded by John Patitucci on Chick Corea's new label, Beal decided to make the move to Los Angeles. His big break came when Ed Harris called on Jeff to score his directorial debut Pollock (2000). Beal's unique blend of Americana, minimalism, and chamber orchestra caught the ear of many in Hollywood. This led to his relationship with HBO, where he has provided scores for two of their most adventurous series, Rome (2005) and Carnivàle (2003), resulting in 3 Emmy nominations. In total Beal has received 15 prime time nominations and 4 Emmy Awards to date.
Frequently called on to score assignments that require a unique and diverse musical approach, Beal won an Emmy for Battleground (2006)- a one-hour no-dialog installment of "NIghtmares and Dreamscapes,"
Other notable scores include Appaloosa (2008) dir. Ed Harris, No Good Deed (2002) dir. Bob Rafelson, Little Red Wagon (2012) dir. David Anspaugh, Georgia O'Keeffe (2009) dir. Bob Balaban, the "Jesse Stone" films, dir. by Robert Harmon and the Golden Globe-winning series Ugly Betty (2006). He also scored Wilde Salomé (2011) for Al Pacino, Mr. Pacino's long-awaited follow-up to Looking for Richard (1996). Beal has also been a frequent collaborator of Academy Award winner Jessica Yu, on In the Realms of the Unreal (2004), Protagonist (2007), and her feature documentary for Participant Productions; Last Call at the Oasis (2011).
Jeff's 1st prime-time Emmy award came in 2001 for his season one theme song to Monk (2002). The instrumental theme was replaced in season two by the producers and became a cause célèbre among Monk fans and critics. This resulted in an online petition with thousands of signatures, and an episode by the show's writers "Mr. Monk and The TV Star" where a theme song change is protested by guest star Sarah Silverman.
Beal's scores are often driven by a strong sense of melody, and frequent use of chamber-size instrumentations. In a musical climate where bigger is better seems to be the pervading aesthetic, his scores are often intimate, dramatically specific and character-driven. He conducts and orchestrates his own scores, and often performs on them. He plays piano, trumpet, duduk, recorders, harmonica, percussion, rababa, oud, and french horn. Beal's wife Joan Beal is a trained opera singer and has sung on several of his scores, including Carnivàle (2003), The Situation (2006), and Wilde Salomé (2011).- Composer
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As a child in Cape Town, Trevor Jones lived opposite the Gem Cinema. The theater was so old and worn out that there was often a loss of the soundtrack, which caused him to realize its power. The fact that everyone in his family worked in film or the theater made it easy to get support in his career choice, but it was the cinema across the street that truly inspired him. At 17, Jones won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, which his mother was fully behind. Not being from England, he could only stay four years, but he did not wish to return due to lack of industry and South African politics. In his third year, he won an award which brought him to the attention of the BBC, where he worked four years as a classical music reviewer, the time allowing him to become a naturalized British citizen. One day there he met Dr. Wilfrid Mellers, a professor at York Universiy, who helped him design a four-year course plan studying all types of music, from the ethnic to the avant garde, music concrete, and electronic. He then went to the British National Film School for an M.A. in film music, and he learned all aspects of filmmaking, directing, writing, and photographing many student films, and composing the music for most everybody at the university. His education in the field took twelve years.
His use of professional musicians allowed him to go straight into the industry. He initially scored shorts with Roger Christian, and was discovered by John Boorman after working on an Irish TV show. Boorman allowed him to write 55 minutes of music for Excalibur (1981) in addition to the classical pieces of Wagner and Orff that were used. Jim Henson called him for The Dark Crystal (1982) even before he had a script, and he would work on Henson projects, along with others, until Henson's death. Jones was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work on The Last of the Mohicans (1992). This success makes him frequently on call, particularly when he is in Los Angeles (where his wife and four children like to accompany him), but he wants to do small, low budget films as well as large, taking small salaries to work on film in which he is really interested. He cites Mark Herman and John Henderson among his favorite directors to work with. He has also worked well with Barbet Schroeder and Richard Loncraine. His attention to the film as an art form is indicative in his work ethic: only one at a time. He once talked himself out of work on a film he thought needed no music. They took his suggestion and won an award. The Last Days of Pompeii (1984) was a film in which he was brought in very late and did not meet the director or the dubbing mixer. "That was the first and only time on a film that I'd never met the director", Jones says. Jones tries to keep from becoming typecast, wanting to work on all types of films, and not do films of the same kind all together, when composers are among the most typecast artists in the industry. His style has worked well, as he has had more films in 1997 and 1998 than in any other single year.- Music Department
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Charlie Clouser is a recording artist and composer for film and television who lives in Los Angeles.
The recipient of sixteen BMI Film & TV Music awards, Charlie has also received ten platinum and gold record awards for his work as a member of the band Nine Inch Nails, and as a producer, programmer, and remixer for David Bowie, Rob Zombie, Killing Joke, Helmet, Marilyn Manson, Jamiroquai, White Zombie, and many other artists.
His scores for all nine films in the "SAW" franchise combined brutal electronics and homemade bowed metal instruments with tortured orchestral washes and became landmarks in industrial-strength horror, and his "Hello Zepp" became a trademark of the franchise and a minor icon in the world of memorable horror themes. His scores for "Dead Silence", "Death Sentence", "The Stepfather", "Resident Evil:Extinction", "The Collection" and other films expanded upon these ideas and produced dozens of memorable themes, terrifying ambiences, and tension-filled rhythmic climaxes.
With over two hundred hours of television underscore to his credit, Charlie's scores to the CBS series "Numb3rs" and the NBC series "Las Vegas" spanned a wide range of styles, from ticking-clock hostage dramas and high-energy car chases to comedic casino capers and delicate heartbreak. More recently, his main title theme from the Fox/FX series "American Horror Story" was widely praised and helped to establish the creepy vibe of the very successful series, and his theme and underscore for the Fox series "Wayward Pines" provided another thick dose of unsettling atmospheres and powerful action-adventure themes.
As the keyboardist in the band Nine Inch Nails during most of the nineties, he toured the globe and contributed to their landmark albums "The Downward Spiral" and "The Fragile", as well as numerous singles, remixes, and other projects undertaken by the band during his tenure. During that era, he remixed and collaborated with artists from Atari Teenage Riot to White Zombie, and as an early adopter and long-time user of Moog and other modular synthesizers, he has appeared in documentaries about Dr. Robert Moog's life ("Moog") and about the recent resurgence of synthesizer culture ("I Dream of Wires").
Drawing from his thirty years of experience as a keyboardist, synthesist, and programmer, he brings to the table a huge palette of sounds and an unusual collection of instruments, including many one-of-a-kind electronic devices and hand-made sculptural metal instruments, all of which combine to create a huge range of emotional textures, from outright aggression to disorienting dissonance.- Composer
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Cho Young-wuk was born on 1 January 1962 in South Korea. He is a composer and producer, known for Decision to Leave (2022), Oldboy (2003) and The Handmaiden (2016).- Composer
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Andrew lives in Los Angeles and holds the greencard. He combines lifelong passion for film with extensive classical training, recording and performance experience. Andrew orchestrates and conducts all his scores, fusing them with electronic textures at his home studio. He has accepted invitations to membership of the BAFTA and The World Soundtrack Academy.
Andrew trained classically in piano and voice from childhood in the choir of Westminster Abbey (with Distinctions in all final ABRSM performances, and the LAMDA Gold Medal), winning scholarships and full tuition awards to lead the National Youth Music Theatre, to read Music at Cambridge University, and to post-grad study at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Before composition he performed across America, Canada, Australia, the Far East, Europe, at the highest levels of concert, opera, and studio recording, in the most renowned classical ensembles - and also in the scores to Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
Andrew was then BAFTA Nominated Best New Composer for Film and TV by the British Academy for his very first score, and after several years scoring tv, has scored feature films across the USA and UK.- Composer
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Nathan Barr is a unique breed of composer. In addition to writing his scores, he also performs all of the instruments heard in many of his compositions. Skilled in many styles and genres, ranging from orchestral to rock, Barr is known for his collection and inclusion of rare and unusual instruments from around the world, such as human bone trumpets from Tibet, dismantled pianos, a rare Glass Armonica and gourd cellos, among many others.
Nathan began studying music in Tokyo, Japan at the age of four. He grew up surrounded by eclectic music, ranging from Kabuki Theater to the sounds of his mother performing on the koto and piano, and his father playing the banjo, guitar and shakuhachi. His interest in the art form was further influenced by extensive travels around the world, where he experienced music, ranging from Bali's Kecak Orchestras to China's Beijing Opera. Barr went on to study at Skidmore College, and toured Italy and Switzerland with the Juilliard Cello Ensemble in the summer of 1993.
Barr, who wrote and performed the music for all four seasons of HBO's True Blood (2008) and has scored more than 25 feature films.
Barr is also a regular collaborator with director/producer Eli Roth and has scored Cabin Fever (2002), Hostel (2005), Hostel: Part II (2007) and The Last Exorcism (2010).- Composer
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Ryuichi Sakamoto was born on 17 January 1952 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a composer and actor, known for The Last Emperor (1987), The Revenant (2015) and Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). He was married to Akiko Yano. He died on 28 March 2023 in Tokyo, Japan.- Composer
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Three-time Academy Award-nominated composer and pianist Nicholas Britell is known for his critically acclaimed scores on feature films with Academy Award winning writer-directors Barry Jenkins and Adam McKay. In 2018, Britell wrote the highly acclaimed score for Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk. Britell received his second Academy Award nomination as well as BAFTA and Critics' Choice nominations for the score and was awarded Best Original Score by numerous critics' groups, including LA, Boston, Chicago, and Washington DC Film Critics Associations, New York Film Critics Online, and the Online Film Critics Association. In 2018, he also wrote the score for McKay's Vice, starring Christian Bale, which went on to receive eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Britell's most recent film work is the score for Netflix's The King, starring Timothée Chalamet. In 2019, Britell was honored by the World Soundtrack Awards as the Film Composer of the Year for his scores for If Beale Street Could Talk and Vice.
In 2016, Britell was responsible for the world-renowned score for Best Picture winner Moonlight, written and directed by Jenkins. Britell received his first Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Critics' Choice nominations for Moonlight as well as the 2016 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score (Dramatic Feature). The year prior, he wrote the score for McKay's much-nominated The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis's best-selling book.
For television, Britell re-teamed with McKay for the HBO series Succession. McKay directed the pilot and executive produces along with writer-showrunner Jesse Armstrong. Britell won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme as well as the 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score (TV Show/Limited Series) for Succession Season 1. Britell's score and main title theme have become some of the most talked about music for television on social media, with audience demand leading Britell to produce a remix of the main title theme with lyrics from legendary hip-hop artist Pusha-T (their remix ''Puppets" was released in October 2019 by Def Jam Recordings).
Britell's upcoming projects include writing the score for Amazon's Underground Railroad series, directed and adapted by Barry Jenkins from Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. He is also composing the score for Succession's upcoming Season 3 on HBO.
Britell's music featured in Steve McQueen's Best Picture winning 12 Years A Slave, for which he composed, researched, and arranged the on-camera music, including the violin performances, spiritual songs, work songs, and dances. He went on to work with McQueen on McQueen's art installation Caribs' Leap, which featured as part of the "Master of Light - Robby Müller" retrospective at the Eye film museum in Amsterdam. Other original film score credits include Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's Battle of the Sexes, for which he also wrote and produced original song, "If I Dare" with singer Sara Bareilles; Natalie Portman's A Tale of Love and Darkness; Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot (winner of the 2012 SXSW Grand Jury Prize); Leon's Tramps; Gary Ross' Free State of Jones, and Jack Pettibone Riccobono's documentary The Seventh Fire.
In 2017, Britell won the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium and also received the Distinguished Composer Award from the Middleburg Film Festival. In May 2019, he was awarded - with music supervisor Gabe Hilfer - the first-ever ASCAP Harmony Award celebrating outstanding collaborative achievement between composers and music supervisors for If Beale Street Could Talk. In 2012, he was the recipient of a Henry Mancini Fellowship from the ASCAP Foundation and also won the ASCAP/Doddle Award for Collaborative Achievement.
Britell is a Steinway Artist and is also a Creative Associate of the Juilliard School; he speaks often and gives masterclasses at conservatories and universities including the Eastman Conservatory, Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, the Mannes School of Music, and Vassar College. In December 2018, it was announced that Britell will be part of Esa-Pekka Salonen's newly formed creative collective "brain trust" as Salonen takes the reins as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. His recent public performances have included concerts at London's Barbican Hall, the Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles, Chicago's Ravinia, and Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall.
As a producer, Britell produced Damien Chazelle's short film Whiplash, which won the Jury Award for Best US Fiction Short at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Following the initial success of the short, he served as co-producer on the Oscar-nominated feature film Whiplash which won Sundance's 2014 Jury Prize and Audience Award.
Britell is an honors and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University, as well as a piano performance graduate of the Juilliard School's Pre-College Division. He returned in May 2016 as the Pre-College's commencement speaker.- Composer
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Andrea Guerra was born in October 1961 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He is a composer and producer, known for Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Pursuit of Happyness (2006) and Nine (2009).- Composer
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Mihály Vig was born on 21 September 1957 in Budapest, Hungary. He is a composer and actor, known for Satantango (1994), The Long Way Home (2013) and The Turin Horse (2011).- Composer
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Rob Simonsen is a singular composer, solo artist and co-founder of composer collective The Echo Society. Simonsen has paved his own musical path, and through years of education and experimentation, crafted a voice that both respects music traditions and explores new bounds. His body of work traverses genres, from Oscar-nominated dramas and techno-thrillers to romantic comedies and coming-of-age films.
Simonsen's ascent as a film composer began when his score for indie film Westender caught the attention of composer Mychael Danna. Through subsequent collaborations with Danna, Simonsen contributed additional music to features Moneyball and Life of Pi, and co-composed the score for 500 Hundred Days of Summer. As a result, Simonsen received attention towards his own scores, prompting The Hollywood Reporter to list him as one of the "Composers primed to take their place on the A-list".
Fulfilling this prediction, Simonsen has collaborated with directors Shawn Levy (The Adam Project), Jason Reitman (Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Front Runner), Julia Hart (Hollywood Stargirl, Stargirl and Fast Color), Greg Berlanti (Love, Simon), Gavin O'Connor (The Way Back), Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher), Marc Webb (The Only Living Boy in New York, Gifted, and 500 Days of Summer), and Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (Viral and Nerve). His music has been called "perfectly calibrated" by the New York Times, "Sensitive" and "Sophisticated" by Variety, and "rich" by Hollywood Reporter.
Simonsen's dedication to artistic expression extends beyond film work. Surrounding himself with a network of dedicated artists, he co-founded The Echo Society to connect and inspire the Los Angeles community with live and interactive audiovisual performances.- Composer
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Eleni Karaindrou was born in the mountain village of Teichio in central Greece and grew up in Athens, where she studied piano and theory at the Hellenikon Odion. From 1969-74 she studied ethnomusicology in Paris and, on returning to Greece, founded the Laboratory for Traditional Instruments at the ORA Cultural Centre. She has since been an active campaigner on behalf of Greece's musical resources. Karaindrou has a long history of writing for film and theatre; to date, some 18 feature films, 13 plays and 10 television series have featured her music. Although most of her work has been with Greek directors, she has also collaborated with Chris Marker, Jules Dassin and Margarethe von Trotta. Eleni Karaindrou has been associated with Theodoros Angelopoulos since 1982.- Music Department
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Austrian composer Max Steiner achieved legendary status as the creator of hundreds of classic American film scores. He was born Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner in Vienna, Austria, the son of Marie Mizzi (Hasiba) and Gabor Steiner, an impresario, and the grandson of actor and theater director and manager Maximilian Steiner. His family was Jewish. As a child, he was astonishingly musically gifted, composing complex works as a teenager and completing the course of study at Vienna's Hochschule fuer Musik und Darstellende Kunst in only one year, at the age of sixteen. He studied under Gustav Mahler and, before the age of twenty, made his living as a conductor and as composer of works for the theater, the concert hall, and vaudeville. After a brief sojourn in Britian, Steiner moved to the USA in the same wave as fellow film composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and quickly became a sought-after orchestrator and conductor on Broadway, bringing the Western classical tradition in which he had been raised to mainstream audiences.
He was soon snatched up by the film studios with the advent of sound and helped the fledgling talkies become musically sophisticated within a brief few years. He was one of the first to fully integrate the musical score with the images on-screen and to score individual scenes for their content and create leitmotifs for individual characters, as opposed to simply providing vaguely appropriate mood music, as evidenced in King Kong (1933), which set the standard for American film music for years to come.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, he was one of the most respected, innovative, and brilliant composers of American film music, creating a truly staggering number of exceptional scores for films of all types. He was nominated for Academy Awards for his scores eighteen times and won three times. Years after his death in 1971, he remains one of the giants of motion picture history, and his music still thrives.- Klaus Garternicht is known for Deadly Maria (1993), Alarm für Cobra 11 - Die Autobahnpolizei (1996) and Double Trouble (2010).
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Dario Marianelli was born in Pisa and studied piano and composition in Florence and London. After a year as a postgraduate composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he spent 3 years at the National Film and Television School, from which he graduated in 1997. Dario's film scores include 'Paddington 2' (2017), 'Darkest Hour' (2017), 'Kubo and the 'Two Strings' (2016) Everest (2015), 'The Boxtrolls' (2014), 'Anna Karenina' (2012), 'Jane Eyre' (2011), 'Salmon Fishing In The Yemen' (2011), 'Eat Pray Love' (2010), 'The Soloist' (2009), 'Agora' (2009), 'Atonement' (2007), 'V for Vendetta' (2006) and 'Pride and Prejudice' (2005). He has written orchestral music for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and the Britten-Pears Orchestra, as well as vocal music for the BBC Singers, incidental music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and several ballet scores. Dario won the Oscar, Golden Globe and Ivor Novello Award in the Best Original Score category for the award-winning Working Title film 'Atonement', for which he also won the World Soundtrack Award and was BAFTA nominated. He was also nominated for a Classical Brit Award in the Soundtrack Of The Year category for 'Atonement'. In 2006, Dario was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Original Score category for his music to Joe Wright's 'Pride & Prejudice'. This score won him the Classical Brit Award in the Soundtrack/ Musical Theatre Composer of The Year category and also earned him an Ivor Novello Award nomination. Dario's collaboration with Joe Wright on the film 'Anna Karenina' led to his nomination for an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe for Best Original Score, and in May 2013, he won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Original Film Score for 'Anna Karenina'. In 2014 Dario composed the score for Laika animation 'The Boxtrolls', which was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. He has recently completed work on the score to his second Laika animation, 'Kubo and the Two Strings', for which he won an Ivor Novello Award, and also worked on his fifth film collaboration with director Asif Kapadia on live action feature 'Ali and Nino'.
During 2014 Dario's 'Voyager' Violin Concerto also had its world premiere in Brisbane, Australia, performed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra as part of a spectacular event combining science, music, voice, and film titled 'Journey Through The Cosmos'. The piece was featured alongside a lecture given by Professor Brian Cox and has since gone on to be performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Harding and featuring highly acclaimed violinist Jack Liebeck.
In 2017, Dario continued his working relationship with Joe Wright on 'Darkest Hour' and also scoring Paul King's 'Paddington 2'. Dario was commissioned by The Royal Opera House to compose their new ballet, 'The Unknown Soldier', which premiered in November 2018. He also worked with Travis Knight, composing the score for the latest film in the Transformers film series, 'Bumblebee.' Dario collaborated with Matteo Garrone to score the Italian feature film 'Pinocchio'. Most recently Dario composed the original score for 'A Boy Called Christmas', directed by Gil Kenan, which was released in late 2021.- Composer
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Born in Milan in 1911 into a family of musicians, Nino Rota was first a student of Orefice and Pizzetti. Then, still a child, he moved to Rome where he completed his studies at the Conservatory of Santa Cecilia in 1929 with Alfredo Casella. In the meantime, he had become an 'enfant prodige', famous both as a composer and as an orchestra conductor. His first oratorio, "L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista," was performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923 and his lyrical comedy, "Il Principe Porcaro," was composed in 1926. From 1930 to 1932, Nino Rota lived in the USA. He won a scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia where he attended classes in composition taught by Rosario Scalero and classes in orchestra taught by Fritz Reiner. He returned to Italy and earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan. In 1937, he began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Bari Conservatory, a title he held from 1950 until his death in 1979. After his "childhood" compositions, Nino Rota wrote the following operas: Ariodante (Parma 1942), Torquemada (1943), Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (Palermo 1955), I due timidi (RAI 1950, London 1953), La notte di un neurastenico (Premio Italia 1959, La Scala 1960), Lo scoiattolo in gamba (Venezia 1959), Aladino e la lampada magica (Naples 1968), La visita meravigliosa (Palermo 1970), Napoli milionaria (Spoleto Festival 1977). He also wrote the following ballets: La rappresentazione di Adamo ed Eva (Perugia 1957), La Strada (La Scala 1965), Aci e Galatea (Rome 1971), Le Molière imaginaire (Paris and Brussels 1976) and Amor di poeta (Brussels 1978) for Maurice Béjart. In addition, there are countless works for orchestra that have been performed since before World War II and are still performed by orchestras in every part of the world. His work in film dates back to the early forties. His filmography includes the names of virtually all of the noted directors of his time. First among these is Federico Fellini. He wrote all of the movie scores for Fellini's films from The White Sheik (1952) in 1952 to Orchestra Rehearsal (1978) in 1978. Other directors include Renato Castellani, Luchino Visconti, Franco Zeffirelli, Mario Monicelli, Francis Ford Coppola (Oscar for best original score for The Godfather Part II (1974)), King Vidor, René Clément, Edward Dmytryk, and 'Eduardo de Filippo'. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zefirelli, and de Filippo. In February of 1995, the Nino Rota Foundation was established at Fondazione Cini of Venice, Italy. Cini specializes in the works of 20th century Italian composers and includes the estate of Casella.- Composer
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Jocelyn Pook is one of the UK's most versatile composers, having written extensively for stage, screen, opera house and concert hall. Often remembered for her film score to Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which won her a Chicago Film Award and a Golden Globe nomination, she has worked with some of the world's leading directors, musicians and artists including Martin Scorsese, Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Laurie Anderson. Her first opera Ingerland was commissioned by ROH2 for the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio in 2010, and The BBC Proms and The King's Singers commissioned her to collaborate with Poet Laureate Andrew Motion on a work entitled Mobile. Jocelyn won an Olivier Award for the National Theatre's production of St Joan, and a British Composer Award for her multi-media music-theatre piece Speaking in Tunes. She won a second British Composer Award for her soundtrack to Akram Khan's dance production DESH. In 2014 she composed the score for his dance piece Dust choreographed for English National Ballet to mark the centenary of the First World War, as well as the score for Mike Bartlett's play King Charles III which premiered at Almeida Theatre, London and transferred to West End and Broadway NY. Her most recent ballet for English National Ballet, M-Dao, choreographed by Yabin Wang, premiered in 2016 at Sadler's Wells. In 2018 Jocelyn won a BAFTA for her score for the 2017 TV film version of King Charles III. She composed the soundtracks for The Wife, acclaimed feature film starring Glenn Close, and for The Staircase, the extraordinary documentary series directed by Jean-Xavier Lestrade. This year Pook was commissioned by The Proms to compose a new piece for Prom 49: in The Lost Words:"You Need To Listen To Us" she sets words from speeches by environmental activist Greta Thunberg to music. She also composed the soundtrack for The Kingmaker, a documentary film about the controversial political career of Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, directed by Lauren Greenfield, to be released later this autumn.- Composer
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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).- Composer
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Justin Hurwitz was born on 22 January 1985 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for La La Land (2016), First Man (2018) and Whiplash (2014).- Composer
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Steve Jablonsky is an American film composer who is known for his collaborations with film directors Michael Bay and Peter Berg. He composed five Transformers films, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Lone Survivor, Deep Horizon, The Island and The Amityville Horror.- Music Department
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John Ottman holds dual distinctions as a leading film composer and an award winning film editor. Ottman has often completed both monumental tasks on the same films. Such remarkable double duties have included The Usual Suspects, X-Men 2, Superman Returns, Valkyrie, and Jack the Giant Killer. He has also held producer roles on several of these films, as well as directing, editing and scoring Urban Legends 2.
From an early age in San Jose, California, Ottman began writing and recording radio plays on cassette tapes. He'd perform many characters with his voice (and some sound effects), and called upon his neighborhood friends as extra cast members.
By the fourth grade, Ottman was playing the clarinet and continued doing so throughout high school. But his real concentration turned from audio productions to making films. He turned his parents' garage into a movie studio, where multiple sets were interchangeable to accommodate productions - invariably some sort of science fiction film. By high school, his films evolved to hour-long productions complete with large sets and lavish scores edited together from his favorite soundtracks.
Having been a veteran of numerous short films, Ottman excelled at USC film school, receiving accolades for his direction of actors and for how masterfully he edited their performances. It was in this directing course that a graduate filmmaker asked Ottman to re-edit his thesis film. John modified the story from raw footage and also designed the film's extensive sound. The film ended up winning the student Academy Award. On that film, Ottman met a production assistant named Bryan Singer.
Singer, only aware of Ottman's editing (Ottman stayed awake into the wee hours learning midi gear and composing music), asked him to edit a short film starring Ethan Hawke - a childhood friend of Singer's. Ottman ended up co-directing the film (Lion's Den) as well as editing and doing the sound design.
Ottman edited Singer's first feature, Public Access. His effective sequences and editorial montages became the highlight of the picture. In the eleventh hour, the film lost its composer. Singer asked Ottman to write the score, after much prodding from the editor. Public Access received the Grand Jury Prize at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, with the score and editing being lauded in reviews.
With The Usual Suspects and future Singer films, Ottman held to a promise that, despite his scoring dreams, he would commit to the months required to also serve as editor on Singer's films. The wary producers of The Usual Suspects gave the go-ahead for him to both edit the complicated picture and write the score, the demands of which no one had undergone. The film was edited in Ottman's living room on a Steinbeck flatbed and a splicer. The Usual Suspects and Ottman's work received widespread acclaim, earning Ottman the British Academy Awards for his editing, a Saturn Award for his score, and a nomination by the American Cinema Editors.
Since then, Ottman has scored numerous films with the intent of keeping thematic film scoring alive. Ottman also made a brief foray into television for which he received an Emmy nomination ("Fantasy Island.")- Composer
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Gabriel Yared stopped his law studies at the age of 20 to work as a professional music composer. He studied with Henri Dutilleux and Maurice Ohana. He worked as a composer, orchestrator or producer for such singers as Françoise Hardy, Charles Aznavour, Gilbert Bécaud and Mireille Mathieu. He made his film debut in 1980 with the score for Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man for Himself (1980). He has since scored a huge list of movies for such major directors as Jean-Jacques Beineix, Robert Altman and Jean-Jacques Annaud. He won an Academy Award for Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (1996) score and has been nominated for two others (Cold Mountain (2003) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)). He also composes ballets for Carolyn Carlson and Roland Petit. He is the founder and director of the Pléiade Academy, which welcomes and supports talented young composers in the production and promotion of their works. This biography has been made with the help of Gabriel Yared's official website.- Composer
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Jim Williams was born in England, UK. He is known for Possessor (2020), Titane (2021) and Raw (2016).- Actor
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Zbigniew Zamachowski was born on 17 July 1961 in Brzeziny, Lódzkie, Poland. He is an actor and composer, known for Three Colors: White (1994), Three Colors: Blue (1993) and Three Colors: Red (1994). He has been married to Monika Richardson since 3 May 2014. He was previously married to Aleksandra Justa and Anna Komornicka-Zamachowska.- Composer
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Armand Amar was born in 1953 in Jerusalem, Israel. He is a composer and producer, known for The Concert (2009), Amen. (2002) and Days of Glory (2006).- Composer
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Rupert Gregson-Williams was born on 21 February 1967 in Tonbridge, Kent, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Wonder Woman (2017), Hacksaw Ridge (2016) and The Crown (2016). He has been married to Emma Jacobs since 1996. They have one child.- Composer
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Daniel Hart is a composer and performer based in Los Angeles. Hart made his feature film debut in 2013 with the critically acclaimed Ain't Them Bodies Saints, which began his collaboration with filmmaker David Lowery. Hart has composed the music for all of Lowery's films, including Pete's Dragon, A Ghost Story, Old Man and The Gun, and 2021's The Green Knight. Over the past decade, he has also scored multiple TV shows, from Fox's The Exorcist, to SMILF, to The Society. Hart has written music for This American Life, and composed the score for S Town, one of the most popular podcasts of all time.
Hart's musical career started on the road, as a hired gun for bands such as St. Vincent, Broken Social Scene, Other Lives, and The Polyphonic Spree. He continues to work in this field, having recorded strings for St. Vincent's 2021 album Daddy's Home, re-arranging songs for Anjimile's latest release Reunion, and writing new music for his own band Dark Rooms, which has released two albums, and toured extensively throughout the US and Europe over the past eight years.- Composer
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Mark Snow became a good friend with Michael Kamen while they were studying music at New York's Art and Music High School. After graduation, they became roommates at Juilliard (an elite music school). After studying at Juilliard, he became very fond of pop music. He, Michael Kamen and 3 others formed the New York Rock'n'Roll ensemble. The band was signed to Atlantic Records and Mark toured and recorded with them for 5 years. His interest then turned in writing film and television scores. He began to write and relocated to Los Angeles in 1974. Mark's musical composition career began in 1975 with the TV series, Starsky and Hutch (1975), and has taken off since then. However, he is best known for his work on The X-Files (1993) and Millennium (1996), he has made music for many other programs. He took piano lessons at age ten and, by the time he was twenty, he played both oboe and percussion.- Music Department
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A child prodigy, Miklos Rózsa learned to play the violin at the age of five and read music before he was able to read words. In 1926, he began studying at the Leipzig Conservatory where he was considered a brilliant student. He obtained his doctorate in music in 1930. Moving to Paris the following year, Rózsa had much of his own chamber music performed, as well as his 'Variations on a Hungarian Peasant Song' and his 'Symphony and Serenade for Small Orchestra'. However, he soon became disenchanted with meagre wages for playing classical music in concert. Attempting to change his financial situation, Rózsa managed to secure a contract with Pathe records to compose music for use in intermissions between movies. This was to be his first step in entering the more lucrative field of film composition. In 1935, Rózsa went to London after being invited by the Hungarian Legation to write the music for a ballet. The resulting work, 'Hungaria', so impressed the director Jacques Feyder that he set up a meeting with fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, who then commissioned him to write an opulent score for the romantic drama Knight Without Armor (1937). Rózsa later recalled having to learn to write music for films 'the hard way': "I bought one German and one Russian book on the technique of film music and everything I learned from these books was absolutely wrong! But then I had long conferences with Muir Mathieson, who was the music director and conductor for Korda, and somehow I learned."
While writing the score for The Thief of Bagdad (1940), Rózsa relocated to Hollywood where he remained gainfully employed over the next four decades. An expert at orchestration and counterpoint with a great flair for the dramatic, he often concentrated on the psychological aspects of a film. One of his innovations was the use of a theremin for the famous dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) which accompanies Salvador Dalí's transcendental nightmare images. Few composers have managed to convey suspense and tension as powerfully as Rózsa with his eerily haunting scores for some of the Golden Era's best films noir (Double Indemnity (1944), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), The Killers (1946), The Naked City (1948)) or his lush, stirring music for spectacular epics (Quo Vadis (1951), Ivanhoe (1952), El Cid (1961)). In addition to winning three Oscars for his film work, Rózsa also continued as a prolific composer of classical music, including Violin and Piano Concertos, a Concerto for String Orchestra, a Sinfonia Concertante and Notturno Ungherese (influenced, respectively, by Stravinsky and Bartók). In 1945, he was appointed Professor of Composition at the University of Southern California where also lectured on the subject for many years.- Composer
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Jon Brion was born on 11 December 1963 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The Other Guys (2010) and Step Brothers (2008).- Composer
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Nathan Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist best known for his work as a film composer and director. His innovative music (acclaimed scores for Knives Out (2019), Looper (2012), and Brick (2005), among others) and short films (videos for Son Lux, Lucius) consistently blur the lines between stage, screen, and audio-visual narrative.
Johnson is the recipient of numerous film and music awards, and his work has been featured extensively by NPR, Wired, the AV Club, and Rolling Stone. When he is not creating music or videos, he works as an art director with The Made Shop, a boutique design firm that specializes in graphic and architectural projects. He has lectured at universities around the world and has presented his work at the Hammer Museum, Adobe MAX, TED, and Apple.- Composer
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John Murphy is a British film composer from Liverpool. He began composing music scores for films in the early 1990s, working on several successful British movies, enjoying particular success with the soundtracks to Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (2000).
Since 2000, Murphy has been based in Los Angeles. From here, he has worked with some of the industry's most respected and luminary filmmakers, including Danny Boyle, Stephen Frears and Michael Mann, and produced several prominent and diverse successes, including 28 Days Later, Miami Vice, Sunshine and 28 Weeks Later.- Music Department
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Elliot Goldenthal is an Academy Award-winning composer best known for his original music scores for such films as Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among his other works.
He was born on May 2, 1954, in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a house-painter, and his mother was a seamstress. Young Goldenthal was fond of music and theatre, he played with his school rock band during the 1960s. In 1968, he staged his first ballet at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn, from which he graduated in 1971. He attended the Manhattan School of Music, studied under Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, and earned his MA in composition.
Among Goldenthal's most notable works are his original music scores for numerous films, such as Julie Taymor's Frida (2002), Clark Johnson's S.W.A.T. (2003), Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997). Goldenthal also has been collaborating with director Neil Jordan on five films, among those are Michael Collins (1996), and Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), for which he earned two Oscar nominations.
Since the early 1980s, Elliot Goldenthal has been working together with Julie Taymor. Their partnership in film and in life has been one of the most rewarding in film business; the couple made such acclaimed films as Titus (1999), Frida (2002) and Across the Universe (2007), among their other works, earning numerous awards and nominations for their highly innovative creativity.- Composer
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Lorne Balfe was born on 23 February 1976 in Inverness, Scotland, UK. He is a composer, known for The Lego Batman Movie (2017), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) and The Dark Knight (2008).- Composer
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Rachel Portman, Composer
British composer Rachel Portman became the first female composer to win an Academy Award, which she received for the score of Emma. She was also the first female composer to win a Primetime Emmy Award, which she received for the film, Bessie. She has received two further Academy Nominations for The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, which also earned her a Golden Globe Nomination. Rachel was given an OBE in 2010 and is an honorary fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. She's also a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. Rachel has written stage and concert commissions including a musical of Little House on the Prairie, and an opera of Saint Exupery's, The Little Prince for Houston Grand Opera. For the BBC Proms, she wrote The Water Diviner, a dramatic choral symphony. She also wrote 'Endangered' performed at the World Environment Day Concert, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing. Other works include Earth Song for the BBC Singers, a solo piano album Ask The River and most recently for Joyce Di Donato, The First Morning of the World as part of her Eden programme.- Composer
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Ilan Eshkeri is one of the most diverse and innovative composers in Britain today. His music transcends genres and mediums, with a focus on emotional narrative that deeply connects with his audience, leaving an indelible mark on the world of music.
Eshkeri is Known for films such as Layer Cake, Stardust, The Young Victoria, Still Alice and his innovative work with Actor/ Director Ralph Fiennes on Coriolanus and The White Crow. He has collaborated with pop and rock artists like Coldplay, KT Tunstall, Take That, Annie Lennox and David Gilmour.
He has worked with Sir David Attenborough, on several major documentaries that fueled his passion for addressing climate and environmental issues through music. This lead him to create Space Station Earth with NASA and ESA, a synth pop and orchestral live show with a film, which takes the audience on the emotional journey experienced by astronauts when leaving Earth.
Ilan Eshkeri's musical journey and legacy continue to unfurl, spending most his time disappearing into his studio at the bottom of his garden in North London. Eshkeri is both dyslexic and synaesthetic, colours, music and patterns merge in his mind allowing him to imagine unconventional ways of approaching music in order to unlock creativity. His distinct and innovative style, blended with a profound emotional connection to human stories, ensures his compositions retain relevance and potency, testifying to the incredible ability to stir audiences worldwide.- Composer
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From his days as one of the pioneering icons of electronic music to his current status as a world-renowned legendary film composer, Mark Isham continues to be one of the most prolific and provocative artists on the scene. His gift for creating unforgettable melodies and his love of fresh, innovative sonic palettes have earned Isham many awards including a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Clio, in addition to multiple Grammy, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his material both as a composer and a recording artist. Most recently, Mark was honored by ASCAP with the Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Isham's musical signature is evident in his memorable scores for such notable films as Crash, awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 2005 (Isham's score was named Best Soundtrack of 2005 by Cinescape.com), Bobby, nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and The Black Dahlia, with its critically lauded jazz noir soundtrack (awarded Best Score for a Drama Film 2007, and nominated for Best Score of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association). Other highlights include Eight Below, The Cooler, A River Runs Through It, Blade, Nell, Men of Honor, and The Secret Life of Bees. His list of collaborators in film is a veritable who's who of the entertainment industry, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma, Chick Corea, Jodi Foster, Robert Altman, Sting, Wil.I.Am, Sydney Lumet, Mick Jagger and too many more to name. As a performing artist, Mark has added his unique sound, melodic, moody, sexy and cool, to a wide variety of genres. He has graced the albums of such diverse artists as Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison. His solo recordings span from electronica and classic jazz to hip-hop and ethnic world music, receiving worldwide critical acclaim including Grammy nominations for his albums Castalia and Tibet, and a win for his Virgin Records release, Mark Isham. No matter the genre, medium, or venue, Mark Isham displays a boundless ability to electrify the listener with his talent for crafting evocative new musical worlds.- Composer
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A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Class of 2016, film composer Lesley Barber writes music marked by intelligence and emotional depth. She has scored a string of award-winning and highly acclaimed projects, including Kenneth Lonergan's multi-award-winning and Oscar-nominated film, Manchester by the Sea.
A multi-instrumentalist, conductor and pianist, Lesley's interest in modern electronic programming, loops, and effects adds dimension to her work, creating hybrid atmospheric scores with lush orchestration with an innate ability to bring the essential to light and avoid the cliche.
Her distinguished list of credits include Lonergan's Oscar-winning You Can Count On Me, Jerry Rothwell's award-winning documentary How To Change The World, Patricia Rozema's Mansfield Park, Mira Nair's Golden Globe winning Hysterical Blindness, Marry Harron's Moth Diaries, the children's classic Little Bear with Maurice Sendak, Yo-Yo- Ma: Sex Gestures, Wiebke Von Carolsfeld's Marion Bridge, Allison Ander's Beaches, and the released powerhouse documentary The Apology by Tiffany Hsiung.
Lesley is a proud and active member of the Alliance for Women Film Composers which has taken a leading role in the much-publicized diversity conversation now occurring in Hollywood. She has a passion for good food, great cities, and interesting company.- Music Artist
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Robbie Robertson was born on 5 July 1943 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was a music artist and actor, known for Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Ladder 49 (2004). He was married to Janet Zuccarini and Dominique Robertson. He died on 9 August 2023 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Composer
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Ben Salisbury was born in London in December 1970. He is best known for his collaboration with Geoff Barrow as composer on the films Annihilation, Ex Machina and Free Fire. He has composed the music for over 50 natural history films, including the last 3 of David Attenborough's 'Life Of..' strand, and also scored Beyonce: Life Is But A Dream for director Beyonce Knowles.- Music Department
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James Horner began studying piano at the age of five, and trained at the Royal College of Music in London, England, before moving to California in the 1970s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in music at USC, he would go on to earn his master's degree at UCLA and teach music theory there. He later completed his Ph.D. in Music Composition and Theory at UCLA. Horner began scoring student films for the American Film Institute in the late 1970s, which paved the way for scoring assignments on a number of small-scale films. His first large, high-profile project was composing music for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which would lead to numerous other film offers and opportunities to work with world-class performers such as the London Symphony Orchestra. With over 75 projects to his name, and work with people such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Oliver Stone, and Ron Howard, Horner firmly established himself as a strong voice in the world of film scoring. In addition, Horner composed a classical concert piece in the 1980s, called "Spectral Shimmers", which was world premiered by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Horner passed away in a plane crash on June 22, 2015, two months short of his 62nd birthday.- Composer
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Roque Baños was born in 1968 in Jumilla, Murcia, Spain. He is a composer and director, known for Don't Breathe 2 (2021), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and The Commuter (2018).- Music Department
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Henry Jackman has established himself as one of today's top composers by fusing his classical training with his experience as a successful record producer and creator of electronic music.
Jackman grew up in the southeast of England, where he began composing his first symphony at the age of six. He studied classical music at Oxford and sang in the St. Paul's Cathedral Choir-but simultaneously got involved in the underground rave scene and began producing popular electronica music and dance remixes, eventually working with artists such as Seal and The Art of Noise.
In 2006 he caught the attention of film composers Hans Zimmer and John Powell, and began writing additional music for Powell on Kung Fu Panda and then for Zimmer on The Dark Knight, The Da Vinci Code, and The Pirates of the Caribbean films, which rapidly led to scoring blockbuster films on his own. His first solo feature film then came to be 'Monsters v Aliens' directed by Rob Letterman.
"I've spent a lot of time working in the record industry," says Jackman, "and for my money being a film composer is way more fun. You can be working on X-Men, and then a movie set in 17th-century Italy. It's not about showing off what you think is cool or what you want to hear, but 'what is this movie about, and what would best serve it?' That process just leads to strange and remarkable places."
Jackman is known for his recent scores for Marvel Studios' 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier', Showtime's 'The Comey Rule', The Russo Brothers' 'Cherry', as well as 'Jumanji: The Next Level', a continuation of the magical board game adventure story, and 'Detective Pikachu', following the story of the beloved Pikachu Pokémon character starring Ryan Reynolds. His other recent work includes 'Ralph Breaks the Internet', which was nominated for Best Animated Feature. His other diverse credits include Captain America: Civil War, Kong: Skull Island, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Big Hero 6, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle.- Composer
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Disasterpeace is known for It Follows (2014), Under the Silver Lake (2018) and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021).- Composer
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Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. As a successful recording artist and touring musician, Jan turned to composing film scores as his primary occupation. Jan's first success in the United States came in theater. After composing striking scores for productions at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, Jan won an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for his music for the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1992 production of John Ford's "Tis Pity She's A Whore," directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, starring Val Kilmer and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Newsday wrote that Jan's score "undulates with hypnotic force that gets under your skin," while Frank Rich of the New York Times found it worthy of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and Luchino Visconti. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned his planned career as a diplomat, for political reasons, to write music in order to finally gain freedom of expression. First he composed for the highly politicized underground theater, and then for a mini-orchestra of his own creation, "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day". The major turning point in his life, he says, was a period of intense study with avant-garde theater director, Jerzy Grotowski. "Playing and composing was like a religion for me," Kaczmarek explains, "and then it became a profession." "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day" began touring Europe in the late 1970's and to date, has completed eighteen major tours. They appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the VPRO Radio International Contemporary Music Festival in Amsterdam,the Venice Biennale, and the International Music Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where Jan won the Golden Spring Prize for the Best Composition. He is a five-time winner in Jazz Forum's Jazz Top Poll. At the end of the Orchestra's first American tour in 1982, Kaczmarek recorded his debut album, Music for the End, for the Chicago-based major independent Flying Fish Records. Jan returned to America in 1989 to find a label for his latest composition for the Orchestra. Jan stayed in the United States where he expanded his horizons by composing for theater as he had already done in Poland with great success, capped by two prestigious New York theater awards in 1992. Having also composed music for films in Poland, he focused his attention to that medium, achieving recognition as a film composer with scores to such films as "Total Eclipse", "Bliss", "Washington Square", "Aimée & Jaguar", "The Third Miracle", "Lost Souls", "Edges of the Lord", "Quo Vadis" and Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful."
February 2005, Jan won his first Oscar for Best Original Score on Marc Forster's highly acclaimed film, "Finding Neverland."
Jan also won The National Review Board's award for Best Score of the Year, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and BAFTA's Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music.In addition to his work in films, Jan is also setting up an Institute inspired by the Sundance Institute, in his home country of Poland, as a European center for development of new work in the areas of film, theatre, music and new media. The Institute website (currently under construction) is: www.rozbitek.org. It is anticipated that Rozbitek will begin accepting students in 2006.- Composer
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Cliff Martinez was born on 5 February 1954 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Only God Forgives (2013), The Neon Demon (2016) and Drive (2011).- Composer
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Patrick Doyle is a classically trained composer.
His first film score, the acclaimed adaptation of "Henry V" with Kenneth Branagh for Renaissance films was scored in 1989. He has subsequently worked with Kenneth Branagh, a long time collaborator on numerous pictures including "Dead Again", "Much Ado About Nothing", "Frankenstein" and "Hamlet".
Patrick has composed over 45 internationally renowned feature film scores including "Indochine", "Sense and Sensibility", "Carlito's Way", "Gosford Park", "A Little Princess", "Bridget Jones's Diary", "Nanny McPhee" and "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire".
He has collaborated with a host of internationally acclaimed film directors including Robert Altman, Ang Lee, Brian de Palma, Alfonso Cuaron, Mike Newell, Regis Wagnier and Kenneth Branagh.
His concert works include "The Thistle and The Rose", a commission by HRH The Prince of Wales for full choir in honour of the Queen Mother's 90th birthday, "Tam O' Shanter" for the National Schools Orchestra Trust and the violin concerto "Corarsik".
He has recently completed the score for the Marvel Entertainment feature film "Thor," directed by Kenneth Branagh, "La Ligne Droite" for Regis Wagnier and the Twentieth Century Fox film "Caesar Rise of the Apes". He is currently scoring the upcoming Pixar film "Brave" directed by Mark Andrews and after which will score the Sovereign Films film "Effie" directed by Richard Laxton.- Composer
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George Fenton was born on 19 October 1949 in Bromley, Kent, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Groundhog Day (1993), Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) and The Bounty Hunter (2010).- Composer
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Composer Christopher Young was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. After graduating from Hampshire College in Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts degree in music, Young went on to pursue his post-graduate studies at North Texas State University. After college Christopher moved to Los Angeles, California. He was originally a jazz drummer, but decided to become a film composer instead after listening to some of Bernard Herrmann's work. Moreover, Young not only has studied with noted composer David Raksin at UCLA Film School, but also teaches at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California. Christopher was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk Award at the 2008 BMI Film and TV Awards.- Music Department
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Steven Price is an Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning composer. In 2014 his groundbreaking score for Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity won him not only the Academy Award but also the BAFTA, the Critics' Choice Award, the Satellite Award, and ASCAP's first-ever Film Composer of The Year Award. He has since scored Fury, the WWII epic written and directed by David Ayer, starring Brad Pitt; Believe, a drama series produced by Alfonso Cuaron and JJ Abrams for NBC; and the BBC's The Hunt, a landmark natural history documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough following the struggles and successes of predators in the animal kingdom. Price's debut score was for Joe Cornish's 2011 feature Attack The Block, produced by Edgar Wright. His music earned Price the award for Best Original Soundtrack from both the Austin Film Critics Association and the Sitges Film Festival. He then went on to work with Edgar Wright as a director, composing the original score for the Universal comedy The World's End. Steven Price moved into composing following an extensive period gaining experience in various roles within the film music industry. He began his career as an assistant in the London studio of Gang of Four with guitarist/producer Andy Gill. He then had a five-year apprenticeship with the film composer Trevor Jones during which he contributed to projects including Thirteen Days, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 80 Days Around The World, Dinotopia, and Crossroads, for which Price was also the featured guitar soloist alongside the London Symphony Orchestra. Having become a regular in the studios, Abbey Road recommended Price to Howard Shore, which led to his role as music editor on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Price went on to music edit on Batman Begins for Christopher Nolan, and on Scott Pilgrim v. the World for Edgar Wright as well as a number of other films and TV series. However, despite having become a leading music editor, Price remained focused on composing. He began to contribute original music to a number of projects, including Richard Curtis' 2009 movie Pirate Radio and Edgar Wright's film Scott Pilgrim vs The World, where he collaborated with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. A guitarist from the age of five, Price has a First Class degree in Music from Cambridge University.- Composer
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Fernando Velázquez (Getxo, 1976) is a composer of music for film, television and theatre, a creator of concerto music, a cellist and an orchestra conductor.
The soundtrack genre has allowed him to bring symphonic music to mass audiences and, above all, to explore very different expressive and narrative possibilities, from fantasy films to drama and comedy.
He has composed award-winning and memorable soundtracks for films including all those by J.A. Bayona, such as El orfanato (The Orphanage), The Impossible and Un monstruo viene a verme (A Monster Calls), the latter of which was awarded the Goya for Best Original Score in 2017. He also composed the music for some of the highest-grossing films in Spanish cinema's history, such as Ocho apellidos vascos (Spanish Affair), Los ojos de Julia (Julia's Eyes), El silencio de la ciudad blanca (The Silence of the White City), Contratiempo (The Invisible Guest) and series such as Patria, El inocente (The Innocent) and the upcoming Alma, among others. His Hollywood experience includes films such as Guillermo del Toro's The Scarlet Summit and M. Night Shyamalan's The Evil Trap. He was asked by Wim Wenders to score his 2017 film Submergence. He has also enjoyed a significant and award-winning career as a classical musician and composer. Among his more than 250 symphonic compositions, the record release of 'Viento' is a particular highlight. It is also worth mentioning Humanity at Music, a cantata translated into several languages which has become the international anthem of cooperativism. It is part of an inter-cooperative artistic project bringing together artistic disciplines such as music, storytelling, singing, illustration, theatre and dance. Also of note is Concierto para trombón y orquesta (Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra), recorded by Ximo Vicedo and Euskadiko Orkestra in 2020. As a conductor, he has led London's Philharmonia, the London Metropolitan, the Czech National Orchestra, the Budapest Radio Orchestra, and the symphony orchestras of RTVE, Bilbao, Euskadi, Extremadura, Galicia, Comunidad de Madrid, Navarra, Murcia, Principado de Asturias and Seville, among others. As an arranger, he has worked on orchestral arrangements of pieces by other composers, such as a version of the famous Cántico espiritual by Amancio Prada, based on the poems of San Juan de la Cruz, or his collaboration on Jorge Drexler's latest album, Tinta y tiempo, among many others.- Composer
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David Wingo got his start composing music for films in David Gordon Green's debut feature George Washington, collaborating on the score with Michael Linnen. The movie went on to win numerous awards and eventually released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. Wingo and Linnen collaborated again on Green's Sundance Award-winning follow-up All The Real Girls and since that Wingo has worked with Green on a majority of his films.
His core for the Jeff Nichols film Take Shelter, which won the Grand Prix prize at the Cannes Film Festival, landed him a Discovery Of The Year Award nomination at the World Soundtrack Awards. In 2013 Wingo scored Nichols' MUD, which was released to worldwide acclaim and went on to be the breakout indie hit of the year. Wingo has also worked on two Warner Bros films, Green's Our Brand Is Crisis, starring Sandra Bullock, and Nichols' studio debut Midnight Special. Wingo has been active with his band Ola Podrda since 2006, releasing three acclaimed full length albums and touring the US and Europe multiple times.- Composer
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Christophe Beck was born in 1968 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is a composer and actor, known for Frozen (2013), Ant-Man (2015) and The Muppets (2011).- Composer
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Theodore Michael Shapiro is an American film composer from Washington D.C. who is known for composing various films such as Jennifer's Body, Old School, Safe Men, Idiocracy, Wet Hot American Summer, Zoolander 2, Year One, DodgeBall, Tropic Thunder, On the Ropes, 13 Going on 30, Girlfight, Captain Underpants and The Devil Wears Prada.- Composer
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Throughout his legendary career, composer John Debney has seen himself in equal demand for holiday classics such as Hocus Pocus and Elf, tentpoles like Iron Man 2, The Jungle Book, and The Greatest Showman, and the powerful epic The Passion of the Christ, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. Debney's key to success is his immense versatility, composing for comedies (Bruce Almighty, Liar, Liar), action (Predators, The Scorpion King), horror (End of Days, Dream House), romance (Marry Me, Valentine's Day), and family films (Clifford the Big Red Dog, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) with the same confidence and panache. Debney is also known for his work in such films as Princess Diaries 1 & 2, Sin City, Spy Kids, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, No Strings Attached, The Emperor's New Groove, Chicken Little, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Ice Age: Collision Course, Isn't It Romantic, Come Away, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey, Home Sweet Home Alone, and The Beach Bum.
His more recent projects include Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids: Armageddon for Netflix, Paramount Pictures' Tom Brady-produced 80 for Brady, Apple+ and Skydance Animation's Luck, Universal's Jennifer Lopez starrer Marry Me, and Disney+'s Hocus Pocus 2.
Upcoming projects include Kevin Costner's 2-part western epic Horizon: An American Saga for New Line Cinemas, Columbia Pictures' animation Garfield starring Chris Pratt, Paramount Pictures' Under the Boardwalk, Netflix's In Your Dreams, and Amazon Prime's Space Cadet.
Born in Glendale, California, Debney studied music composition at the California Institute of the Arts, and afterward began his career orchestrating and composing scores for Walt Disney Studios and various television series. He won his first Emmy Award in 1990 for the main theme for western series The Young Riders, and has since won three additional Emmy Awards and received nominations for a total of seven, with his latest being Disney+'s smash hit Hocus Pocus 2 in 2023. Debney has also worked with industry titan Seth MacFarlane on numerous episodes of his sci-fi space series The Orville, utilizing nearly 100-piece orchestras to record his bombastic adventure scores. His first foray into video game scoring, Sony's 2007 medieval adventure Lair, resulted in a BAFTA nomination and a Best Videogame Score award from The International Film Music Critics Association.
Debney has collaborated with acclaimed directors as diverse as Jon Favreau, Kevin Costner, Robert Rodriguez, David E. Talbert, Harmony Korine, Kat Coiro, Brenda Chapman, Mel Gibson, Peggy Holmes, the late Garry Marshall, Adam Shankman, Kenny Ortega, and the late Ivan Reitman. In 2005, he was the youngest recipient of ASCAP's Henry Mancini Career Achievement Award.- Composer
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Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka, is an Academy Award-nominated composer, pianist and experimental musician.
In 2016, Bertelmann collaborated with Dustin O'Halloran on the score for Garth Davis' Lion, which was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for Best Original Score. Since then, he has gone on to score numerous film and TV projects, among which Baltasar Kormákur's Adrift (2018), HBO mini-series Gunpowder (2018) and Showtime's Emmy-nominated TV series Patrick Melrose. Bertelmann teamed up with O'Halloran again on the scores for The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019), based on the best-selling novel by Garth Stein, Ammonite (2020) and The Old Guard (2020).
Beyond his work as a film composer, Bertelmann has gained recognition as a recording artist through his compositions for the prepared piano. In 2018, he signed a record deal with Sony Masterworks and released his first record on the label in 2019.- Composer
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Marcelo Zarvos was born in 1969 in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. He is a composer and actor, known for Wonder (2017), Fences (2016) and Enough Said (2013). He has been married to Janel Moloney since 5 January 2010. They have two children.