Film & TV Music Composers
One of the most unsung heroes of the big and small screens are the ones who make the music. No, not the ones that sing the songs which make up a soundtrack, but the ones that make the scores, the sweet melodies you hear, the excitement you get when Harry Potter is playing Quidditch, the ones that provide the heartbeat of a film or TV show. I guarantee you, films like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, Titanic, Alien and many others wouldn’t be the same without the incredible scores. This list honors all the men and women who’ve made contributions to the medium of film scoring, and why they are essential to making a great movie. I’m sure there are many films that you consider great but have no idea who made the scores. Sure you may recognize the big names like John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Jerry Goldsmith, but what about the other hundreds of artists? Here is a list of composers both from film and television and the films they’ve helped bring to life.
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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.Career Highlights & Achievements:
2nd Most Academy Award nominations ever received living or dead - (53; behind Walt Disney)
One of the longest careers in a medium spanning over 70
5-time Academy Award Winner
71-time Grammy Award Nominee
25-time Grammy Award Winner
25-time Golden Globes Nominee
4-time Golden Globe Winner
6-time Emmy Award Nominee
3-time Emmy Award Winner
Received the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
Inducted into the Hollywood Bowl’s Hall of Fame
Received the Kennedy Center Honor
Received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award
Films Composed:
*= Academy Award Nomination
§= Academy Award Win
^= Golden Globe Nomination
^^= Golden Globe Win
#= Grammy Award Nomination
##= Grammy Award Win
Daddy-O (1958)
Gidget (1959)
I Passed for White (1960)
Because They’re Young (1960)
The Secret Ways (1961)
Bachelor Flat (1962)
Diamond Head (1963)
Gidget Goes to Rome (1963)
The Killers (1964)
None But the Brave (1965)
John Goldfarb, Please Come Home (1965)
The Rare Breed (1966)
How to Steal a Million (1966)
The Plainsman (1966)
Not Without My Wife, You Don’t (1966)
Penelope (1966)
Valley of the Dolls (1967)*
A Guide for the Married Man (1967)
Fitzwilly (1967)
Sergeant Ryker (1968)
Daddy’s Gone A-hunting (1969)
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)*
The Reivers (1969)*
Story of a Woman (1970)
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)§
The Cowboys (1972)
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)*^
Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972)
Images (1972)*
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Tom Sawyer (1973)*^
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973)
The Paper Chase (1973)
Cinderella Liberty (1973)**
Conrack (1974)
The Sugarland Express (1974)
Earthquake (1974)^
The Towering Inferno (1974)*
The Eiger Sanction (1975)
Jaws (1975)§^^##- 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.- 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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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.- Music Department
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The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".- 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.- 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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Unlike many musicians who started to learn music while still in their childhood, Maurice Jarre was already late in his teens when he discovered music and decided to make a career in that field. Against his father's will, he enrolled at Conservatoire de Paris where he studied percussions, composition and harmonies. He also met and studied under Joseph Martenot, inventor of the Martenot Waves, an electronic keyboard that prefigured the modern synthesizer.
After leaving the Conservatoire, Jarre played percussion and Martenot Waves for a while at Jean-Louis Barrault's theater. In 1950, another actor-director, Jean Vilar , asked Jarre to score his production of Kleist's 'The Princess of Homburg', the first score Jarre wrote. Shortly after, Vilar created the 'Théâtre National Populaire' and hired Jarre as permanent composer, an association that lasted 12 years.
In 1951, filmmaker Georges Franju asked him to write the music of his 23 minutes documentary Hôtel des Invalides (1952), Jarre's first composition for the movie screen. His first full-length feature, again directed by Georges Franju, was Head Against the Wall (1959) followed by Franju's best known film, Eyes Without a Face (1960).
Jarre's career took a spectacular turn in 1961 when producer Sam Spiegel asked him to work on David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Initially, three composers were supposed to write the score, but for various reasons, Jarre ended up writing all the music himself and won his first Oscar. His second collaboration with David Lean on Doctor Zhivago (1965) earned him another Oscar and obtained a level of success rarely achieved by a film score. He collaborated with Lean again on Ryan's Daughter (1970) and A Passage to India (1984) for which he received a third Academy Award. He was set to score Lean's next movie, 'Nostromo', but the director became ill and died before the film could ever get made.
He also worked for directors as diverse as William Wyler (The Collector (1965)); John Huston (three films); Franco Zeffirelli (Jesus of Nazareth (1977)); Volker Schlöndorff (The Tin Drum (1979) [The Tin Drum] and Circle of Deceit (1981) [Circle of Deceit]); Peter Weir (four films); Michael Apted (Gorillas in the Mist (1988)) and Alfonso Arau (A Walk in the Clouds (1995)).
Mainly perceived as a symphonist and known for his prominent use of percussions, Jarre often integrated ethnic instruments in his orchestrations like cithara on 'Lawrence of Arabia' or fujara (an old Slovak flute) on 'The Tin Drum'. During the eighties, he incorporated synthetic sounds in his music, writing his first entirely electronic score for The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). His son Jean-Michel Jarre is a well-known popular musician.- Music Department
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Elmer Bernstein was educated at the Walden School and New York University. He served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II, writing scores for the service radio unit. He also wrote and arranged musical numbers for Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band. A prolific and respected film music composer, he was a protégé of Aaron Copland, who studied music with Roger Sessions and Stefan Wolpe. Bernstein worked in various artistic endeavors, including painting and the theatre and also performed as an actor and dancer. Among his early composition work were scores for United Nations radio programs and television and industrial documentaries. His original scores for films range over an enormous variety of styles, with his groundbreaking jazz score for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), light musical comedies such as his Oscar-winning Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) score, and perhaps his most familiar score, for the western The Magnificent Seven (1960). Between 1963 and 1969, Bernstein served as vice president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
A few years before before his death, he acquired something of a cult status among fans of English football when his familiar main theme for The Great Escape (1963) was adopted by them and hummed and played, lustily, during matches.- 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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Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.
From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.
In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.
Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.
He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.- Music Artist
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Randy Newman is an American film composer and singer who is well-known for composing The Princess and the Frog, Meet the Parents and various Pixar films including the Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and Cars franchises as well as A Bug's Life. He wrote iconic songs such as "Short People", "You've Got A Friend in Me" and "We Belong Together". He won Best Original Song for Toy Story 3.- 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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In his 25 year career, David Newman has scored over 100 films, ranging from War of the Roses, Matilda, Bowfinger and Heathers, to the more recent The Spirit, Serenity, and Alvin and the Chipmonks: The Squeakuel. Newman's music has brought to life the critically acclaimed dramas Brokedown Palace and Hoffa; top-grossing comedies Norbit, Scooby-Doo, Galaxy Quest, The Nutty Professor, The Flinstones, Throw Mama From the Train; and award-winning animated films Ice Age, The Brave Little Toaster and Anastasia. The recipient of top honors from the music and motion picture industries, he holds an Academy Award nomination for his score to the animated feature, Anastasia, and was the first composer to have his piece, 1001 Nights, performed in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's FILMHARMONIC Series, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Newman is also a highly sought-after conductor and appears with leading orchestras throughout the world, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin Score Orchestra, National Orchestra of Belgium, New Japan Philharmonic, Utah Symphony, and the American Symphony. He has led subscription week with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall and regularly conducts the Hollywood Bowl.
Also an active composer for the concert hall, his works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Indianapolis Symphony, Long Beach Symphony, and at the Ravinia Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and Chicago's Grant Park Music Festival.
Newman has spent considerable time unearthing and restoring film music classics for the concert hall, and headed the Sundance Institute's music preservation program in the late 1980s. During his tenure at Sundance he wrote an original score and conducted the Utah Symphony for the classic silent motion picture, Sunrise, which opened the Sundance Film Festival in 1989. As a tribute to his work in film music preservation, he was elected President of the Film Music Society in 2007, a nonprofit organization formed by entertainment industry professionals to preserve and restore motion picture and television music. Passionate about nurturing the next generation of musicians, Newman services as President of the Board of the American Youth Symphony, a forty-three year-old pre-professional orchestra based in Los Angeles, where he launched the three-year "Jerry Goldsmith Project." In 2007 he wrote the children't melodrama Yoko and the Tooth Fairy for Crossroads School in Santa Monica, CA, and in 2010 he served on the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival in the Film Scoring Program. When his schedule permits, he visit Los Angeles area high schools to speak about film scoring and mentor young composers.
The son of nine-time Oscar-winning composer, Alfred Newman, David Newman was born in Los Angeles in 1954. He trained in violin and piano from an early age and earned degrees in orchestral conducting and violin from the University of Southern California.- Music Department
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Flamboyant, latterly white-maned, U.S. conductor known best for his popularization of classical music. (He is also known for teaching 'Mickey Mouse' a few things about music in Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), in which Stokowski was featured with the Philadelphia Orchestra). He was a pioneer in the use of hi-fi sound and bringing great music to the screen.- Music Department
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John Barry was born in York, England in 1933, and was the youngest of three children. His father, Jack, owned several local cinemas and by the age of fourteen, Barry was capable of running the projection box on his own - in particular, The Rialto in York. As he was brought up in a cinematic environment, he soon began to assimilate the music which accompanied the films he saw nightly to a point when, even before he'd left St. Peters school, he had decided to become a film music composer. Helped by lessons provided locally on piano and trumpet, followed by the more exacting theory taught by tutors as diverse as Dr Francis Jackson of York Minster and William Russo, formerly arranger to Stan Kenton and His Orchestra, he soon became equipped to embark upon his chosen career, but had no knowledge of how one actually got a start in the business. A three year sojourn in the army as a bandsman combined with his evening stints with local jazz bands gave him the idea to ease this passage by forming a small band of his own. This was how The John Barry Seven came into existence, and Barry successfully launched them during 1957 via a succession of tours and TV appearances. A recording contract with EMI soon followed, and although initial releases made by them failed to chart, Barry's undoubted talent showed enough promise to influence the studio management at Abbey Road in allowing him to make his debut as an arranger and conductor for other artists on the EMI roster.
A chance meeting with a young singer named Adam Faith, whilst both were appearing on astage show version of the innovative BBC TV programme, Six-Five Special (1957), led Barry to recommend Faith for a later BBC TV series, Drumbeat (1959), which was broadcast in 1959. Faith had made two or three commercially unsuccessful records before singer/songwriter Johnny Worth, also appearing on Drumbeat, offered him a song he'd just finished entitled What Do You Want? With the assistance of the JB7 pianist, Les Reed, Barry contrived an arrangement considered suited to Faith's soft vocal delivery, and within weeks, the record was number one. Barry (and Faith) then went from strength to strength; Faith achieving a swift succession of chart hits, with Barry joining him soon afterwards when the Seven, riding high on the wave of the early sixties instrumental boom, scored with Hit & Miss, Walk Don't Run and Black Stockings.
Faith had long harboured ambitions to act even before his first hit record and was offered a part in the up and coming British movie, Wild for Kicks (1960), at that time. As Barry was by then arranging not only his recordings but also his live Drumbeat material, it came as no surprise when the film company asked him to write the score to accompany Faith's big screen debut. It should be emphasised that the film was hardly a cinematic masterpiece. However, it did give Faith a chance to demonstrate his acting potential, and Barry the chance to show just how quickly he'd mastered the technique of film music writing. Although the film and soundtrack album were both commercial successes, further film score offers failed to flood in. On those that did, such as Never Let Go (1960) and The Amorous Mr. Prawn (1962), Barry proved highly inventive, diverse and adaptable and, as a result, built up a reputation as an emerging talent. It was with this in mind that Noel Rogers, of United Artists Music, approached him in the summer of '62, with a view to involving him in the music for the forthcoming James Bond film, Dr. No (1962).
He was also assisted onto the cinematic ladder as a result of a burgeoning relationship with actor/writer turned director Bryan Forbes, who asked him to write a couple of jazz numbers for use in a club scene in Forbes' then latest film, The L-Shaped Room (1962). From this very modest beginning, the couple went on to collaborate on five subsequent films, including the highly acclaimed Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), King Rat (1965) and The Whisperers (1967). Other highlights from the sixties included five more Bond films, Zulu (1964), Born Free (1966) (a double Oscar), The Lion in Winter (1968) (another Oscar) and Midnight Cowboy (1969).
In the seventies he scored the cult film Walkabout (1971), The Last Valley (1971), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) (Oscar nomination), wrote the theme for The Persuaders! (1971), a musical version of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and the hit musical Billy. Then, in 1974, he made the decision to leave his Thameside penthouse apartment for the peace of a remote villa he was having built in Majorca. He had been living there for about a year, during which time he turned down all film scoring opportunities, until he received an invitation to write the score for the American TV movie, Eleanor and Franklin (1976). In order to accomplish the task, he booked into the Beverly Hills Hotel for six weeks in October 1975. However, during this period, he was also offered Robin and Marian (1976) and King Kong (1976), which caused his stay to be extended. He was eventually to live and work in the hotel for almost a year, as more assignments were offered and accepted. His stay on America's West Coast eventually lasted almost five years, during which time he met and married his wife, Laurie, who lived with him at his Beverly Hills residence. They moved to Oyster Bay, New York and have since split their time between there and a house in Cadogan Square, London.
After adopting a seemingly lower profile towards the end of the seventies, largely due to the relatively obscure nature of the commissions he accepted, the eighties saw John Barry re-emerge once more into the cinematic limelight. This was achieved, not only by continuing to experiment and diversify, but also by mixing larger budget commissions of the calibre of Body Heat (1981), Jagged Edge (1985), Out of Africa (1985) (another Oscar) and The Cotton Club (1984) with smaller ones such as the TV movies, Touched by Love (1980) and Svengali (1983). Other successes included: Somewhere in Time (1980), Frances (1982), three more Bond films, and Peggy Sue Got Married (1986).
After serious illness in the late eighties, Barry returned with yet another Oscar success with Dances with Wolves (1990) and was also nominated for Chaplin (1992). Since then he scored the controversial Indecent Proposal (1993), My Life (1993), Deception (1992), Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and has made compilation albums for Sony (Moviola and Moviola II) and non-soundtrack albums for Decca ('The Beyondness Of Things' & 'Eternal Echoes').
In the late nineties he made a staggeringly successful return to the concert arena, playing to sell-out audiences at the Royal Albert Hall. Since then he has appeared as a guest conductor at a RAH concert celebrating the life and career of Elizabeth Taylor and made brief appearances at a couple of London concerts dedicated to his music. In 2004 he re-united with Don Black to write his fifth stage musical, Brighton Rock, which enjoyed a limited run at The Almeida Theatre in London.
He continued to appear at concerts of his own music, often making brief appearances at the podium. In November 2007, Christine Albanel, the French Minister for Culture, appointed him Commander in the National Order of Arts and Letters. The award was made at the eighth International Festival Music and Cinema, in Auxerre, France, when, in his honour, a concert of his music also took place.
In August 2008 he was working on a new album, provisionally entitled Seasons, which he has described as "a soundtrack of his life." A new biography, "John Barry: The Man with The Midas Touch", by Geoff Leonard, Pete Walker, and Gareth Bramley, was published in November 2008.
He died following a heart-attack on 30th January 2011, at his home in Oyster Bay, New York.- Composer
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Harry Gregson-Williams is one of Hollywood's most sought-after and prolific composers whose long list of film and television credits underscore the diverse range of his talents. He most recently wrote the music for "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" both directed by Ridley Scott. In addition, he wrote the music for Disney's live action feature film "Mulan" which was directed by Niki Caro with whom he worked previously having scored her film "The Zookeeper's Wife." Gregson-Williams also co-wrote the original song "Loyal Brave True" for "Mulan" performed by Christina Aguilera. He and his brother, composer Rupert Gregson-Williams, wrote the original score for both seasons 1 & 2 of the HBO drama series "The Gilded Age". He also co-wrote the original score for the Netflix documentary "Return to Space" with his friend Mychael Danna, directed by Oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin for which he received an Emmy nomination.
Upcoming 2023 releases include "Meg 2: The Trench" starring Jason and directed by Ben Wheatley and Aardman's animated feature "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" directed by Sam Fell and the action thriller "Retribution" directed by Nimród Antal and starring Liam Neeson. Gregson-Williams was the composer on all four installments of the animated blockbuster "Shrek" franchise, garnering a BAFTA Award nomination for the score for the Oscar-winning "Shrek." He received Golden Globe and Grammy Award nominations for his score for Andrew Adamson's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." He has collaborated multiple times with a number of directors including Ben Affleck on "Live by Night," "The Town" and "Gone Baby Gone", Joel Schumacher on "Twelve," "The Number 23," "Veronica Guerin" and "Phone Booth", Tony Scott on "Unstoppable," "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," "Déjà Vu," "Domino," "Man on Fire," "Spy Game" and "Enemy of the State", Ridley Scott on "The Martian," "Prometheus," "Exodus: Gods and Kings," "Kingdom of Heaven," "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci", Bille August on "Return to Sender" and "Smilla's Sense of Snow", Andrew Adamson on the "Shrek" series, "Mr. Pip" and the first two "Narnia" movies, and Antoine Fuqua on "The Replacement Killers," "The Equalizer," The Equalizer 2" and "Infinite". Some of his more recent film projects include Disney Nature's feature film "Polar Bear" which streamed exclusively on Disney+ in 2022, "The Ambush" directed by Pierre Morel, "Life in a Day 2020" directed Kevin Macdonald, "The Meg" directed by Jon Turteltaub, Aardman's "Early Man" directed by Nick Park for which he received an Annie Award nomination and Disney Nature's "Penguins." His television credits include "Whiskey Cavalier," the miniseries "Catch-22" co-composed with his brother Rupert Gregson-Williams and additionally he wrote the main title theme for "Electric Dreams" and earned an Emmy nomination for the episode entitled "The Commuter." Over the past two decades he has scored three of the five games in the highly successful "Metal Gear Solid" franchise for Konami as well as "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" for Activision, which became the top-selling video game of 2014 and earned him various music gaming awards. Throughout his illustrious and successful career, Gregson-Williams has also collaborated with a diverse array of recording artists such as Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Tricky, Peter Murphy, Flea, Hybrid, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Trevor Horn, Trevor Rabin, Lebo M., Perry Farrell and Tony Visconti.
Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams earned a music scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, at the age of 7 and later gained a coveted spot at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama, from which he recently received an honorary fellowship. He started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers, and then went on to compose his first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and friendship with composer Hans Zimmer led to Gregson-Williams providing music for such films as "The Rock," "Armageddon" and "The Prince of Egypt" and helped launch his career in Hollywood.
In 2018, Gregson-Williams received the BMI Icon Award, in recognition of his unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers, as well as the Society of Composers & Lyricists' prestigious Ambassador Award.- 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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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.- Music Department
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Alan Menken is an American composer, songwriter, music conductor, director and record producer.
Menken is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores and songs for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1987), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), among others.
He is also known for his work in musical theatre for Broadway and elsewhere. Some of these are based on his Disney films, but other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994) and Sister Act (2009).
Menken has collaborated with such lyricists as Lynn Ahrens, Howard Ashman, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins, Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, who has 9 Oscars. He has also won 11 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, Emmy Award, 7 Golden Globe Awards and many other honors.- Composer
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Academy Award-winning composer and songwriter ("Whistle While You Work", "Some Day My Prince Will Come"), and pianist, educated at the University of California. He was a pianist in film theatres, and then came to Hollywood under contract to Walt Disney. Joining ASCAP in 1938, his chief musical collaborators included Ann Ronell and Larry Morey. His other popular-song compositions include "I Bring You a Song", "Love Is a Song", "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", "Spring is in the Air", "Ain't Nature Grand?", "The Golden Youth", "Slow but Sure", "With a Smile and a Song", "I'm Wishing", "Heigh-Ho", "Happy as a Lark", "The Sunny Side of Things", "One Song", and "Baby Mine".- Composer
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Stephen Warbeck began studying piano and composing at the age of four. His parents were keen amateur musicians who encouraged Stephen to pursue his musical talents. By his mid-teens, Stephen developed an affinity for rock 'n' roll as well as for theatre. He studied Drama and French at Bristol University, and began his career at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, as a musician and actor. After eight years of working as a composer and performer for the stage, Stephen began writing music for film and television. Since the early 1980s, Stephen has built up a considerable filmography. As well as writing music for more than forty television projects, (for which he has received five BAFTA nominations, including one for the highly successful series Prime Suspect), he has scored many feature films including The Other Man (2008), Proof (2005), Two Brothers (2004), Mrs. Brown (1997), Mystery Men (1999), Quills (2000), Billy Elliot (2000), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), Birthday Girl (2002), and Shakespeare in Love (1998), for which he won an Academy Award. Some of Stephen's notable stage productions include the National Theatre's An Inspector Calls, John Madden's production of Proof , Sam Mendes' production of To The Green Fields Beyond, both at the Donmar, and The White Devil for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He has written for several shows at the Almeida, including The Triumph Of Love, Parlour Song and When The Rain Stops Falling. Stephen most recently collaborated with Ian Rickson on Jerusalem at the Royal Court. In addition to composing for film and television, Stephen has written music for numerous radio plays, and is a founder member of the anarchic pub band The hKippers, for whom he composes and performs. He has his own ensemble and another small band called The Metropolitan Water Board. Stephen has written several concert pieces, "Peter Pan" is his first ballet score.- 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).- Music Department
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Heitor Teixeira Pereira was born in Brazil and has worked for Brazilian jazz musicians such as Ivan Lins and Lani Hall. In July 1988 he joined Simply Red as a guitarist and stayed with the band until 1996. During that time he shortened his name to Heitor TP. In 1994 he released a solo album called "Heitor" with the help of some of the other Simply Red musicians. He now lives in California, USA with his wife and two children and is currently working on film music together with Hans Zimmer as well as his solo career.- 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.- Music Department
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Randy Edelman was born on 10 June 1947 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Last of the Mohicans (1992), xXx (2002) and Anaconda (1997). He has been married to Jackie DeShannon since 3 June 1976. They have one child.- 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.- 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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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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It's anything but typical for the realms of film or music... Tyler Bates regularly transitions from scoring some of the world's biggest film and television franchises, such as Guardians of the Galaxy and John Wick, to rocking massive audiences with Marilyn Manson and back to the studio again writing and producing. The musical voice of this highly sought-after composer, guitarist, songwriter, and record producer can be heard in every corner of pop culture-from video games to the Disney California Adventure attraction, Guardians of the Galaxy - Mission Breakout! In 2004, he made waves by creating the menacing audio backdrop for the popular Zack Snyder Dawn of the Dead reboot followed by his soundtrack for the filmmaker's 300, which remains one of the 21st century's biggest-selling score albums. His oeuvre expanded to include Watchmen and Sucker Punch both helmed by Snyder, several collaborations with Rob Zombie-including The Devil's Rejects, Halloween, and Halloween II-and Killer Joe directed by Academy Award® winner William Friedkin. Beyond composing for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 & Vol2., he produced a fan favorite "disco version" of his "Guardians of the Galaxy" main theme, titled "Guardians Inferno," co-written with director and long-time collaborator, James Gunn [feat. David Hasselhoff] and performed the second installment's score at the 2017 MOSMA Festival in Spain. John Wick: Chapter 2 represents the nexus of his work as a composer, performer, and songwriter. He penned the closing credits tune "A Job To Do" alongside legendary Alice In Chains guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and performed on-screen during the climactic "Rock Opera" sequence. Elsewhere, his sonic presence reverberates throughout Showtime's Californication, Audience Network's Kingdom, WGN America's Salem, and more as well as video games such as Killzone: Shadow Fall, God of War: Ascension, Army of Two 40th Day, and China's massive Crossfire. He also wrote the theme for his favorite NFL team the Tennessee Titans, and performed the "Star-Spangled Banner" solo in the rain during a 2015 game. Bates co-wrote and produced Manson's 2015 epic, The Pale Emperor. A runaway success, it crashed the Top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 at #6 and earned widespread critical acclaim with Rolling Stone hailing it as the "#1 Metal Album of 2015." As the band's lead guitarist, he dedicated over a year to touring in support of the album on the headline Hell Not Hallelujah Tour, an arena run with Slipknot, and various festivals worldwide. In 2017, he once again joined forces in the studio with Manson on the follow-up Heaven Upside Down and returns to the road for a string of high-profile touring. In 2017, he scored the blockbuster Atomic Blonde, starring Academy Award® winner Charlize Theron in addition to producing Health's cover of "Blue Monday" and re-invigorating Ministry's "Stigmata" with Manson, for two of the film's key sequences. Bates' voice also permeates NETFLIX's upcoming The Punisher. With several exciting projects slated for 2018 including Deadpool 2, The Spy Who Dumped Me & the return of The Punisher for season 2. Tyler Bates will undoubtedly continue to redefine what a composer is.- Composer
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Christopher Joseph Lennertz is an American music composer from Massachusetts. He had written music for various films, video games and shows including Lost in Space, Sausage Party, Medal of Honor, Hop, Alvin and The Chipmunks, Agent Carter, Supernatural, Revolution, Think Like A Man, The Boys, UglyDolls, Tom & Jerry, Ride Along and Horrible Bosses.- 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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James L. Venable was born on 19 May 1967 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a composer, known for Scary Movie 3 (2003), Samurai Jack (2001) and Jersey Girl (2004).- Composer
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John Frizzell has composed music for Film and Television across a wide range of genres in his career. Recently his dark mysterious score for two seasons of Kevin Williamson's CBS All Access series Tell Me A Story, is a sharp contrast to his comedic score for FOX television's Duncanville starring Amy Poehler, and his co-composed score to Mike Judge Presents: Tales From the Tour Bus on which he collaborated with the legendary George Clinton. As a Producer and Composer, he recently completed work on Alex Winter's documentary Zappa which explores the complex life and music of Frank Zappa.
Over the years, he has created scores as varied as the dark and violent Alien Resurrection, the quirky off-beat music for the cult classics Office Space and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, the epic sound of Gods and Generals, and the dark and disturbing score for the FOX series The Following. In addition, he has composed the gentle melodies of the intimate period drama The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio and created the plaintive jazz score behind James Franco's Golden Globe winning performance in James Dean. In recent years Frizzell, a mandolin and guitar player, has worked with BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) to promote and support Bluegrass Music on the west coast.
Born in New York City, Frizzell began his music career early, singing in the chorus of the Paris Opera Company and the Metropolitan Opera Company. As a teenager he played guitar in rock bands, and later became focused on jazz, a passion that led him to pursue a formal musical education at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music as well as the Manhattan School of Music. It was during his college years that Frizzell met his mentor, guitar legend Joe Pass, and through Pass, Frizzell discovered his calling as a composer.
After college Frizzell worked for acclaimed producer/vibraphonist Michael Mainieri, who owned the first digital music workstation, a Synclavier. Frizzell became a master synthesist, a skill that led him to work with Academy Award winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, for whom Frizzell provided orchestrations to Oliver Stone's landmark mini-series Wild Palms. When he relocated to Los Angeles, Frizzell was introduced to James Newton Howard, who mentored him and composed the themes for Frizzell's first two feature films, The Rich Man's Wife and Dante's Peak.
Known to experiment with evolving music technology in his Film/TV scores, Frizzell has utilized experimental devices and software to create a fluid, collaborative and creative process, while still incorporating more traditional orchestral writing. Whether he is recording dry ice being rubbed on the inside of a piano or capturing the nuances of great violinists like Mark O'Conner or Sara Watkins, Frizzell strives to create a score intimately tied to picture and enhance the story.
A proponent for film music and film music issues, Frizzell has served on the Executive Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, lectured to graduate students at USC Thornton School of Music and the Sundance Film Music Lab. He has also served as the Honorary President of the International Film Music Conference in Ubeda, Spain.- 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.- Composer
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Stephen Trask is known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Little Fockers (2010) and The Nice Guys (2016).- 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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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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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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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).- Music Department
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Known for his wide-ranging talents, Mark Mancina's film scores traverse almost every genre: drama, action, comedy, suspense, and period epic. His dark, edgy music for the Oscar-winning Training Day (2001), is a benchmark score that expanded the boundaries of scoring street-wise drama, and is widely used as a temp track, while his breakout score for Speed (1994), another innovative work, influenced the sound of subsequent action movies. Mancina's orchestral originality on Return to Paradise (1998), reflecting the haunting gloom of its subject, and his score for the period epic Moll Flanders (1996), which appeared on Billboard's Classical Crossover Chart, further point to Mancina's considerable compositional range. Other films include Twister (1996), Bad Boys (1995), Con Air (1997), Domestic Disturbance (2001), Tarzan (1999), Brother Bear (2003), The Haunted Mansion (2003), and Sony's 3-D animated short, Early Bloomer (2003).
But Mancina's achievements as composer for some of the top-grossing films of recent years comprise only one aspect of his diverse career. Composer, producer, songwriter and three-time Grammy winner, he has also added Broadway to his list of accomplishments by writing, producing and arranging the score for Disney's Tony-winning stage production of The Lion King. The foundation for this expansion into theatre was set in the early 1990s when Oscar winning composer Hans Zimmer, recognizing Mancina's varied gifts, asked him to arrange and produce three Elton John songs for what would become the enormously successful original film version of The Lion King. Mancina's efforts on "Can You Feel the Love Tonight," "I Just Can't Wait To Be King," and "Hakuna Matata" were rewarded with a multi-platinum record that has sold over ten million copies worldwide, and earned him a Grammy for Best Musical Album for Children and two American Music Awards for Best Pop Album. On the heels of the success of The Lion King (1994), Mancina went on to write and produce additional songs for a Lion King follow-up album entitled Rhythm of the Pridelands featuring South African artist 'Lebo M'. One of Mancina's original songs, "He Lives In You," became a thematic centerpiece for The Lion King theatrical production which opened on Broadway in 1997, and has since been performed to great acclaim in numerous cities around the world. In his role as producer of music for the stage, Mancina collaborated with 'Lebo M', and director Julie Taymor to create the distinctive musical atmosphere of the Tony award winning show. Mancina received a Tony nomination, was awarded Britain's Ivor Novello Award for the London production, and earned his second Grammy for producing the Original Broadway Cast Album.
Born in Santa Monica, Mancina spent his childhood in Culver City, then Huntington Beach, California. Commencing his musical training at a very early age, he has performed all his life as a singer, guitarist and pianist. His film and television scores frequently feature Mancina's own performances on piano, guitar, bass, percussion, and drums, highlighting unique sounds harvested from a personal collection of traditional, exotic, and custom instruments from all over the world.
After studying composition and performance as a classical guitar major at Cal State Fullerton, he went on to perform on Trevor Rabin's solo tour, and later to write and produce for Yes. He also worked on several records with producer Trevor Horn, including the song "Crazy," performed by Grammy-winning artist Seal. In 1990, Mancina moved from Los Angeles to London for a year to work with Emerson, Lake and Palmer, producing and composing their "Black Moon" album for PolyGram. More recently, he has composed and arranged songs with Kenny Loggins. His extensive partnership with Phil Collins includes Disney's animated hit Tarzan (1999), for which Mancina composed the score and co-produced several Collins songs. The ballad "You'll Be In My Heart," which Mancina arranged and co-produced, won the Oscar for Best Song. They renewed their collaborative efforts for the recent Brother Bear for which Mancina co-produced songs and co-composed the dramatic score. In addition to his work in film, theatre and the recording industry, Mancina also writes score and themes for many television projects, which have included "The Outer Limits," "Poltergeist," "Millennium," "Lifepod," and HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon." Among his countless television commercial clients are Nike, Mountain Dew, Jaguar, Skittles, McDonald's, Verizon, Computer Associates, Goodyear, The U.S. Army, American Express and AT&T. Working from his studio in Pasadena, and his home studio, a mountaintop farmhouse/barn, he continues to expand his repertoire, and is currently developing songs for musicals and films.- 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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John Swihart is known for Napoleon Dynamite (2004), How I Met Your Mother (2005) and Trial & Error (2017).- 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.- Writer
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Renowned composer ("West Side Story", "Candide", "On The Town"), conductor, arranger, pianist, educator, author, TV/radio host, educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University (BA) with Walter Piston. Edward Burlingame Hill and A. Tillman Merritt. He studied piano with Helen Coates, Heinrich Gebhard and Isabelle Vengerova, at the Curtis Institute with Fritz Reiner, and at the Berkshire Music Center with Serge Koussevitzky (and became an assistant to Koussevitzky). He was assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1943-1944, and conductor of the New York Symphony, 1945-1948.
He was music advisor to the Israel Philharmonic from 1948-1949, and a member of the faculty at the Berkshire Music Center from 1948 (though he did take leaves of absence), and head of the conducting department there in 1951. He was Professor of Music at Brandeis University, 1951-1956; and co-conductor of the New York Philharmonic, 1957-1958, and music director there after 1958. He won an Emmy award for his televised Young People's Concerts. He was guest conductor of symphony orchestras in the USA and Europe, and conducted the Israel Philharmonic seven times between 1947 and 1957. He toured the US with Koussevitzky in 1951, and was the first American to conduct at the La Scala Opera House in Milan, in 1953. He was awarded the Sonning Prize in Denmark, and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
He joined ASCAP in 1944, and his chief musical collaborators included Betty Comden, Adolph Green, John Latouche, and Stephen Sondheim. His song compositions include "New York, New York", "Lonely Town", "Some Other Time", "I Can Cook, Too", "I Get Carried Away", "Lucky to Be Me", "Ohio", "A Quiet Girl", "It's Love", "A Little Bit in Love", "Wrong Note Rag", "Glitter and Be Gay", "El Dorado", "The Best of All Possible Worlds", "Maria", "Tonight", "Something's Coming", "I Feel Pretty", "Cool", "America", and "Gee, Officer Krupke".- 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.- Composer
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George S. Clinton began his professional musical career as a songwriter, arranger, and session musician in Nashville, while earning degrees in music and drama at Middle Tennessee State University. The summer after graduation, George attended the Atlanta Pop Festival and, upon hearing Joe Cocker perform "With a Little Help from My Friends", left his native Chattanooga, bound for Los Angeles and ready to rock and roll.
Clinton became a staff writer for Warner Brothers Music, with songs recorded by such artists as Michael Jackson, Joe Cocker, and Three Dog Night; continued arranging and session work; and, as a recording artist, did albums for MCA, Elektra, ABC, and Arista. The critically acclaimed George Clinton Band attracted the attention of a movie producer, giving George the opportunity to score his first film, Cheech and Chong's Still Smokin', and, later, Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers.
He developed his craft scoring "ninja" movies for Cannon Films, network and cable television movies and miniseries, writing for a wide range of genres and musical styles. The soulful, erotic jazz for Zalman King's Showtime anthology Red Shoe Diaries developed quite a following, and brought more public awareness.
His musical inventiveness and versatility in both orchestral and popular idioms have allowed him to contribute memorable scores to such diverse films as the hit comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery and its blockbuster sequels and the hit martial arts fantasy Mortal Kombat and its sequel. Other noteworthy projects include John Waters's A Dirty Shame; Disney's holiday hits The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3; and the sexy thriller Wild Things.
Most recent projects include the Emmy Award-winning Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, Hometown Glory, The Tooth Fairy, Extract, and Salvation Boulevard.
In addition, Clinton has written several concert works; three musicals; and is proud to serve as an advisor at the Sundance Composers Lab. Awards include a Grammy nomination, an Emmy nomination, and 9 BMI Film Music Awards, including their highest honor, the Richard Kirk Career Achievement Award.- Composer
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Composer, conductor, arranger and flautist, educated at the Manhattan School of Music (BA, MA) and Juilliard (on scholarship) (MM). He was first flautist for Radio City Music Hall from 1934 to 1936, the Detroit Symphony from 1936 to 1941, the NBC Toscanini Orchestra from 1942 to 1948 and staff arranger for Radio City Music Hall from 1948 to 1956, and the opera conductor for the Brooklyn Academy of Music from 1948 to 1955.
He was music director for the Broadway stage production of "Once Upon a Mattress" and the touring companies of "Kismet" and "La Plume de Ma Tante". He joined ASCAP in 1952.- Composer
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Erran Baron Cohen is known for The Dictator (2012), Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) and Borat (2006).- Composer
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Jeff Danna is an award-winning Canadian film composer. Born in Burlington, Ontario, to a musical family active in local theatre and church choir, Danna was a reluctant young piano student but found solace in an electric guitar left behind at his home by a friend. Unknowingly following in the path of three generations of Winnipeg mandolin players, progress came quickly. He began playing professionally at the age of 15 until a hand injury brought his performance career to a halt at 22. He has composed or co-composed scores for a wide range of films and television, including The Boondock Saints (1999), Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004), Silent Hill (2006), The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), The Good Dinosaur (2015), Storks (2016), The Breadwinner (2017), The Addams Family (2019), Onward (2020), Guillermo del Toro's Tales of Arcadia (2020), Nora Twomey's My Father's Dragon (2022), Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022), and Julia (2022). His older brother, composer Mychael Danna, is a frequent collaborator, and the two have received Emmy nominations for their work on Camelot (2011), Tyrant (2014-2016), and Alias Grace (2017). Additionally, Danna has been nominated for six Annie Awards, won five BMI Film & TV Awards, a Gemini Award, a Genie Award, three nominations and one Hollywood Music in Media Award, and 17 SOCAN Awards.- Music Department
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A great talent who started his career in Saturday Night Live (1975), where he worked with colleagues like Rob Reiner or Billy Crystal. He worked for some great stage values as Eric Clapton, Rosemary Clooney, Harry Connick Jr., Billy Crystal, Lauryn Hill, Jennifer Holliday, Nathan Lane, Jenifer Lewis, Darlene Love, Patti LuPone, Lonette McKee, Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short or Barbra Streisand. His first important score for cinema is Misery (1990) (directed by Rob Reiner) and then he scored movies for Ron Underwood (City Slickers (1991), Hearts and Souls (1995)), Billy Crystal (When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Mr. Saturday Night (1992), Forget Paris (1995)), Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993)), Sam Weisman (George of the Jungle (1997)) or Rob Reiner (Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), A Few Good Men (1992), North (1994), The American President (1995)).
Shaiman has raised a unique place in film music industry, with a great talent for musicals and songs, getting great reviews with his acclaimed scores for The American President (1995), Patch Adams (1998), Simon Birch (1998) or South Park (1997) (with wonderful songs). Shaiman won Grammy and Emmy Awards and the Tony Award for his musical, "Hairspray". He has been nominated for the Oscars and still works in musical stages and cinema scores. Shaiman has also appeared as an actor in some movies, many times paying the piano.- Actor
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John Murphy is a Canadian-Irish actor, director, writer, composer and producer of film/TV and theatre.
On TV, John has played series regulars on Sabrina and Away, and guest star roles on Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Arrow, Loudermilk and The Good Doctor. Two of his favorite projects were co-starring with Bradley Whitford on the limited series Valley of the Boom, and guest starring with Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick on the limited series Painkiller.
He co-wrote, co-produced and directed the mockumentary, Forgotten Masters, about the greatest guitars you've ever heard... but never heard of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVLcjyTC2O8. It has been nominated for 2 Leo Awards for Best Web Series and was nominated for Best Writing, Music, Actor, Editing, Direction and Web Series at multiple film festivals. It won the Best Actor (Ken Lawson) award at the Minnesota Web Fest.
John directed, co-wrote and co-produced two short films, The Legend of Wilson Spalding and The Box (Winner of Audience Choice Award - Reelfast 48 hour Film Fest). He directed and produced the music video for the song Still Fighting, by China Repair.
In the theatre, John has acted in over a hundred plays, directed twenty-eight and written three. He has worked extensively for Bard on the Beach, Vancouver's celebrated Shakespeare festival, where he played iconic roles like Benedick, Petruchio and Jaques, and adapted/directed Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing. He has been nominated for four Jessie Awards (Vancouver's Tonys) for acting. His directing and composing work has been nominated several times and he won the Jessie for Best New Play for True Story. His one-man play, The Heretic, which he starred in as well, toured across Canada and played at the Edinburgh Fringe ("A tour de Force" - the Scotsman).
John has also performed in 100's of live comedy shows - sketch, stand-up, improv. He co-founded the legendary Vancouver sketch comedy group, Gut-Wrench.
When he's not making movies or theatre John writes and plays music with his art rock band China Repair. https://www.chinarepairband.com- Composer
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Award-winning film + TV composer Aaron Zigman has composed over 60 film scores for many of Hollywood's major studios and directors. Zigman combines his classical background and training with a strong knowledge of contemporary music, which has enabled him to create some of Hollywood's most memorable scores, including The Notebook, Bridge to Terabithia, The Proposal, Flicka, For Colored Girls, Flash of Genius, Sex and the City, Sex and the City 2, and the animated film Escape from Planet Earth. He has also scored such films as The Company Men, Alpha Dog, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (co-score with Alexandre Desplat), My Sister's Keeper and The Shack. The recent film Wakefield, starring Bryan Cranston and Jennifer Garner, marks his second collaboration with Oscar-nominated writer and director Robin Swicord, having previously worked together on The Jane Austen Book Club.
He has also won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Song for the Showtime TV Movie Crown Heights. For Showtime TV, Zigman most recently scored the Suge Knight documentary American Dream/American Knightmare, directed by Antoine Fuqua. While attending UCLA, Zigman signed a four-year songwriting contract with publishing giant Almo Irving and began writing, producing, arranging and orchestrating for many major artists in the record industry. As one of only four songwriters on Irving's staff, Zigman penned songs for Carly Simon and the hit television show Fame, as well as co-wrote music with David Lasley, Jerry Knight, and Steve Cropper. Zigman also studied with his cousin, the renowned MGM composer George Bassman. After a brief apprenticeship, Zigman broke out as a studio musician, working with producers Don Was, Gary Katz, Steely Dan, and Stewart Levine. From this experience, he began making a name for himself as a producer/writer, and soon after wrote his first big hit, with the song "Crush On You," which was recorded by The Jets and topped the pop charts.
Working with legendary record producer Clive Davis, Zigman has produced and arranged music for such artists as Aretha Franklin ("Through the Storm" duet record) and Natalie Cole. He has also written, arranged and produced songs for many of the top vocalists, producers, and artists in the music industry, including John Legend (co-wrote), Quincy Jones, Trevor Horn, Seal, Ray Charles, Alison Sudol (co-wrote), Bryan Adams (co-wrote), Phil Collins, Dionne Warwick, Boz Scaggs, Tina Turner, Seal, Carly Simon, The Pointer Sisters, Huey Lewis, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LaBelle, Chicago, and Christina Aguilera. Transitioning to film music composition in the '90s, Zigman's work has been featured on such soundtracks as Mulan, What's Love Got To Do With It, The Birdcage, License to Kill, Caddyshack, Pocohantas.
In 2000, Zigman arranged a classical 35-minute symphonic tone poem entitled "Rabin," which was composed in memory of Yitzhak Rabin, the late prime minister of the State of Israel and was performed by the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony. Director Nick Cassavetes, who was in attendance the night of the performance, was so moved by what he heard, he asked Zigman to score his upcoming film, the critically acclaimed John Q. starring Denzel Washington. The success of John Q. was followed by The Notebook, a notable major box-office hit. Zigman's soundtrack for the film has sold a record number of albums since the film's debut in 2004. Since The Notebook, Zigman has firmly established himself as one of Hollywood's go-to composers in the film music industry.- Chris P. Bacon is known for Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator (2017) and Crackhead Barney & Friends (2020).
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Born in Oregon in 1914, George Bruns was the son of a sawmill worker. He took music lessons as a child, becoming proficient on the piano, tuba and trombone. He attended Oregon State Agricultural College, and in order to pay tuition he played in the ROTC band. Deciding on a musical career, he left college to be a full-time musician, and was soon playing with the likes of Jack Teagarden.
After World War II, he began playing with various swing and jazz bands, then formed his own group (among whom was a trumpet player named Doc Severinsen). In addition to having his own band, he was also musical director at several Portland (OR) radio stations. In 1948 he left Portland for Los Angeles, where he played for orchestras such as the Turk Murphy Band. In 1953 he was hired by UPA Studios as the composer for a cartoon called Little Boy with a Big Horn (1953). The award-winning short launched his career, and over the next few years he composed music for a dozen more pictures.
He was hired by Walt Disney Studios in 1953 to compose the score for Sleeping Beauty (1959). While working on that, he was asked to come up with a song to fill a 3.5-minute gap in a multi-part TV series the studio was shooting. He got together with lyricist Thomas W. Blackburn, and they came up with what would become a landmark song and series of the 1950s: "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" from Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (1955).
Bruns was then assigned by Disney to write songs for its upcoming childrens show, The Mickey Mouse Club (1955). He spent nearly 20 years at the studio, working on the scores of nearly 40 films and several TV series and specials. He received an Academy Award nomination for his scores for "Sleeping Beauty", Babes in Toyland (1961) and The Sword in the Stone (1963), and another nomination for the song "Love" from Robin Hood (1973).
He retired in 1976, moved back to Oregon, and died of a heart attack in Portland on May 23, 1983.- 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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Tom Howe is an award-winning composer from the UK who has scored over 100 Emmy and BAFTA-winning dramas and documentaries. Recent projects include films like Aardman's animated feature Early Man, directed by Nick Park, for which he was Annie nominated, and Annapurna/Sony Pictures' Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, starring Luke Evans and Rebecca Hall. In addition to his film & TV projects, Tom has also written several international Top 40 hits, as a songwriter. After establishing himself in the UK Tom moved to Hollywood, and has written music for several major motion pictures, such as Fox's "Exodus: Gods and Kings.", Warner Bros. "Wonder Woman" and "Legend Of Tarzan".
Tom has recently completed work on the animated feature "Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon" for Aardman as well as comedy/drama "Ted Lasso" for Apple/Warner Bros starring Jason Sudeikis.
Tom's abilities as a multi-instrumentalist, his fluency with large scale orchestral scores, combined with his talents in writing pop and rock music, electronic sound design, and his use of modern production techniques have given him an advantage few other composers can boast when scoring film, TV and other media.- Composer
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Johnny Klimek was born in 1962 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He is a composer and producer, known for Babylon Berlin (2017), Cloud Atlas (2012) and Deadwood: The Movie (2019).- 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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Nicholas Hooper was born in the UK. He is known for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (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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Kris Bowers is known for Green Book (2018), Haunted Mansion (2023) and The Color Purple (2023). He has been married to Briana Henry since 6 June 2020. They have one child.- Music Department
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Considered to be one of the greatest minds in music and television history, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Sarah Frances (Wells), a bank executive, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a carpenter.
Jones found his love for music while he was enrolled in grade school at Seattle's Garfield High School, this is also where he had met Ray Charles whom he later worked and became friends with. In 1951, Quincy Jones had won a scholarship to the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. Jones however dropped out when he got the opportunity to tour with Lionel Hampton's band as a trumpeter and conductor. Jones also worked for the European production of Harold Arlen's blues opera, Free and Easy in 1959. After Jones had worked on several projects overseas he returned to New York where he composed and arranged, and recorded for artists such as Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Dinah Washington, LeVern Baker, and Big Maybell. Jones was working with these artists while holding an executive position at Mercury Records, being one of the very few African Americans at the time to have such a position.
In 1963, Quincy Jones won his first Grammy award for his Count Basie arrangement of "I Can't Stop Loving You". In 1964, by the request of director Sidney Lumet, Jones composed the music for his movie, The Pawnbroker. This would be the first of many Jones composed for film scores. By the mid-1960's Quincy Jones became the conductor and arranger for Frank Sinatra's orchestra. Jones also conducted and arranged one of Sinatra's most memorable songs, Fly Me To The Moon. Jones appeared on a lot of film credits for his music such as The Slender Thread, Walk, Don't Run, In Cold Blood, In The Heat Of The Night, A Dandy In Aspic, Mackenna's Gold, and The Italian Job. In 1972 Quincy Jones was the theme song composer for the hit-sitcom, Sanford And Son.
Quincy Jones in 1978 worked on music for the Wiz, this is where he met icon, Michael Jackson. Jackson at the time was looking for a producer, Jones recommended some producers but in the end asked Jackson if he could do it, Jackson said yes. In 1982 as a result of this partnership, Jones had formed a tapestry with Jackson which was unbreakable it was called, Thriller. The Thriller album sold more than 100 million records world-wide. Jones continued working with Jackson with his Bad album in 1987. However after Jones recommended Jackson seek other producers to update his music. Jones referred Jackson to producer, Teddy Riley. This ended a partnership between two-greats, Jackson and Jones would never collaborate again.
In 1981 Jones had an album called, The Dude. In 1985 Jones scored the film adaptation of The Color Purple. Jones also was a philanthropist, in 1985 gathering multiple stars to participate in the song We Are The World to help raise money to help the victims of the Ethopian disaster.
In 1990 Jones composed a theme song for the new sitcom which was centered around Will Smith, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. Jones was also the executive producer of the show.
Quincy Jones will forever be remembered as someone who helped sculpt music in every form, he refined music and through the music he helped sculpt brought messages of peace, justice, love, funk, and hope.- Composer
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Joby Talbot began writing and performing in the early 90s, joining Neil Hannon in the UK pop phenomenon, The Divine Comedy. The successful partnership produced seven albums for The Divine Comedy, Ute Lemper's critical masterpiece, Punishing Kiss and a live collaboration with Michael Nyman, which was awarded the Edinburgh Festival's Critics Choice in 1997. Now highly in demand as a pop arranger, Talbot went on to work with artists such as Travis, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney and producer Nigel Godrich. In 2000, Joby's score to the prime time comedy The League of Gentlemen won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Title Music and a series of high profile commissions followed from BBC television. In the same year The British Film Institute asked Talbot to compose a new score for Hitchcock's silent classic The Lodger, and the film together with the new score is performed regularly across Europe and in the States. As a classical composer, Talbot has worked with many of the major European orchestras and has been commissioned by the prestigious BBC Proms Festival. In 2004, Classic FM appointed Joby Talbot as the radio station's first ever 'Composer in Residence' and Sony/BMG released the resulting album 'Once Around the Sun'. Future projects include a full length ballet, a feature film for Working Title and an album collaboration with The White Stripes.- 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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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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Jason Staehler Hill is an award-winning film score composer, platinum-selling recording artist, record producer, and mixer. Hill is known for many projects with acclaimed film director David Fincher such as the Emmy-winning series Mindhunter, for which Hill won a 2021 BMI Composer Award along with Voir, Gone Girl, and Fincher's only animated short film Bad Travelling which is a part of 2022's Emmy-winning series Love, Death, and Robots. Hill was also the original music composer on FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Netflix's 5-part mini-series The Confession Killer, Netflix's This Is A Robbery, and Showtime's Couples Therapy.
Mr. Hill is a multi-instrumentalist skilled at playing guitar, cello, piano, synthesizers, drums, and bass among many others. He is also known for his unusual approach to composing having invented many unique instruments used often within the tapestry of his films and series.
He is also the lead singer, guitarist, and producer for the band Louis XIV along with the band Vicky Cryer which contains members of Killers and Muse. Hill also releases music under his own name. He has produced records, or otherwise worked with, such artists as The Killers, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Jet, Sky Ferreira, New York Dolls, Brandon Flowers, Ariel Pink, Craig Nicholls (The Vines), The Virgins, Macy Gray, Nick Littlemore and Luke Steele (Empire of the Sun), Idkhtfm (I Don't Know How They Found Me), and Neon Trees, among many others. Hill was also a part of the seminal alt-country band Convoy in his early years.
Jason Hill is working on a solo record and two 2023 Apple TV series, City on Fire and Extrapolations.
In 2015, Hill bought the building now called Department of Recording and Power and re-imagined one of the world's premier recording facilities. Located right on the edge of Burbank and Glendale, the studios have given rise to some of the most celebrated music of the past fifty years, and have produced Grammy-winning albums, award-winning film scores, and some of the most astonishing music ever created. This iconic complex originally built as a studio in the mid-1970's was home to many massive hits from The Beach Boys, James Brown, Barbra Streisand, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, Phil Spector, Joe Cocker, and many others.
In 2005, Hill was named one of Guitar Player magazine's top 10 guitar players of the year. That same year David Bowie did an interview in multiple Conde Naste publications including Vanity Fair where he cited Jason and his band Louis XIV as his favorite new band. The following year at the request of Mr. Bowie, Jason and Louis XIV played with him at his last concert before his death for an AIDS benefit in New York City.- Composer
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Jerskin Fendrix (real name Joscelin Dent-Pooley) is an English composer and musician. The composer of the score for the 2023 film Poor Things, It was the first film score Fendrix composed. Among other awards, the score was nominated for Best Original Score at the 96th Academy Awards.
Fendrix was raised near Market Drayton in the West Midlands. Growing up, he listened to a wide variety of music and learned to play violin and piano. He attended Adams' Grammar School in Newport and graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in classical music. his debut solo album, Winterreise, was released in 2020.- Music Artist
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Sara Bareilles was born on 7 December 1979 in Eureka, California, USA. She is a music artist and actress, known for Little Voice (2020), Battle of the Sexes (2017) and She's Out of My League (2010).- 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.- Music Department
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Anthony Willis is known for M3GAN (2022), Promising Young Woman (2020) and How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming (2019).- Composer
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Coming from a musical background, Martin read drama at Manchester University. Fortunately for the acting profession, he decided to concentrate his energies on writing music. Since scoring his first TV drama Eureka Street in 2002, he has gone on to write music for many of the most interesting series of recent years, winning 2 BAFTAs and 3 Ivor Novello Awards.
Martin has moved into film, scoring Weinstein Company's much anticipated Woman In Gold with Hans Zimmer, starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren, and previous to that Harry Brown and Brighton Rock. In 2014 Martin had two feature film scores premiering at the Toronto Film Festival; Daniel Barber's US indie The Keeping Room, and Morgan Matthew's X Plus Y.
Additionally, Martin has set up Mearl, a project to facilitate collaborating with other artists and composers, as well as a platform for developing his own material. Peaky Blinders was the first soundtrack under this name, scored with a band of musicians from Radiohead's new Laundry Studios in London Fields.- Director
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David Metzger is known for Vermont Film Essentials (2017), #Dinnergate (2016) and Husband Training (2014).- 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.- 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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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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Oscar nominated, five-time Emmy award winning composer Laura Karpman creates powerful, imaginative scores that push the boundaries of storytelling. Her bold, incandescent works span film, television, theater, interactive media and live performance, reflecting an audaciously creative, prodigious fresh spirit. Karpman collaborates with some of the most renowned filmmakers of our time, including Eleanor, Francis Ford and Sofia Coppola, Cord Jefferson, Nia DaCosta, Alex Gibney, Misha Green, Rory Kennedy, Kasi Lemmons, Laura Nix, Sam Pollard and Steven Spielberg.
2023 was perhaps her most prolific year to date, with six film and TV projects alone - American Fiction (Amazon MGM), starring Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown, written, directed and produced by Cord Jefferson, which has garnered five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and for which Karpman has received her first Oscar nomination for her original score, The Marvels (Disney), Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (Max), What If? (Disney+), Ms. Marvel (Disney+), and 61st Street (The CW). 2024 promises season 3 of What If?, two unannounced video game projects, and a musical based on Dorothy Arzner's MGM film, Dance Girl Dance. Concert music premieres include the world premiere performance of BALLS, an opera chronicling Billie Jean King's epic 1973 "Battle of the Sexes"' tennis match, with words by New York Times writer Gail Collins, and a commissioned work for the Juilliard School. Karpman was proud to have her theme from The Marvels performed at closing night of the BBC Proms.
Karpman's scores span HBO's acclaimed hit Lovecraft Country, the Oscar-nominated feature film Walk Run Cha-Cha and the docuseries Why We Hate. Other recent work includes Miss Virginia, Set It Up, Paris Can Wait, The Cotton Club Encore, Step, Black Nativity, Underground, LA's Finest and the Peabody Award-winning series Craft in America. Karpman has recently received two additional Emmy nominations for Ms. Marvel, and won an HMMA award for The Marvels. For her American Fiction score, to date she has received Academy Award, SCL, NAACP Image Award, and HMMA nominations, as well as inclusion in the 2024 BAFTA Longlist.
Other awards include a 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from She Rocks, a Critics' Choice Award for her song "Jump" (from the film Step), co-written with frequent collaborators Raphael Saadiq and Taura Stinson, sung by Cynthia Erivo. Her animated work includes Sitara, directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, executive produced by Darla Anderson and Gloria Steinem, and her Annie-nominated score for Monkey's Tale. Her celebrated scores for interactive media and blockbuster video games include Guardians of Middle Earth, Everquest 2, Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, Kung Fu Panda 2, Project Spark and Kinect Disneyland Adventures.
Across concert halls, Karpman is well known for her Grammy Award-winning album, "Ask Your Mama," a multimedia opera based on the iconic cycle of poems by renowned author Langston Hughes. For this Carnegie Hall commission, Karpman collaborated with The Roots, soprano Jessye Norman, performer De'Andre Aziza, and jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon. Other notable works include "All American," commissioned and performed by The Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl; "Brass Ceiling," commissioned and recorded by the U.S. Army Band; "And Still We Dream," commissioned by Lyric Opera of Kansas City, honoring 100 years of suffrage; "Wilde Tales," commissioned by Glimmerglass Festival, and a pandemic opera for Opera Theatre of St. Louis with libretto by Taura Stinson & Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum.
Karpman is a fierce champion for DEI in Hollywood. After founding the Alliance for Women Film Composers, she was elected the first female Governor in the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. During her two consecutive three-year terms, she implemented sweeping change, facilitating the admission of dozens of underrepresented voices, co-founded the Academy Women's Initiative, co-chaired the LGBTQ+ Affinity Group, helped to create the Code of Conduct, and updated the bylaws with more inclusive, representative language. Her leadership in creating opportunity and advocating for inclusion is unparalleled.
Karpman was an advisor for the Sundance Film Institute and was on the faculty of the USC Film Scoring Program. She received a doctorate from The Juilliard School, where she studied with 20th century icon Milton Babbitt.
She lives and works in Los Angeles with her wife, composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, their son and two dogs.- Composer
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David Boman is known for Moonshot (2022), Wandering Ponderings with Kevin Graber (2014) and Wendy (2020).- Composer
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Born in NY, Nick Urata is best known as founder and front man of the influential band Devotchka. In 2007, the band gained worldwide recognition and a Grammy nomination for the soundtrack of Academy Award winning film, Little Miss Sunshine. Since then, Urata has scored more than 25 films including Paddington, Crazy Stupid Love, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Ruby Sparks, and Focus. Urata recently collaborated with Neil Patrick Harris to create the unforgettable theme song for Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, as well as several other original songs performed by the cast.- Music Department
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Branford Marsalis is the eldest son in the "first family of jazz." Born August 26, 1960, Marsalis is an established saxophonist and outspoken iconoclast. He has collaborated with the likes of Herbie Hancock, Art Blakey, Terence Blanchard, Sting, Guru, Miles Davis, Bruce Hornsby and brother Wynton. He was the original bandleader for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" for nearly three years until he walked away to return to his love, jazz music.- Composer
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Christopher Stracey is known for Anyone But You (2023), Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022) and Manodrome (2023).- Composer
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Mark Orton, founding member of the genre-bending acoustic chamber ensemble Tin Hat, has written original scores and contributed music to numerous dramatic and documentary films including Nebraska, My Old Lady, Sweet Land, Everything Is Illuminated, Buck, From the Ashes, The Good Girl, The Box Trolls, People-Places-Things, 12 Mighty Orphans, Fernando Meirelles' 360, Ken Burns' The Roosevelts series, and Pixar's Loop. Recent projects include the films Leave No Trace and Somewhere in Queens, two series from Netflix - Obama's Working: What We Do All Day, and Muscles & Mayhem, along with the upcoming feature The Holdovers.
An alumnus of the Peabody Conservatory and the Hartt School of Music, and the recipient of a Sundance Institute Composer Fellowship, he was nominated Best New Composer by the International Film Music Critics. He is a multi-instrumentalist and collector of antique and unusual musical instruments, which he often employs in his scores.
Mark is a frequent contributor to both radio and podcast programming including This American Life, All Things Considered, the Headlong series, and the award winning podcast Wind of Change. As an arranger, Mark has worked with artists including Tom Waits, Willie Nelson, Mike Patton, and Madeline Peyroux. In addition, he continues to compose music for modern dance, radio drama, the circus and the concert hall.
He lives in The Great Pacific Northwest with his wife and son.- 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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Atticus Ross was born on 16 January 1968 in England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and Mank (2020). He has been married to Claudia Sarne since 2001. They have three children.- Composer
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Emmy Award-winning composer Geoff Zanelli is a standout in the film and television scoring industry, garnering accolades and recognition for his diverse musical voice. Zanelli has composed for directors such as Gore Verbinski and Ridley Scott; writer/directors David Koepp, Peter Hedges and David Duchovny; producers Jerry Bruckheimer, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg; as well as actor/producer Tom Hanks.
Zanelli will score the fifth installment of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales" coming to theaters in May 2017. "Pirates of the Caribbean" fans have previously heard Zanelli's original music contributions in all four of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films via his collaborative work with Zimmer.
This marks a return of Zanelli's strong scores for Disney, which began with his breakout score for the fantasy drama "The Odd Life of Timothy Green" starring Jennifer Garner and Joel Edgerton. Zanelli's organic and stirring score for the film also received critical acclaim, including a feature in Variety's Eye on the Oscars issue.
Zanelli recently collaborated with Grammy-award winning Mark Ronson on the co-written score and songs to Lionsgate's "Mortdecai," marking his third time working with writer/director David Koepp; director Jared Hess for the comedy "Masterminds;" and Steve Martin and Edie Brickell to lend string arrangements to the Grammy-award winning album "Love Has Come For You," and follow-up album "So Familiar," which dominated the Bluegrass charts. He is currently writing the score and songs for "Star Citizen: Squadron 42," the most crowd-funded game in history.
In 2006, Zanelli earned his first Emmy after scoring the original music for Steven Spielberg's miniseries "Into The West." With this win, Zanelli became the youngest composer ever to be awarded the 'Outstanding Music Composition for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special (Original Dramatic Score)' accolade. A few years later, Spielberg once again tapped Zanelli to score HBO's "The Pacific," which earned him his second Emmy nomination. Other credits include: DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures' "Disturbia," 20th Century Fox's "Hitman," Lionsgate's "Gamer," DreamWork's "Ghost Town," The Weinstein Company's "Outlander" and Columbia Pictures' "Secret Window" (co-written with Philip Glass) among many others. Additionally, Zanelli co-wrote the song "Don't Make Me Wait" for "Disturbia."
Zanelli has contributed music to many feature films including: Disney's "The Lone Ranger;" the Golden Globe-nominated scores for Warner Bros.' "The Last Samurai" and Touchstone Pictures' "Pearl Harbor;" Paramount Pictures' "Rango," MGM's "Hannibal," Columbia Pictures' "Angels & Demons," DreamWorks' "Antz," "Chicken Run," "Shark Tale," and "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," working alongside composers Hans Zimmer, John Powell, Harry Gregson-Williams and Steve Jablonsky.
Zanelli has degrees in Film Scoring and Music Production & Engineering from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, which he attended on scholarship. He is an active alumnus at his alma mater and has participated in Berklee's Curriculum Review Initiative as well as given seminars to students studying composition. During his time at Berklee, Zanelli received the Doug Timm Award in recognition of his film scoring work and the Music Production/Engineering Scholar Award.
A Southern California native, Zanelli began his musical career as a guitar player and songwriter. In 1994, he met Zimmer and was offered a job at Remote Control Productions. Now, Zanelli is known as a versatile composer in his own right, who combines music from different genres and cultures.- Composer
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Rostam Batmanglij was born on 28 November 1983 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), I Feel Pretty (2018) and The East (2013).- Composer
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Heather McIntosh started her musical career playing with the bands of The Elephant 6 Collective, Gnarls Barkley, and Lil Wayne. Following her touring days, she has been regularly composing music for film and television since 2011. In addition to being a frequent collaborator on Duplass brothers productions, Heather was one of four women eligible for the Academy Awards Best Original Score in 2013 for Craig Zobel's Compliance, and again in 2015 with Craig's film, Z for Zachariah, both of which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival. Heather is an alumna of The Sundance Institute Music & Sound Design Labs at Skywalker Sound, a 2014 Sundance Institute Time Warner Foundation Fellow, and a member of the Academy class of 2016. Her credits include Faults directed by Riley Stearns, the series One Dollar for CBS All Access, Astra Taylor's feature documentary What is Democracy?, and Riley Stearns' upcoming The Art of Self-Defense. Heather's most recent project, To The Stars directed by Martha Stephens, premiered at Sundance in 2019 as part of the US Dramatic Competition.- Composer
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Emmy-nominated composer Holly Amber Church has been lovingly nicknamed the "Scream Queen of Scoring," although her work in film and TV has covered many genres. Her 2023 Emmy nomination came from the Main Title theme music for GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES on Netflix. She has written the score for the upcoming drama MIRANDA'S VICTIM starring Abigail Breslin, Donald Sutherland, Andy Garcia, Luke Wilson and Ryan Phillippe. Other recent releases of films scored by Holly include ELI ROTH'S BE MINE: A VR VALENTINE'S SLASHER, OPEN 24 HOURS, DARK LIGHT, and THE RUNNER. She has signed on to score the documentary about Donn Beach, THE DONN OF TIKI.
In addition to an Emmy nomination, Holly's Main Title theme for GUILLERMO DEL TORO'S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES was also nominated for a 2023 ASCAP Composer's Choice Award for Television Theme of the Year. Holly won two best score awards in 2021 for her score for A BAND TO HONOR and won the award for Best Original Score at the 2020 Women in Horror Film Festival for her score for FELLOWSHIP. She's a member of the Alliance for Women Film Composers and an alumni of USC's Screen Scoring program, the ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop and the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive. With several films released in the past few years and several upcoming projects she's attached to, Holly has proven she is a reliable, inventive, hard-working and creative collaborator.
Besides her love for film scoring, Holly also loves anything to do with tiki, monsters and ghosts!- 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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Yair Elazar Glotman is a composer, musician and sound artist based in Berlin.
Glotman trained in both classical music as an orchestral contrabass player and in electroacoustic composition. His current practice is informed by both of these traditions and employs a range of improvisation, extended contrabass techniques, and a special interest in textural and spatial compositions and combining analog and digital processing.
In recent years, Glotman's focus has been in composition for film and media, alongside regularly releasing and performing his own music. His work for film included working closely with the influential, late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, most notably writing additional music for "Mandy" (2018) and co-composing "Last and First Men" (2019). In addition, he has worked with composers Hildur Guðnadóttir, Ben Frost, Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury, Dustin O'halloran and Hauschka, and others. In addition to film and TV, he has composed for dance performances and Opera, most notably designing the Soundtrack for the Royal Opera House in London's production "Mamzer" (2018).- Composer
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Adam Janota Bzowski is known for Saint Maud (2019), Marilyn Myller (2013) and The Sleeping Field (2017).- Composer
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Marius De Vries was born in 1961 in London, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for La La Land (2016), Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Romeo + Juliet (1996).- Additional Crew
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Karl Saint Lucy is a composer and songwriter known for A24's Dicks: The Musical, starring Megan Thee Stallion, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullally, Bowen Yang, Josh Sharp, and Aaron Jackson, directed by Larry Charles, with music producer and composer Marius de Vries. Saint Lucy was a featured soloist on John Cameron Mitchell's Anthem: Homunculus by Luminary.- Composer
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As a musician, performer and recording artist, Brian McOmber has collaborated with Björk, David Byrne, Doudou N'Diaye Rose, Deer Tick, Kurt Ballou (Converge), Marijuana Deathsquads, Mira Calix, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Solange, The Roots, Yeasayer and St. Vincent. After studying evolutionary morphology and percussion with AC Burke and Pheeroan akLaff at Wesleyan University, Brian joined the Grammy-nominated indie rock band Dirty Projectors and played on many of the group's most critically acclaimed albums. McOmber has performed for audiences across six continents at venues such as The Barbican Centre, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Dakar Fashion Week, Disney Hall, Fuji Rock, Glastonbury, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman, Lincoln Center, Lollapalooza, Madison Square Garden, Primavera Sound and Radio City Music Hall.
As a film and TV composer, Brian has contributed to Emmy, Oscar, Peabody and Independent Spirit Award-winning narrative and documentary releases from companies such as A24, Amazon Studios, Fox Searchlight, HBO, Jigsaw Productions, Magnolia, MRC, NEON, Frontline PBS, Showtime, and T-Street Productions. He has composed and performed on dozens of original soundtracks including those for Trey Edward Shults' hybrid horror films, Krisha and It Comes At Night, Penny Lane's bizarro documentaries, Hail Satan? and Nuts!, Danielle Krudy and Bridgette Salvage Cole's dark thriller, Blow The Man Down, Nia DaCosta's emotional thriller, Little Woords, Rick Rowley's investigative documentaries, 16 Shots and Documenting Hate, and Anurag Kashyap's Hindi-language thriller, Ugly.
Brian was named as one of Filmmaker's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" in 2016 and The Hollywood Reporter went on to describe him as, "One of the best composers working in film today".
Most recently, McOmber worked on the score for Chloe Domont's feature film, Fair Play, staring Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor. The film premiered at Sundance 2023 and is a co-production between T-Street, Star Thrower Entertainment and MRC. McOmber also has featured musical contributions in the Sundance award-winning documentary, "20 Days In Mariupol" (Frontline PBS).
When not scoring films, he studies Lyme Disease, the Origins or Form and serves as resident drummer for the American music group, Marijuana Deathsquads.