Italian composer Ennio Morricone walked away from the European Film Awards with the coveted European Composer Award 2013. The award comes for his work on “The Best Offer”, directed by Giuseppe Tornator and starring Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess, Sylvia Hoeks and Donald Sutherland.

Morricone is still best known in the public eye  for his distinctive music for a series of westerns in the seventies, but has remained an in-demand composer across very many genres since that time.  The 85 year-old averages one film per year, with titles as diverse as “Inglorious Basterds”, “Ripley’s Game”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and “Once Upon a Time in New York”.

Morricone is currently working on “L’enfant du Sahara”, directed by Laurent Merlin.