Favorite Composers (In no particular order)
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Wojciech Kilar was born on 17 July 1932 in Lwów, Lwowskie, Poland [now Lviv, Ukraine]. He was a composer, known for Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Ninth Gate (1999) and The Pianist (2002). He was married to Barbara Pomianowska. He died on 29 December 2013 in Katowice, Slaskie, Poland.- 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.- Composer
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Born in Burano (Venice) in 1941, Pino Donaggio studied violin at the Conservatory of Venice and Milan.
After a period of adolescent performer of classical music with the Solisti Veneti and the Soloists of Milan, in 1959 he began to devote himself to the pop music that soon led to international success.
He has participated in ten editions of the Sanremo Festival getting a 3rd place in 1963 with the song "Giovane giovane" and a 4th place in 1966 with the song "Una casa in cima al mondo". His best-known song and performed is 1965 "Io che non vivo (senza te)" starring, among others, also by Elvis Presley.
Since 1973, Donaggio began gradually to abandon pop music to devote himself to composing music for films. In over forty years of activity it has put together more than two hundred soundtracks for the big and small screen, both in Italy and abroad.
He lives and works in Venice.- 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).- Composer
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Born in Poland in 1955, Zbigniew Preisner studied philosophy and history in the university of Cracow. In his twenties he started to study music in a autodidactical way: buying records and learning to write by taking the music in parts. He started to write his own compositions. His style has always been very romantic, influenced by romantic polish composers from the XIX century and others like Paganini or Sibelius. He has always emphasized the importance of melody in music. He doesn't like experimental modern music.
In 1981 he began his collaboration with filmmakers. While he was working with Antoni Krauze's movie "Weather Report" he met director Krzystof Kieslowski who invited him to work in his new movie "No End" about Poland under the martial law at the beginning of the 80s.
With that movie he began a very close collaboration with Kieslowski and his screenwriter Krzystof Piesiewicz. He works while the script for the movie is still being written but he usually also takes part in the editing of the movie.
Their next collaboration became a success worldwide. "Decalogue" won the European film award for best film and also awards in Cannes and other festivals. Kieslowski became one of the most importants directors in Europe and Preisner the leading film music composer of his generation.
At the same time he continued his collaboration with Kieslowski in such films like "La double vie de Veronique" and the trilogy of colours ("Blue", "White" and "Red") he also wrote soundtracks for others important directors like Louis Malle, Agniezka Holland or Héctor Babenco.
His collaboration with Kieslowski ended with his death in 1996. In the last years Preisner not only has continued his collaboration in others movies but he also has been involved in others musical projects like the writing of an opera to be performed in London and features for the Varsovia Simphony orchestra.- Composer
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Composer Eric Neveux was 25 when he met director François Ozon (Swimming Pool, 8 Women) and composed the score for his first long-form film, See the Sea. Ozon then asked him to score his first feature film, Sitcom. Shortly thereafter, Neveux began a long-term collaboration with Patrice Chéreau, scoring his film Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train (Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, 1997), followed by Intimacy (Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear award-winner, 2001), and Persecution, (Venice Film Festival, 2009).
Eric Neveux has composed original music for 60 feature films, as well as a variety of scores for TV movies and series. Recent score highlights include two installments of director Rachid Bouchareb's American Trilogy; Just Like a Woman (starring Sienna Miller and Golshifteh Farahani), and Two Men in Town(2014), with Forest Whitaker and Harvey Keitel; and later, Bouchareb's film Road to Istanbul in 2016 (the last two being official selections of the Berlin Film Festival). Eric's passion for independent film is further illustrated by his work on titles such as La Vie Domestique by Isabelle Czajka, Standing Tall (La Tête Haute) by Emmanuelle Bercot, the Cannes Film Festival's opening film in 2015, The Attack (2013), and The Insult (2017), by Ziad Doueiri which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 90th Academy Awards.
Under the moniker Mr. Neveux, Eric made important contributions to the 90s Downtempo music scene, most notably with the release of his album, TUBA (Cup of Tea Records). Later he co-founded Microbe Records, a respected home for indie artists in France and the United Kingdom.
Eric and his family divide their time between Los Angeles and Paris.- Composer
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Atli Örvarsson (b. 1970) is an acclaimed Icelandic film and TV composer, conductor, and musician. His body of work spans over 40 major studio film productions, countless TV shows, collaborations with a range of artists including RZA, Khalid, Talos, and orchestral conducting, and ambitious solo work.
Atli was born and raised in the town of Akureyri in North Iceland. He lived and worked in Los Angeles for many years, feeling a call to return to his homeland in 2016. The move brought him full circle, and heralded a renewed sense of creative freedom, and an exciting new chapter in his storied career.
Since his return, Atli has worked with the Sinfonia Nord orchestra to put Akureyri on the map as an international destination for recording film scores. He founded the thriving INNI label / studios to help bring talented Icelandic artists to a wider audience, and continued his creative evolution with the release of his expansive 2020 solo debut, 'You Are Here'.
Atli's journey in music began early. At age five, his musical aptitude was noticed by a relative who gave an open invitation for a music lesson, for which he showed up bright and early at 10am the next morning. In his teens, he played in a professional theatre ensemble, and earned several gold and platinum discs with the band Sálin hans Jóns míns.
Setting out to broaden his horizons, Atli undertook a degree at Boston's Berklee College of Music, and felt his calling as a film composer. He explored the synergies and subtleties of composing for the screen, going further during his Masters at the University of North Carolina. A move to Los Angeles was the natural next step. Atli quickly found good company, honing his craft alongside prolific TV composer Mike Post, and Hollywood legend Hans Zimmer.
Since then, Atli has become one of Iceland's foremost screen composers, winning the HARPA Nordic Film Composer Award for his acclaimed score to 'Rams', and several ASCAP and BMI Film and TV Music Awards. In 2009, he was nominated as the Breakthrough of the Year at the IFMCA Awards, and Discovery of the Year by the World Soundtrack Academy. In 2019, his score for 'Ploey: You Never Fly Alone' was nominated for a Public Choice Award.
The path ahead will be an exciting one. The view from the top of the world, just miles from the Arctic Circle, has given Atli a new sense of purpose. With the fertile creative ground he has cultivated, a steady flow of film and TV projects in the works, and the rich possibilities of the INNI organisation, the sky seems the limit.- 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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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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Javier Navarrete was born in 1956 in Teruel, Aragón, Spain. He is a composer, known for Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Wrath of the Titans (2012) and Byzantium (2012).- Composer
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Frans Bak was born on 7 February 1958 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a composer and actor, known for Men & Chicken (2015), Doctor Foster: A Woman Scorned (2015) and Final Hour (1995).- Composer
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Graeme Revell was born in New Zealand in 1955. He was graduated from The University of Auckland with degrees in economics and politics. He is a classically trained pianist and French horn player. Revell worked for as a regional planner in Australia and Indonesia and as an orderly in an Australian psychiatric hospital. Graeme Revell was a member of SPK, a 70s Industrial music group, for which he played keyboards and percussion. Their single "In Flagrante Delicto" was the basis for his Dead Calm score. This was his first score and won him an Australian Film Industry award. Since then he's done a number of major and minor film soundtracks including The Crow, The Crow: City Of Angels, The Craft, The Saint, and Chinese Box.