composer: Last News

Musicians want the international streamers to change their tune in Europe.

A flooring store boss furious at being given fajitas for dinner flung the meal in his grieving wife's face. At the time James McAteer's partner was trying to compose a eulogy for her dead uncle. A court heard the assault was part of a catalogue of domestic abuse spanning 10 years.

Jimmy Quigley says his Renfrew side were composed and professional in their emphatic win over Finnart in the Strathclyde Demolition Cup as his team scored goals at the “right time”.

EXCLUSIVE: Sky is developing a drama series on beloved composer Mozart’s time in Vienna from Giri/Haji writer Joe Barton and produced by Patrick Melrose indie Two Cities Television.

EXCLUSIVE: Indian Two Time Grammy Award composer and environmentalist Ricky Kej has signed to compose the original music for American-Bangladeshi writer-director Asif Akbar’s spy action-thriller MR-9 featuring Frank Grillo as a villain.

The Warner Bros Worldwide Marketing vet is in talks for the top Film & TV, Marketing post at Amazon Studios, sources tell us. The rumor has been around for a while, and we understand it’s becoming more real, and it really shouldn’t surprise as Sue Kroll has been a marketing consultant at Amazon Studios for six months. Sources tell us that the streamer and Kroll are still working out details.

He's the man who conducts the incredible soundtracks to Strictly Come Dancing every week.

Pop superstar Carly Simon paid tribute to her sisters – opera singer Joanna Simon and Broadway composer Lucy Simon – who each died of cancer last week within one day of the other.

Lucy Simon, the Tony Award-nominated composer of Broadway’s 1991 musical The Secret Garden and sister of singer Carly Simon, died of breast cancer Thursday at her home in Piedmont, New York. She was 82.

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has an exclusive 3-track sampler from Carter Burwell’s score to The Banshees of Inisherin, which is set for release on all major digital platforms tomorrow via Hollywood Records, as the film debuts in theaters via Searchlight Pictures.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Warner Chappell Music publishing has unveiled an original podcast series called “Setting the Standard: Stories from the Great American Songbook,” in partnership with Bang/Audiation – the team behind WCM’s podcast “Final Sessions: Harry Nilsson’s Losst and Founnd.” The new podcast will “weave together story and song into a tapestry of American cultural history for songwriters, historians, musicians, artists, and fans alike,” according to the announcement. Launching on October 25th, “Setting the Standard” will feature eight episodes – each on a different legendary songwriter – starting with three-time Oscar-winning and pioneering film composer Harry Warren. Additional episodes will roll out throughout the year and spotlight composers and songwriters including Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Jule Styne, and more. Using historical sources and new discussions with scholars, critics, artists, and family members, the series will tell the stories of their lives and highlight their most iconic songs. It will also feature exclusive interviews from artists like Billy Corgan and Michael Feinstein, and top songwriters such as Justin Tranter.

Women represent only a quarter of all film directors working in the European film industry, according to a new study by the Strasbourg-based European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO).

Jon Burlingame editor The Grammys’ new video game score category appears to be a success in its first year, as more than 70 original scores have been entered. First-round voting is underway now, and Recording Academy members have plenty to choose from. But will they vote based on popularity of the game or on quality of the music? Grammy voters tell Variety the ballot includes currently popular games such as the dark fantasy “Elden Ring” (music by Yuka Kitamura, Yoshimi Kudo, Shoi Miyazawa, Tsukasa Saitoh and Tai Tomisawa), the action-adventure “Tunic” (music by Janice Kwan and Terence Lee), the post-apocalyptic “Horizon Forbidden West” (music by “various artists,” the only game on the ballot that doesn’t specify a composer) and the horror-filled “The Quarry” (music by Ian Livingstone).

Mike Wass With global box office receipts already exceeding $100 million, “Smile” is the breakout horror hit of 2022. And while pundits largely put the film’s success down to Parker Finn’s spooky premise and a razor-sharp marketing campaign, its secret sauce is arguably Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s inventive score. Built around an obscure instrument that mimics human growls and groans, the otherworldly soundscape adds a layer of dread to “Smile” that lingers long after the credits roll. “Besides being the creepiest score of the year, Parker wanted it to be original,” Tapia de Veer says of the director’s original brief. To achieve that formidable goal, the Chilean-born composer knew that he had to sidestep the genre’s obsession with synthesizers. “In the last few years, there has been an obsession with retro sounds from the ’80s,” he says. “It’s very hard to plug in a synthesizer and not sound like John Carpenter when you start doing creepy things.”

Jon Burlingame editor The centennial of Henry Mancini, composer of “The Pink Panther,” “Moon River” and other movie songs, isn’t until 2024. But the celebration began on Thursday when an all-star parade of Oscar, Emmy and Grammy-winning musicians got together to re-record one of his most famous works: “Peter Gunn.” With legendary composers John Williams and Herbie Hancock on keyboards, jazz great Arturo Sandoval on trumpet and music mogul Quincy Jones conducting an 18-piece band of L.A. session players, Mancini’s 1958 TV theme rocked the Warner Bros. scoring stage all afternoon. It was old home week for many, who seemingly spent half the three-hour session embracing, laughing and snapping photos. Williams and Jones called each other “Q” and “John T.,” the nicknames they had when the two were toiling side-by-side at Universal Television in the 1960s, before each started collecting Oscars and Grammys for their work in films and records.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Rupert Murdoch is considering getting the whole gang together again — a new combination of the two big media companies his family controls. Murdoch has proposed an exploration of the potential for a merger of Fox Corp. and News Corp., two entities his family split apart in the summer of 2013. according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed by the latter. The Wall Street Journal previously reported the decision, which would be mulled by special committees of each company’s board of directors. News Corp. said that it “formed a Special Committee composed of independent and disinterested members of the Board to begin exploring a potential combination with Fox Corporation” after it received “letters from K. Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust.” There is no guarantee a merger will result from the discussions, the company said.

The European Union police agency Europol said Friday that Spanish police have dismantled an organized crime group believed to have been running Europe’s biggest "narco-bank," used to launder proceeds from international drug trafficking. Europol said the group, composed mainly of Syrians, operated out of a restaurant in an industrial park in the central Spanish town of Fuenlabrada.There, customers could deposit or collect bulk cash and have their earnings laundered by the internationally structured financial network, Europol said. Europol said the group provided financial services to crime gangs linked to drug trafficking in more than twenty countries across the world.

Jon Burlingame February 2023 will be the first time a composer will walk away with a Grammy for scoring a video game. And many in the creative community are saying “it’s about time.” Game scores have, over the past two decades, become a huge part of the media music landscape. Yet, despite being eligible for music’s highest honor since 1999 (in the film and TV music category), only one game has ever been nominated: Austin Wintory’s landmark score for “Journey,” in 2012. After years of lobbying by game executives and composers alike, in June the Recording Academy announced a new category, the tongue-twister score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media to “recognize excellence in score soundtrack albums comprised predominantly of original scores and created specifically for, or as a companion to, a current video game or other interactive media.”

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Hulu’s “Rosaline” (streaming Oct. 14) puts a rom-com spin on Shakespeare’s classic love story “Romeo and Juliet.” With that, composers Drum & Lace (Sofia Hultquist and Ian Hultquist) put a similar spin on their musical approach to scoring. The film stars Kaitlyn Deaver as Rosaline, the story’s jilted ex-lover. Drum & Lace integrated traditional instruments of the time, such as harpsichord, lute, wooden flutes, renaissance drums and more, into a score with a pop sensibility. But for the composing duo whose credits include “Dickenson” and “Good Lenny,” scoring comedy was more of a challenge than scoring drama. Sofia Hultquist said, “You have comedic timing to keep very much in mind. For ‘Rosaline,’ we tried to find very strong themes that we could use often so as to build a familiarity with the characters as well as play up the emotional arcs that were happening on-screen.”

EXCLUSIVE: Ashton Gleckman, the director behind Holocaust documentary We Shall Not Die Now, is turning his attention to John F. Kennedy in a new docuseries.

“The Rings of Power” is planning to close out season 1 of the “Lord of the Rings” prequel series in epic fashion. Ahead of next Friday’s conclusion, Prime Video debuted an epic trailer, promising that “all will be revealed” in the finale. Not only that, but the episode will also feature a new song by Fiona Apple.