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Jóhann Jóhannsson, 1969-2018
Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson died on February 9, 2018, at his home in Berlin, Germany, of an accidental drug overdose. He was 48 years old.
Jóhann Jóhannsson was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, in September 1969. After graduating from university he started his musical career in the mid-1990s as a guitarist playing in various Icelandic indie rock bands, before founding Kitchen Motors, an art organization that encouraged musical collaborations between artists from numerous different genres. He began scoring television projects and films in his native Iceland in 1999, beginning with the TV series Corpus Camera and the theatrical feature The Icelandic Dream [Íslenski Draumurinn] for director Robert Ingi Douglas, and went on to write several acclaimed scores for Icelandic directors over the next several years.
Jóhannsson scored his first English-language film, Personal Effects for director David Hollander, in 2009, first came to international prominence in 2013 when he was asked to score the dark thriller Prisoners starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal by director Denis Villeneuve. He followed this with the score for the Steven Hawking bio-pic The Theory of Everything in 2014, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music, and a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Read more…
IFMCA Award Nominations 2017
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED; MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS FOR ALEXANDRE DESPLAT, MICHAEL GIACCHINO, DANIEL PEMBERTON, JOHN WILLIAMS
FEBRUARY 8, 2018. The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of nominees for excellence in musical scoring in 2017, for the 14th annual IFMCA Awards. In a wide open field, the most nominated composers are Alexandre Desplat and Daniel Pemberton, who both received four nominations, Michael Giacchino, who received five nominations, and John Williams, who received six nominations for new work, plus an additional three for archival re-releases of some of his classic scores.
56-year old Frenchman Alexandre Desplat is nominated for his work on two scores – director Guillermo Del Toro’s critically acclaimed monster movie romance “The Shape of Water,” and director Luc Besson’s epic space fantasy “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” – and is one of the five nominees for Composer of the Year. IFMCA member James Southall said that “The Shape of Water” was “yet another from the top drawer of Desplat,” and went on to describe him as “one of the most consistently impressive film composers of the last couple of decades,” who has “managed to be so successful without having to water down his highly-distinctive musical voice at all”. Desplat previously received IFMCA Score of the Year honors in 2008 for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. His other major scores in 2017 include director George Clooney’s satirical racial drama ‘”Suburbicon,” and the French-language comedy-drama “D”Après Une Histoire Vraie,” directed by Roman Polanski. Read more…
Movie Music UK Awards 2017
After a little bit of a slow start, 2017 ended up being a really excellent year for film music. Many of the industry’s most reliable and storied composers had superb years, each writing multiple outstanding scores, while a bevy of exceptionally talented newcomers made their marks on the genre for the first time, proving that – hopefully – the future is in good hands if they continue to be given quality projects to score.
Despite the lack of a true ***** masterpiece, I ended up with an astonishing 66 scores which, were I still handing out star ratings, would have rated **** or better. And it’s not just Hollywood staples – composers working in China and Japan, Britain and France, Russia and Poland and Finland, Spain and Italy, all wrote outstanding music this year, proving once again that there is magnificent music out there – if only you’re prepared to look for it. So, without further ado, here are my choices… Read more…
John Morris, 1926-2018
Composer John Morris died on January 25, 2018, at his home in Red Hook, New Jersey, following complications from a respiratory infection. He was 91.
John Leonard Morris was born in October 1926, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. After his family moved to Kansas while he was young, Morris continued studying piano, and by the late 1940s he moved back to the New York City are, where he studied at both Juilliard School and at The New School. He pursued a career as a concert pianist and musical director before transitioning to composing for theater and film. Morris began his long and fruitful collaboration with writer-director Mel Brooks in the late 1950s, and together they worked on two musicals, Shinbone Alley (1957) and All-American (1962).
Morris and Brooks continued to work together when Brooks brought his play ‘Springtime for Hitler’ to the big screen as The Producers in 1967, and their collaboration continued through a string of hits including Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World, Part I (1981), and Spaceballs (1987), among many others. His deft orchestral parodies and lovingly crafted pastiches matched Brooks’ irreverent humor beat for beat. Read more…
Academy Award Nominations 2017
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the nominations for the 90th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2017.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- CARTER BURWELL for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for The Shape of Water
- JONNY GREENWOOD for Phantom Thread
- JOHN WILLIAMS for Star Wars: The Last Jedi
- HANS ZIMMER for Dunkirk
This the first nomination for Greenwood and the second nomination for Burwell. Desplat has now been nominated nine times, having previously won for The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014, while Zimmer has now been nominated eleven times, having previously won the The Lion King in 1994.
Incredibly, this is the 51st Oscar nomination for John Williams, which breaks his own record for the most nominated living person, and maintains his position as the second most nominated person of all time after Walt Disney (who had 59). He previously won Academy Awards for Fiddler on the Roof in 1971, Jaws in 1975, Star Wars in 1977, E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and Schindler’s List in 1993.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- KRISTIN ANDERSON-LOPEZ and ROBERT LOPEZ for “Remember Me” from Coco
- MARY J. BLIGE, RAPHAEL SAADIQ, and TAURA STINSON for “Mighty River” from Mudbound
- BENJ PASEK and JUSTIN PAUL for “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman
- SUFJAN STEVENS for “Mystery of Love” from Call Me By Your Name
- DIANE WARREN and LONNIE LYNN JR. (COMMON) for “Stand Up For Something” from Marshall
The winners of the 90th Academy Awards will be announced on March 4, 2018.
BAFTA Nominations 2017
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has announced the nominations for the 71st British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2017.
In the Best Original Music category, which is named in memory of the film director Anthony Asquith, the nominees are:
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for The Shape of Water
- JONNY GREENWOOD for Phantom Thread
- DARIO MARIANELLI for Darkest Hour
- BENJAMIN WALLFISCH and HANS ZIMMER for Blade Runner 2049
- HANS ZIMMER for Dunkirk
This is the eighth BAFTA nomination for Desplat, who won for “The King’s Speech” in 2010 and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” in 2014; the second nomination for Greenwood; the third nomination for Marianelli; the first nomination for Wallfisch; and the ninth BAFTA film award nomination for Zimmer. Zimmer also has music nominations from the BAFTA TV Awards and the BAFTA Games Awards.
The winners of the 71st BAFTA Awards will be announced on February 18, 2018.
Golden Globe Winners 2017
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) have announced the winners of the 75th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2017.
In the Best Original Score category composer Alexandre Desplat won the award for his score for director Guillermo del Toro’s romantic fantasy The Shape of Water. This is Desplat’s second Golden Globe, him having won previously for The Painted Veil in 2006. In his acceptance speech, Desplat said:
“Thank you, merci, merci beaucoup. Different color from the previous one! Thank you Hollywood Foreign Press. Thanks to Fox Searchlight, to Miles Dale the producer, and Guillermo… you moved me. Your movie has moved me so much, inspired me so much, because it’s made of your humanity, your passion. I thank you also for all the dinners we have in Paris, and the ones to come. I want to thank all the musicians who recorded the score, they are marvelous. All the crew and cast: Richard [Jenkins], Sally [Hawkins], Doug [Jones]. The music department at Fox Searchlight, Queen Renee Fleming, Laura Engel, Ray Costa, my friend Katz, and Solrey – this is for you. Thank you very much!”
The other nominees were Carter Burwell for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Jonny Greenwood for Phantom Thread, John Williams for The Post, and Hans Zimmer for Dunkirk.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul for their song “This Is Me” from the screen musical The Greatest Showman.
The other nominees were Kristin Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez for “Remember Me” from Coco; Mariah Carey and Marc Shaiman for “The Star” from The Star; Nick Jonas, Justin Tranter, and Nick Monson for “Home” from Ferdinand; and Raphael Saadiq, Mary J. Blige, and Taura Stinson for “Mighty River” from Mudbound.
Dominic Frontiere, 1931-2017
Composer Dominic Frontiere died on December 21, 2017, in his home in Tesuque, New Mexico, after a short illness. He was 86.
Dominic Carmen Frontiere was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in June 1931. A classically trained accordion prodigy who performed at Carnegie Hall as a teenager, Frontiere went on to study at the Juilliard School before beginning a career in Hollywood that spanned more than four decades. He first gained recognition as musical director at 20th Century Fox, where he collaborated with Alfred Newman and contributed to a variety of studio productions.
His association with director and producer Leslie Stevens led to Frontiere scoring his first major film, The Marriage-Go-Round, in 1961. That relationship led Frontiere to became an executive of the television and film production company Daystar Productions, a company Stevens run. He composed several famous television themes of the 1960s, such as those for The Outer Limits, The Rat Patrol, Branded, and The Flying Nun, as well as The Invaders, The Fugitive, and 12 O’Clock High for producer Quinn Martin.
In cinema, he earned acclaim for his scores to films including Hang ‘Em High (1968), starring Clint Eastwood, and Freebie and the Bean (1974) while his score for The Stunt won a Golden Globe Award and earned him a Grammy nomination in 1980. Other notable films scored by Frontiere include On Any Sunday in 1971, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold in 1975, Brannigan in 1975, The Aviator in 1985, and Color of Night in 1994, which was his final major work. Read more…
Golden Globe Nominations 2017
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has announced the nominations for the 75th Golden Globe Awards, honoring the best in film and American television of 2017.
In the Best Original Score category, the nominees are:
- CARTER BURWELL for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri
- ALEXANDRE DESPLAT for The Shape of Water
- JONNY GREENWOOD for Phantom Thread
- JOHN WILLIAMS for The Post
- HANS ZIMMER for Dunkirk
This is the first Golden Globe nomination for Greenwood, and just his second major film music award nomination – he was previously nominated for a BAFTA for There Will Be Blood in 2007 – although he has been a multiple Grammy award nominee and winner for his work as a member of the alternative rock group Radiohead.
This is the 3rd nomination for Burwell, and the 9th nomination for Desplat, who previously won the Globe for The Painted Veil in 2006. It’s also the 25th nomination for Williams – who previously won Globes in 1975 for Jaws, 1977 for Star Wars, 1982 for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and 2005 for Memoirs of a Geisha – and the 14th nomination for Zimmer, who previously won Globes for The Lion King in 1994 and Gladiator in 2000.
In the Best Original Song category, the nominees are:
- KRISTIN ANDERSON-LOPEZ and ROBERT LOPEZ for “Remember Me” from Coco
- MARIAH CAREY and MARC SHAIMAN for “The Star” from The Star
- NICK JONAS, JUSTIN TRANTER, and NICK MONSON for “Home” from Ferdinand
- BENJ PASEK, and JUSTIN PAUL for “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman
- RAPHAEL SAADIQ, MARY J. BLIGE, and TAURA STINSON for “Mighty River” from Mudbound
The winners of the 75th Golden Globe Awards will be announced on January 7, 2018.
Luis Enríquez Bacalov, 1933-2017
Composer Luis Enríquez Bacalov died on November 15, 2017, at his home in Rome, Italy, after suffering a stroke. He was 84.
Bacalov was born in August 1933 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a Bulgarian Jewish family and studied music from an early age; his teachers included Enrique Barenboim, the father of famed conductor Daniel Barenboim, and pianist Berta Sujovolsky. Bacalov relocated from Argentina to Italy in the 1950s, and spent the majority of the rest of his life living and working there.
He scored his first film, a low-budget ghost story called Questi Fantasmi, in 1954, and then for many years fronted a rock group in the 1960s called Luis Enrique and His Electronic Men, but first came to prominence in 1964 when he arranged the music for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film The Gospel According to St. Matthew, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Music Adaptation or Treatment when the film was released in the United States in 1967.
Bacalov quickly established himself as one of the most popular and successful composers in the Italian film industry in the 1960s and 70s; his most famous scores were for spaghetti westerns such as Django (1966), Sugar Colt (1966), Quién Sabe (1967), Lo Chiamavano King (1971), and Il Grande Duello (1972), and gritty crime thrillers such as The Summertime Killer (1972), Milano Calibro 9 (1972), Il Boss (1973), and I Padroni Della Città (1976). He scored Federico Fellini’s City of Women in 1980, Fellini’s first film after the death of Nino Rota, and then achieved arguably his most prominent international success when he won the Academy Award for Best Score in 1995 for Il Postino, The Postman. Read more…
MOVIE MUSIC UK – The First Twenty Years
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since I started Movie Music UK in the summer of 1997. In many ways, it feels like a lifetime ago, but in others I can barely believe that so much time has passed. Considering this milestone occasion, I thought it would be appropriate to set down a few thoughts about my site, my life in film music, and the people I have met over the past two decades who have helped make the site what it is and, perhaps most importantly, make me who I am. Settle in… this is a long read! Read more…
Academy Award Winners 2016
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have announced the winners of the 89th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film in 2016.
In the Best Original Score category composer Justin Hurwitz won the award for his score for director Damian Chazelle’s film La La Land, a modern day musical which celebrates the style of classic Hollywood updated to a contemporary setting. Hurwitz accepted the award by saying:
“Ok, wow! Thank you so much to the Academy. Thank you to my very, very good friend, Damian [Chazelle], I’m so glad I met you! Thank you to Marc Platt, Jordan Horowitz, Fred Berger. Thank you to everybody at Lionsgate. Thank you to all the LA musicians who played on this score. I just put notes on a page and they’re the ones who made it beautiful and sound the way it does. If I start going through names I could make, at most, twenty to thirty people happy but, I’ll make about a hundred – a couple of hundred million people really bored, so I’ll just leave it at everybody who’s work is on-screen in any way in this movie, I was looking at your work when I was scoring the picture, I was looking at what you did when I was scoring the picture, and that’s what inspired me, so thank you to everybody who worked on this movie. Thank you.”
The other nominees were Nicholas Britell for Moonlight, Mica Levi for Jackie, Dustin O’Halloran and Volker “Hauschka” Bertelmann for Lion, and Thomas Newman for Passengers.
In the Best Original Song category, the winners were Justin Hurwitz, Justin Paul, and Benj Pasek, for their song “City of Stars” from La La Land.
The other nominees were Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, and Justin Paul for “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land, Lin-Manuel Miranda for “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, Joshua Ralph and Gordon Sumner (Sting) for “The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story, and Justin Timberlake, Max Martin, and Karl Johan Schuster (Shellback) for “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from Trolls.
IFMCA Award Winners 2016
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2016 IFMCA AWARDS; “ARRIVAL” TAKES SCORE OF THE YEAR, JUSTIN HURWITZ AND “LA LA LAND” WINS THREE OTHERS
The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of winners for excellence in musical scoring in 2016, in the 2016 IFMCA Awards.
The award for Score of the Year goes to Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson for his work on the critically acclaimed science fiction drama “Arrival,” directed by Denis Villeneuve, starring Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. IFMCA member Jon Broxton said that “Jóhannsson’s approach to solving the film’s musical problems [is] absolutely fascinating, and the way he was able to musically convey some of the film’s more challenging cerebral ideas involving language and communication is astonishingly accomplished,” while IFMCA member Daniel Schweiger said that Jóhannsson “brilliantly captures both a sense of wonder and fear with beholding the mind-boggling, verbally-scrambled unknown, as whale cry motifs join with alternately moaning and chattering voices, backed by a strong orchestral sound that serves as a powerful universal musical translator in a way that’s both harmonically understandable, and profoundly strange.” This is the first IFMCA Award win of Jóhannsson’s career, him having previously been nominated for Best Original Score for a Drama Film for “The Theory of Everything” in 2014. Read more…
BAFTA Winners 2016
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) have announced the winners of the 70th British Academy Film Awards, honoring the best in film in 2016.
In the Best Original Score category composer Justin Hurwitz won the award for his score for the contemporary screen music La La Land. In accepting his award, Hurwitz said:
“Thank you to the Academy. I wanted to share this as well with our incredible lyricists, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, who wrote all the words. I remember talking a couple of years ago to somebody who came to the BAFTAs as a part of a movie that had multiple nominations and they were saying that one of the coolest things was getting to know other people who worked on the movie who you may not have known, and that’s not the experience I’m having because this was such an unusually collaborative movie where from the very beginning we were working under one roof, and I got to see these other artists work up close. I got to see Mary Zophres designing the costumes, and watch the Wascos work, and watch Linus (Sandgren) shoot it, and I was constantly inspired by the work of these other artists, which is a cool experience for a composer in general, but to see it under the direction of Damian (Chazelle), who’s so masterful, is really something I’ll never forget. This is very cool trophy, by the way, I really like it. Beautiful Thank you!”
The other nominees were Jóhann Jóhannsson for Arrival, Abel Korzeniowski for Nocturnal Animals, Mica Levi for Jackie, and Dustin O’Halloran and Volker “Hauschka” Bertelmann for Lion.
IFMCA Award Nominations 2016
INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION AWARD NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED; MICHAEL GIACCHINO AND “LA LA LAND” COMPOSER JUSTIN HURWITZ LEAD THE PACK
The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of nominees for excellence in musical scoring in 2016, for the 13th annual IFMCA Awards. In a wide open field, the most nominated composers are Michael Giacchino and Justin Hurwitz, with five nominations each, and Abel Korzeniowski, with four nominations.
Giacchino is nominated for his work on two scores; the action-packed comic book fantasy film “Doctor Strange,” and the popular and socially aware Disney animated film “Zootopia,” as well as for the “Night on the Yorktown” cue from his score for “Star Trek Beyond”. In addition, his score for the first of the Star Wars spinoff films, “Rogue One,” helped him secure a nomination for Composer of the Year. Giacchino is a 36-time IFMCA Award nominee who previously received Score of the Year honors in 2004 for “The Incredibles,” and in 2009 for “Up”. Read more…
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