2004 - BEST MUSIC
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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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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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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.- 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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Michael Nyman studied piano, harpsichord and music history with Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music, and musicology with Thurston Dart at King's College, London. Between 1968 and 1978 he worked as a music critic and in 1977 he founded the Campiello Band, later renamed the Michael Nyman Band. Many of his filmscores were composed for the films of Peter Greenaway. He has also written several operas, ballet music and a large number of chamber and concert pieces.- Composer
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Jan A. P. Kaczmarek is a composer with a tremendous international reputation that continues to grow. As a successful recording artist and touring musician, Jan turned to composing film scores as his primary occupation. Jan's first success in the United States came in theater. After composing striking scores for productions at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum, Jan won an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for his music for the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1992 production of John Ford's "Tis Pity She's A Whore," directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, starring Val Kilmer and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Newsday wrote that Jan's score "undulates with hypnotic force that gets under your skin," while Frank Rich of the New York Times found it worthy of the films of Bernardo Bertolucci and Luchino Visconti. Educated as a lawyer, he abandoned his planned career as a diplomat, for political reasons, to write music in order to finally gain freedom of expression. First he composed for the highly politicized underground theater, and then for a mini-orchestra of his own creation, "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day". The major turning point in his life, he says, was a period of intense study with avant-garde theater director, Jerzy Grotowski. "Playing and composing was like a religion for me," Kaczmarek explains, "and then it became a profession." "The Orchestra of the Eighth Day" began touring Europe in the late 1970's and to date, has completed eighteen major tours. They appeared at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the VPRO Radio International Contemporary Music Festival in Amsterdam,the Venice Biennale, and the International Music Festival in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia, where Jan won the Golden Spring Prize for the Best Composition. He is a five-time winner in Jazz Forum's Jazz Top Poll. At the end of the Orchestra's first American tour in 1982, Kaczmarek recorded his debut album, Music for the End, for the Chicago-based major independent Flying Fish Records. Jan returned to America in 1989 to find a label for his latest composition for the Orchestra. Jan stayed in the United States where he expanded his horizons by composing for theater as he had already done in Poland with great success, capped by two prestigious New York theater awards in 1992. Having also composed music for films in Poland, he focused his attention to that medium, achieving recognition as a film composer with scores to such films as "Total Eclipse", "Bliss", "Washington Square", "Aimée & Jaguar", "The Third Miracle", "Lost Souls", "Edges of the Lord", "Quo Vadis" and Adrian Lyne's "Unfaithful."
February 2005, Jan won his first Oscar for Best Original Score on Marc Forster's highly acclaimed film, "Finding Neverland."
Jan also won The National Review Board's award for Best Score of the Year, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and BAFTA's Anthony Asquith Award for Achievement in Film Music.In addition to his work in films, Jan is also setting up an Institute inspired by the Sundance Institute, in his home country of Poland, as a European center for development of new work in the areas of film, theatre, music and new media. The Institute website (currently under construction) is: www.rozbitek.org. It is anticipated that Rozbitek will begin accepting students in 2006.- Composer
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Bruno Coulais was born on 13 January 1954 in Paris, France. He is a composer and actor, known for The Chorus (2004), Wolfwalkers (2020) and Coraline (2009).- 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.- 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
- Music Department
- Sound Department
Johan Söderqvist was born on 11 February 1966 in Stockholm, Sweden. He is a composer, known for Let the Right One In (2008), Kon-Tiki (2012) and Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes (2013).- Composer
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Shigeru Umebayashi was born on 19 February 1951 in Kitakyushu, Japan. He is a composer, known for 2046 (2004), The Grandmaster (2013) and A Single Man (2009).- Composer
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Guy is an award-winning film composer whose outstanding body of work includes over 40 feature films, flagship television series and collaborations with multi-platinum selling artists.
Guy's recent and most notable works include That Good Night, starring John Hurt and Charles Dance; additional music with Hans Zimmer on Netflix The Crown; Anthropoid (nominated for best music in the 2017 Evening Standard Film Awards) directed by Sean Ellis and starring Jamie Dornan; Friedrich Moser's award-winning documentary feature A Good American (nominated for best film score at the 2017 Austrian Film Awards); Bear Grylls' sold out 2016 arena tour, Endeavour; and Academy Award winning Peter Fudakowski's film of Joseph Conrad's Secret Sharer.
In addition to The Crown, Guy's television scores include BBC's Planet Earth series Growing Up Wild and Nature's Miracle Orphans; the multi-award winning feature documentary Faberge: A Life Of Its Own; and History Channel's South Africa: A Miracle Rising. Guy also arranged and produced channel Four's multi-award winning We Are The Superhumans for the 2016 Paralympics and produced music for both seasons of the series True Justice for Voltage Pictures.
Guy has also achieved great success collaborating with artists and producers, producing and arranging music for the likes of Emeli Sande, Eliza Doolittle, Paloma Faith, Amy Winehouse, Tokio Myers, Petite Meller, Fiona Bevan, Mica Paris and Stephen Fretwell.- 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.- Music Department
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As one of the best known, awarded, and financially successful composers in US history, John Williams is as easy to recall as John Philip Sousa, Aaron Copland or Leonard Bernstein, illustrating why he is "America's composer" time and again. With a massive list of awards that includes over 52 Oscar nominations (five wins), twenty-odd Gold and Platinum Records, and a slew of Emmy (two wins), Golden Globe (three wins), Grammy (25 wins), National Board of Review (including a Career Achievement Award), Saturn (six wins), American Film Institute (including a Lifetime Achievement Award) and BAFTA (seven wins) citations, along with honorary doctorate degrees numbering in the teens, Williams is undoubtedly one of the most respected composers for Cinema. He's led countless national and international orchestras, most notably as the nineteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980-1993, helming three Pops tours of the US and Japan during his tenure. He currently serves as the Pop's Conductor Laureate. Also to his credit is a parallel career as an author of serious, and some not-so-serious, concert works - performed by the likes of Mstislav Rostropovich, André Previn, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Leonard Slatkin, James Ingram, Dale Clevenger, and Joshua Bell. Of particular interests are his Essay for Strings, a jazzy Prelude & Fugue, the multimedia presentation American Journey (aka The Unfinished Journey (1999)), a Sinfonietta for Winds, a song cycle featuring poems by Rita Dove, concerti for flute, violin, clarinet, trumpet, tuba, cello, bassoon and horn, fanfares for the 1984, 1988 and 1996 Summer Olympics, the 2002 Winter Olympics, and a song co-written with Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman for the Special Olympics! But such a list probably warrants a more detailed background...
Born in Flushing, New York on February 8, 1932, John Towner Williams discovered music almost immediately, due in no small measure to being the son of a percussionist for CBS Radio and the Raymond Scott Quintet. After moving to Los Angeles in 1948, the young pianist and leader of his own jazz band started experimenting with arranging tunes; at age 15, he determined he was going to become a concert pianist; at 19, he premiered his first original composition, a piano sonata.
He attended both UCLA and the Los Angeles City College, studying orchestration under MGM musical associate Robert Van Eps and being privately tutored by composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, until conducting for the first time during three years with the U.S. Air Force. His return to the states brought him to Julliard, where renowned piano pedagogue Madame Rosina Lhevinne helped Williams hone his performance skills. He played in jazz clubs to pay his way; still, she encouraged him to focus on composing. So it was back to L.A., with the future maestro ready to break into the Hollywood scene.
Williams found work with the Hollywood studios as a piano player, eventually accompanying such fare such as the TV series Peter Gunn (1958), South Pacific (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as forming a surprising friendship with Bernard Herrmann. At age 24, "Johnny Williams" became a staff arranger at Columbia and then at 20th Century-Fox, orchestrating for Alfred Newman and Lionel Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, and other Golden Age notables. In the field of popular music, he performed and arranged for the likes of Vic Damone, Doris Day, and Mahalia Jackson... all while courting actress/singer Barbara Ruick, who became his wife until her death in 1974. John & Barbara had three children; their daughter is now a doctor, and their two sons, Joseph Williams and Mark Towner Williams, are rock musicians.
The orchestrating gigs led to serious composing jobs for television, notably Alcoa Premiere (1961), Checkmate (1960), Gilligan's Island (1964), Lost in Space (1965), Land of the Giants (1968), and his Emmy-winning scores for Heidi (1968) and Jane Eyre (1970). Daddy-O (1958) and Because They're Young (1960) brought his original music to the big theatres, but he was soon typecast doing comedies. His efforts in the genre helped guarantee his work on William Wyler's How to Steal a Million (1966), however, a major picture that immediately led to larger projects. Of course, his arrangements continued to garner attention, and he won his first Oscar for adapting Fiddler on the Roof (1971).
During the '70s, he was King of Disaster Scores with The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Towering Inferno (1974). His psychological score for Images (1972) remains one of the most innovative works in soundtrack history. But his Americana - particularly The Reivers (1969) - is what caught the ear of director Steven Spielberg, then preparing for his first feature, The Sugarland Express (1974). When Spielberg reunited with Williams on Jaws (1975), they established themselves as a blockbuster team, the composer gained his first Academy Award for Original Score, and Spielberg promptly recommended Williams to a friend, George Lucas. In 1977, John Williams re-popularized the epic cinema sound of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman and other composers from the Hollywood Golden Age: Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) became the best selling score-only soundtrack of all time, and spawned countless musical imitators. For the next five years, though the music in Hollywood changed, John Williams wrote big, brassy scores for big, brassy films - The Fury (1978), Superman (1978), 1941 (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) ... An experiment during this period, Heartbeeps (1981), flopped. There was a long-term change of pace, nonetheless, as Williams fell in love with an interior designer and married once more.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) brought about his third Oscar, and The River (1984), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Accidental Tourist (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) added variety to the 1980s, as he returned to television with work on Amazing Stories (1985) and themes for NBC, including NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970). The '80s also brought the only exceptions to the composer's collaboration with Steven Spielberg - others scored both Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and The Color Purple (1985).
Intending to retire, the composer's output became sporadic during the 1990s, particularly after the exciting Jurassic Park (1993) and the masterful, Oscar-winning Schindler's List (1993). This lighter workload, coupled with a number of hilarious references on The Simpsons (1989) actually seemed to renew interest in his music. Two Home Alone films (1990, 1992), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995), Sleepers (1996), Seven Years in Tibet (1997), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Angela's Ashes (1999), and a return to familiar territory with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) recalled his creative diversity of the '70s.
In this millennium, the artist shows no interest in slowing down. His relationships with Spielberg and Lucas continue in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), the remaining Star Wars prequels (2002, 2005), Minority Report (2002), Catch Me If You Can (2002), and a promised fourth Indiana Jones film. There is a more focused effort on concert works, as well, including a theme for the new Walt Disney Concert Hall and a rumored light opera. But one certain highlight is his musical magic for the world of Harry Potter (2001, 2002, 2004, etc.), which he also arranged into a concert suite geared toward teaching children about the symphony orchestra. His music remains on the whistling lips of people around the globe, in the concert halls, on the promenades, in album collections, sports arenas, and parades, and, this writer hopes, touching some place in ourselves. So keep those ears ready wherever you go, 'cause you will likely hear a bit of John Williams on your way.- 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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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).- Writer
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Is the son of a Spanish mother and a Chilean father. His family moved back to Spain when he was 1 year old, and he grew up and studied in Madrid. He wrote, produced and directed his first short film La cabeza at the age of 19, and he was 23 when he directed his feature debut Thesis (1996). His film Open Your Eyes (1997) was a huge success in Spain and was distributed worldwide. It was remade in Hollywood by Cameron Crowe as Vanilla Sky (2001), starring Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz (also the star of the original version) and Cameron Diaz. The Others (2001) is Amenábar's first English language film.- Composer
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Michal Lorenc is one of the most eminent, contemporary composers of film scores. He was born in 1955 in Warsaw. Since his debut in 1979, he has made music for more than 150 feature films, documentaries, tv-serials and theatre performances. He has worked with best Polish, Czech, British and American film directors.
The American magazine "Variety" compared Michal Lorenc to an eminent American composer - Aaron Copland.- Composer
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Isao Tomita was born on 22 April 1932 in Tokyo, Japan. He was a composer, known for The Twilight Samurai (2002), Ocean's Thirteen (2007) and Demon Pond (1979). He was married to Akiko. He died on 5 May 2016 in Tokyo, Japan.- Composer
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Trevor Rabin was born in South Africa in 1954. He began playing guitar at the age of 12 after having had piano lessons since he was a toddler. In 1972 he formed the band Rabbit becoming the most successful rock act ever to emerge from South Africa. Rabin left Rabbit to pursue a solo career in London and released three solo albums.
Rabin moved to Los Angeles in 1982. Here he became a member of the newly reformed progressive art/rock group Yes for the groundbreaking 90125 album as a guitarist, keyboardist, singer, songwriter, producer and recording engineer. He penned the majority of the songs on 90125 as well as Big Generator and Talk, before leaving Yes in 1994 to pursue a career as a film composer.
Rabin has scored three dozen films which include Con Air, Homegrown, Armageddon, Enemy of the State, Jack Frost, Deep Blue Sea, Gone in 60 Seconds, Remember the Titans, The 6th Day, The Banger Sisters, Kangaroo Jack, Bad Boys 2, The Great Raid, Exorcist: The Beginning, National Treasure, Coach Carter, Snakes On A Plane, The Guardian, and Flyboys.
Along with many Grammy nominations and one win, Mr. Rabin also has received nine BMI film score awards, and has received a lifetime achievement award from the Temecula Film Festival.- Composer
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Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Glass worked in his father's radio store and discovered music listening to the offbeat Western classical records customers didn't seem to want. He studied the violin and flute, and obtained early admission to the University of Chicago. After graduating in mathematics and philosophy, he went to New York's Juilliard school, drove a cab, and studied composition with Darius Milhaud and others.
At 23, he moved to Paris to study under the legendary Nadia Boulanger, who taught almost all of the major Western classical composers of the 20th century. While there, he discovered Indian classical music while transcribing the works of Ravi Shankar into Western musical notation for a French filmmaker. A creative turning point, Glass researched non-Western music in India and parts of Africa, and applied the techniques to his own composition.
Back in the United States, Glass spent the late 1960s and early 1970s driving a taxi cab in New York and creating a major collection of new music. In 1976, his landmark opera "Einstein on the Beach" was staged by Robert Wilson to a baffling variety of reviews. His compositions were so avant-garde that he had to form the Philip Glass Ensemble to give them a venue for performance. Although called a minimalist by the Western classical mainstream, he denies this categorization. His major works include opera, theater pieces, dance, and song.
His work in film, beginning with Koyaanisqatsi (1982), gave filmmakers such as Godfrey Reggio and Errol Morris a new venue of expression through the documentary form. His many recordings have also widened his audience. He was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to compose "The Voyage" for the Columbus quinquacentennial in 1992. In 1996, he composed original music for the Atlanta Olympic Games, which, perhaps, made Glass almost mainstream. Glass remains one of the most important American composers. His music is distinctive, haunting, and evocative. Either performed by itself or in collaboration with other media, his compositions move the listener to unexplored places. More recently, a major reexamination of Glass's oeuvre has led him to be labeled the Last Romantic by the musical press.- Composer
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Born in Poland in 1955, Zbigniew Preisner studied philosophy and history in the university of Cracow. In his twenties he started to study music in a autodidactical way: buying records and learning to write by taking the music in parts. He started to write his own compositions. His style has always been very romantic, influenced by romantic polish composers from the XIX century and others like Paganini or Sibelius. He has always emphasized the importance of melody in music. He doesn't like experimental modern music.
In 1981 he began his collaboration with filmmakers. While he was working with Antoni Krauze's movie "Weather Report" he met director Krzystof Kieslowski who invited him to work in his new movie "No End" about Poland under the martial law at the beginning of the 80s.
With that movie he began a very close collaboration with Kieslowski and his screenwriter Krzystof Piesiewicz. He works while the script for the movie is still being written but he usually also takes part in the editing of the movie.
Their next collaboration became a success worldwide. "Decalogue" won the European film award for best film and also awards in Cannes and other festivals. Kieslowski became one of the most importants directors in Europe and Preisner the leading film music composer of his generation.
At the same time he continued his collaboration with Kieslowski in such films like "La double vie de Veronique" and the trilogy of colours ("Blue", "White" and "Red") he also wrote soundtracks for others important directors like Louis Malle, Agniezka Holland or Héctor Babenco.
His collaboration with Kieslowski ended with his death in 1996. In the last years Preisner not only has continued his collaboration in others movies but he also has been involved in others musical projects like the writing of an opera to be performed in London and features for the Varsovia Simphony orchestra.- Composer
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- Producer
Marco Beltrami was born on 7 October 1966 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for I, Robot (2004), World War Z (2013) and Knowing (2009).- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Bruce Broughton composes in almost every medium, from theatrical motion pictures and television to computer games, in styles ranging from large symphonic settings ("Silverado") to contemporary electronic scores (the recently Emmy-nominated "The Dive from Clausen's Pier"). Broughton has written the scores for such major motion pictures as "Tombstone," "Lost In Space," "Young Sherlock Holmes" and "Bambi II." With 23 nominations, he has received the Emmy award a record ten times, most recently for his score to the HBO movie, "Warm Springs." His television credits include the main title themes for "Jag" and Steven Spielberg's "Tiny Toon Adventures," as well as the scores for countless television series ("Dallas," "Quincy," "Hawaii Five-O") and movies and mini-series ("The Blue and the Gray," True Women"). His score for "Heart of Darkness" was the first orchestral score composed for a CD-ROM game. Broughton's concert music includes numerous works for orchestra and chamber groups, which have been performed by ensembles such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. He is a governor of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a board member of ASCAP and a past president of The Society of Composers and Lyricists. He has lectured in music composition at UCLA and has taught film composition in the Advanced Film Music Studies program at USC.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Jon Brion was born on 11 December 1963 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, USA. He is a composer and actor, known for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), The Other Guys (2010) and Step Brothers (2008).- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Rolfe Kent was born in 1963 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is a composer and producer, known for Up in the Air (2009), Sideways (2004) and Downsizing (2017).- Composer
- Director
- Writer
Roque Baños was born in 1968 in Jumilla, Murcia, Spain. He is a composer and director, known for Don't Breathe 2 (2021), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018) and The Commuter (2018).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
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
- Music Department
- Actor
From his days as one of the pioneering icons of electronic music to his current status as a world-renowned legendary film composer, Mark Isham continues to be one of the most prolific and provocative artists on the scene. His gift for creating unforgettable melodies and his love of fresh, innovative sonic palettes have earned Isham many awards including a Grammy, an Emmy, and a Clio, in addition to multiple Grammy, Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his material both as a composer and a recording artist. Most recently, Mark was honored by ASCAP with the Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement. Isham's musical signature is evident in his memorable scores for such notable films as Crash, awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 2005 (Isham's score was named Best Soundtrack of 2005 by Cinescape.com), Bobby, nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and The Black Dahlia, with its critically lauded jazz noir soundtrack (awarded Best Score for a Drama Film 2007, and nominated for Best Score of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association). Other highlights include Eight Below, The Cooler, A River Runs Through It, Blade, Nell, Men of Honor, and The Secret Life of Bees. His list of collaborators in film is a veritable who's who of the entertainment industry, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma, Chick Corea, Jodi Foster, Robert Altman, Sting, Wil.I.Am, Sydney Lumet, Mick Jagger and too many more to name. As a performing artist, Mark has added his unique sound, melodic, moody, sexy and cool, to a wide variety of genres. He has graced the albums of such diverse artists as Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison. His solo recordings span from electronica and classic jazz to hip-hop and ethnic world music, receiving worldwide critical acclaim including Grammy nominations for his albums Castalia and Tibet, and a win for his Virgin Records release, Mark Isham. No matter the genre, medium, or venue, Mark Isham displays a boundless ability to electrify the listener with his talent for crafting evocative new musical worlds.- Composer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Erwann Kermorvant was born in 1972 in Lorient, Morbihan, France. Erwann is a composer, known for 36th Precinct (2004), Prête-moi ta main (2006) and Overdose (2022).- Composer
- Actress
- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Ofer Shalhin is known for Campfire (2004), Rav Komot (1995) and The House on Chelouche Street (1973).