93rd Annual Oscars Spotlight on Music (Original Score)
This year’s line-up for Achievement in Music (Original Score) may be one of the more intriguing categories, because it includes past winners, past nominees — some who have been nominated many times without a win, in fact — as well as one relatively new composer. More importantly, two composers have achieved a somewhat rare... »
Contender Profile: Composer Terence Blanchard Talks Da 5 Bloods, One Night in Miami…
Beginning with Jungle Fever in 1991, Musician and Composer Terence Blanchard has been Spike Lee’s go-to guy for enhancing his films and television with just the right musical score. If you think about the variety of genres and tones that Lee brings to his work from biopics like Malcolm X to more mainstream crime-thrillers... »
Tina: Film Composing Duo Danny Bensi, Saunder Jurriaans Create Emotional Scoring for HBO Doc
Film composer duo Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans, SCL (Ozark, The Devil All The Time) lend their signature sound, which has been recognized for its unpredictability and uniqueness, to the HBO feature documentary, Tina. The film is an intimate look at the life and career of musical icon Tina Turner, from her meteoric rise... »
Contender Profile: Composer James Newton Howard on News of the World, Raya and the Last Dragon
With a career that spans four and a half decades, James Newton Howard is a composer’s composer, having received Grammys, Emmys and eight Academy Award nominations. Just a few highlights include writing the original main title sequence from the hit NBC show E.R. and co-writing the scores (with Hans Zimmer) for Christopher Nolan’s Batman... »
Society of Composers & Lyricists Announce Winners of 2nd Annual Awards
The Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL) gave out its 2nd Annual SCL Awards on Tuesday, March 2 in a virtual ceremony. Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste‘s score for the Disney-Pixar film Soul won in the Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film, while Lolita Ritmanis’ score for Blizzard of Souls (Dvēseļu Putenis) won for Outstanding Original Score for an... »
Artist Spotlight: Composer Emile Mosseri on Scoring Minari
Every musician and composer has a different journey on their path to scoring for films and television, which is why there’s so much range and variety in the types of music used to embellish the sound and visuals of the media we consume. That’s particularly the case with Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, a deeply... »
Artist Profile: Composer Nathan Halpern on Swallow and In the Same Breath
Below the Line likes to shine the spotlight on some of the fresher new voices coming from the independent film space, as is the case with composer Nathan Halpern, who has done some amazing work over the past ten years or so. Halpern scored Chloé Zhao’s second film, The Rider, in 2017, and Bing... »
Artist Profile: Composer Geoff Zanelli Adds Thrills to Deon Taylor’s Fatale
As with many L.A. composers, Geoff Zanelli came out of the Hans Zimmer school of scoring, working with the busy Oscar-winning composer on some of his projects before branching out on his own. His work with Zimmer on the first four Pirates of the Caribbean movies for Walt Disney Pictures led Zanelli to taking... »
Artist Profile: Composer Michael Giacchino Drops his Debut Album Travelogue Volume 1
If you were to reflect upon the roster of amazing composers from the past twenty years, it wouldn’t take long to arrive at Composer Michael Giacchino, whose Academy, Emmy and Golden Globe-winning music has provided him quite a fanbase outside the amazing movie franchises in which he’s played a key role. 2004 probably could... »
Artist Spotlight: Composers Elegant Too from Scare Me and Bob’s Burgers
There are many paths to the world of film and television scoring, but the duo known as “Elegant Too” – Chris Maxwell and Phil Hernandez – have established a name for themselves with their quirky comedic music for shows like Bob’s Burgers and The Amy Schumer Show. They’ve also contributed to Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz... »