Getting inside the head of painter Pablo Picasso presented an interesting challenge for composer Lorne Balfe, who thought in terms of the “color” of instruments for the second season series score to National Geographic’s critically acclaimed series Genius. Balfe utilized flamenco guitar and the accordion to brush in both the episodic music and a reimagined theme, collaborating […]
Germaine Franco’s star turn as ASCAP’s Shirley Walker Award honoree had people wanting to learn more about Shirley Walker. As it turns out, she was a trailblazing female film and television composer at a time when there were even fewer than there are now. Mentor to Hans Zimmer and Mark Watters, she had a bit […]
It was a night of art and social awareness for ASCAP members at the 33rd annual ASCAP Screen Music Awards last night, with composers John Powell and Germaine Franco taking center stage. Powell, who created the mind-blowing music for The Bourne Identity and sequels, and Franco — his protege and one of the few women composing music for […]
Sony is acquiring another 60 percent of EMI Music Publishing, bringing its total holding to 90 percent of the song giant. The deal, valued at around $2 billion, sees Sony gaining additional rights to EMI’s two million songs from artists ranging from Queen to Pink, Pharrell Williams and Carole King to drive revenue through Sony/ATV […]
Craig Armstrong — composer of scores to Moulin Rouge!, The Great Gatsby, Love Actually and Ray — will receive SoundTrack_Cologne’s 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award in a closing night ceremony at this year’s conference, which runs Aug. 22-25. The announcement was made today by Soundtrack_Cologne CEO Michael Aust at a Cannes Film Festival cocktail party for the film music event, […]
Kobalt is a leading independent rights management and publishing company that is making waves around the world. Although Wired magazine in 2015 called it “the most important music company you’ve never heard of,” a lot has changed since then. Today, everyone who’s anyone in the industry knows Kobalt. Founded in 200 by Willard Ahdritz, a […]
Bradley Cooper will direct and star in a biographical film about Leonard Bernstein, according to Variety, which reports Paramount Pictures and Amblin Partners will co-finance the project. The legendary conductor is now the subject of dueling biopics, with actor Jake Gyllenhaal developing a competing project that he will star in, with Cary Fukunaga set to direct. That […]
They went to outer space, but instead of finding a shooting star, they found… a circus tent. That’s how the world welcomed Killer Klowns From Outer Space, a 1988 cult classic that is getting high-class treatment for its 30th anniversary, with a live-to-picture performance of composer John Massari’s score by the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra. The film, […]
Established in 1930, SESAC stands out as innovative among the nation’s performing rights organizations (PROs), which collect royalties from radio and television stations, among other outlets, and distribute them to songwriters. In a textbook example of how to grow a business, SESAC was started as a niche operation, focused on European publishers in the classical […]
The Italian novelist Italo Calvino described a classic as something that exercises a particular influence, both when imprinting itself on your imagination unforgettably and hiding in the layers of memory disguised as individual or collective unconscious. By that measure, and other reckonings, the 1967 film The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols, and its genre-busting soundtrack are […]
