Latest in Composer

When Germaine Franco began composing the score for Encanto, the directors knew they didn't want the sound of a traditional Disney film. Franco began experimenting with Colombian instruments and rhythms to create the sound of Latin American magic. Encanto takes place in a magical town sheltered by mountains, created…

Coming from a choral background, composer Daniel Hart was well prepared to score The Green Knight, but the real challenge was creating an ancient sound. With a basis in ancient England during the time of King Arthur, it was important for the choral elements to use the language of the time. Hart researched a lot of…

The story that has dominated Los Angeles’ social media over the past two days may have a bit of a happy ending. According to reports, herd of about 40 cows escaped a Pico Rivera-area slaughterhouse Tuesday night. Video of cows roaming the neighborhood — and police cars giving chase — delighted many who rooted for the…

Leaving an indelible mark on USA’s Mr. Robot and a string of Ryan Murphy series—most notably, his two American stories—composer Mac Quayle met his match when approached for the prolific creator’s latest project, Feud: Bette and Joan. The style was “early ’60s, old Hollywood orchestral type music,”—a form outside of…

Between two critically lauded FX dramas—Noah Hawley’s Fargo and Legion—the network’s anticipated Snowfall and potent HBO miniseries The Night Of, two-time Emmy nominee Jeff Russo may be one of the busiest composers working in television. Like all composers at the top of their craft, Russo is a master at conjuring…

A renowned Brazilian composer with work spanning the film and television spheres, Marcelo Zarvos immediately responded to Denzel Washington’s approach with Fences, the actor’s third directorial effort, from a script by playwright August Wilson. Of course, Washington’s command of the material was understandable—an…

When it came to scoring the story of an unhappy, well-to-do divorced woman, who experiences her regret through her ex-husband's cathartic tome of fiction in Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals, Polish-born composer Abel Korzeniowski decided to filter the music through the eyes of Amy Adams' Susan Morrow. Based on Austin…

An Oscar nominee for Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, composer John Debney found in Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book the fruition of a very personal family legacy. The son of Disney Studios producer Louis Debney, John is among the few who can claim vivid personal memories of Walt Disney himself—not to mention the…

Collaborating variously with director Mike Mills over the years—most notably on Beginners—composer Roger Neill brought an ethereal synth-driven score to 20th Century Women, in the process reestablishing a connection with instruments he'd played as a child. As ever, music is integral to Mills' final product—he's often…

There are few musicians in this year's Oscar race who can have had as significant a contribution to the projects they're attached to as Pharrell Williams with Hidden Figures. Already Oscar nominated for the phenomenal hit song "Happy", which was attached to Despicable Me 2 in 2013, the multi-hyphenated musical artist…

An eight-time Oscar nominee, who finally won for The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2015, prolific composer Alexandre Desplat composed scores for four of this year’s Oscar contenders, including Illumination’s animated feature The Secret Life of Pets and the Meryl Streep-starring Florence Foster Jenkins. If more than one of…