Germaine Franco (Photo courtesy ASCAP)

Film and television score composer Germaine Franco will receive the prestigious ASCAP Shirley Walker Award at the 33rd annual ASCAP Screen Music Awards in Los Angeles on May 23.

The Shirley Walker Award honors those whose achievements have contributed to the diversity of film and television music. Franco is the first Latina composer invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences music branch.

Her work is currently heard on the new Starz television series Vida, which premiered May 6th. She also scored the New Line/Warner Bros. feature film Tag, directed by Jeff Tomsic, hits theaters June 15. In addition, Germaine’s action-packed score for Kung Fu Panda – The Emperor’s Quest, an immersive attraction, launches this summer at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Franco co-wrote and produced five original songs for Disney/Pixar’s Oscar winning Coco, including “Un Poco Loco” and “Proud Corazón”, which she co-wrote with the film’s co-director Adrian Molina.  Franco received an Annie Award for her Coco work.

She is the first Latina to win for music in a feature film at the Annie Awards, which honor the best in animation. Lee Unkrich directed Coco with Adrian Molina.

An ASCAP member, Walker was one of the first prominent female composers working in film and television and is remembered as a pioneer for women in the film industry. Franco recently worked with Shirley Walker’s son, Ian Walker, double bassist, on the score to Tag.

“Germaine Franco’s kaleidoscopic work is impossible to summarize, spanning numerous visual media, musical genres and cultures,” ASCAP President Paul Williams said in announcing the honor. “Her work on Disney Pixar’s Coco, which incorporated traditional Mexican musical elements and included composing, songwriting, producing, arranging and orchestrating, is only the most recent highlight of her achievements in the film world.”

The invitation-only ASCAP dinner and awards ceremony will honor the composers and songwriters of the top box office film music, top rated series and the most performed television music of 2017.

Francophilia

In addition to her extensive training as an orchestral musician, Franco is an electronic music programmer, a multi-instrumentalist and a student of world music. Her upcoming Tag is a hybrid score of electronica and action music.

The multitalent collaborated for four years with Pixar’s Unkrich, Molina and Darla K. Anderson for four years as an additional composer, songwriter, producer, arranger and orchestrator on Coco.

Her hip-hop and electronica score to DOPE, directed by Rick Famuyiwa (Open Road Films) premiered at Cannes and Sundance Film Festivals. For producer Tanya Saracho’s  Starz project Vida, Franco drew on indigenous Mexican chant, electronica, and Latin music.

Likewise, the Kung Fu Panda – The Emperor’s Quest at Universal Studios Hollywood taps into a variety of ethnic music styles. Franco is a Sundance Music Sound Design Fellow, an Advisory Board Member of Women in Media, and a Board Member of the Alliance for Women Film Composers. She worked alongside John Powell on over 30 feature films including How to Train Your Dragon (1 & 2), Rio (1 & 2), The Lorax, Happy Feet (1 & 2), Kung Fu Panda (1,2 & 3), and The Bourne Supremacy.

ASCAP Recap

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a professional membership organization of songwriters, composers and music publishers of every kind of music. ASCAP’s mission is to license and promote the music of its members and foreign affiliates, obtain fair compensation for the public performance of their works and to distribute the royalties that it collects based upon those performances.

ASCAP licenses music to hundreds of thousands of enterprises who use it to add value to their business – from bars, restaurants and retail, to radio, TV and cable, to Internet, mobile services and more. The ASCAP license offers an efficient solution for businesses to legally perform ASCAP music while ensuring songwriters and composers are compensated. With more than 650,000 members representing more than 11.5 million copyrighted works, ASCAP is a worldwide leader in performance royalties, service and advocacy for songwriters and composers, and the only American performing rights organization (PRO) owned and governed by its writer and publisher members.