The World Soundtrack Awards will present Ryuichi Sakamoto with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 16th edition of the event on the 19th of October in Ghent, Belgium. The award ties in with a spotlight on Japanese cinema. Continue reading Ryuichi Sakamoto to receive Lifetime Achievement Award
On November 12 a workshop about the European video game industry will take place at an unusual location: the European Parliament in Brussels. This workshop, organised by Creativity Works, is a chance to get a glimpse at how Europe’s football and video game industries work and what they need to keep creating jobs throughout Europe and remain engines of innovation.
The meeting will bring together:
Stefan Brost, Head of EU Office, Bundesliga (Germany)
Mathieu Moreuil, Head of European Public Policy, Premier League
Richard Glynn, CEO of Studio Powwow
David Sweeney, Senior Counsel, ISFE
Continue reading Last minute: video game workshop in Brussels
Sad news from Southern California: the Oscar-winning composer James Horner died in a plane crash on June 22, 2015. Horner was the composer of several major movies, notably “A Beautiful Mind”, “Troy”, “Avatar” and “Apollo 13”. Horner’s soundtrack to the James Cameron movie “Titanic” earned him two Oscars, for the soundtrack and for best song. It also earned him two Grammys and two Golden Globes.
The 61 year-old was flying one of his light planes when it crashed in the early morning. There were no other casualties. His assistant Sylvia Patrycja commented: “We have lost an amazing person with a huge heart, and unbelievable talent.”
Horner was working on the score to the two sequels that have been planned to Avatar. His next film to be released will be “Southpaw”, a boxing drama starring Jake Gyllenhall and Rachel McAdams. Other projects include “The 33”, a film based on the 2010 Chilean mining disaster, that will be in released in November.
There was a time when writing for cinema had a certain prestige. There was also a time when writing for cinema usually involved being paid to do the work. Increasingly, however, composers are finding themselves totally squeezed on both fronts. Continue reading The rise and fall of French soundtrack composers
The Oscar fever has started. Although music is far from being the focus of the event, the music nominations are inevitably pretty impressive.
It’s interesting to note that two of the nominees – Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat – have been featured on Find-a-Track in the past few months.
In the US, the Guild of Music Supervisors was founded to act as a valuable, highly specialized resource to further the understanding of the constant evolution of music in media and for related guilds who benefit from our expertise.
As such it tries to ensure that music supervisors are not forgotten in their work and when it comes to awards ceremony. Continue reading US Guild of Music Supervisors announces nominees
As “Interstellar” is sitting very comfortably atop most of the box office charts at the moment (November 2014), I couldn’t help being interested in reading a Quora piece on working with Christopher Nolan. The reply came from none other than Hans Zimmer (photo), the famous soundtrack composer.
Chris … doesn’t, in any way, get in the way of my imagination. In fact, he works very hard at not having me confined by the mechanics of film-making. So, our process is usually starting long conversations – just riffing on ideas. Then slowly I start writing and experimenting, coming up with sounds, etc., all the while keeping in constant conversation with Chris.
What is perhaps even more fascinating is the way Zimmer got involved in “Interstellar” in the first place. From a separate question: Continue reading What’s it like working with Christopher Nolan?
The President and Chairman of the Board of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Paul Williams, will deliver a keynote interview at next year’s Midem in June 2015.
Williams is know to the broader public as a composer and actor, having written numerous hits for artists as diverse as Elvis Presley and Kermit the Frog. Continue reading Head of ASCAP to address MIDEM about the future of licensing
URGENT Narip will be bringing their highly-rated music supervisor sessions to the Berlin Music Week on September 4, 2014. The idea is to give composers, publishers and labels a chance to pitch music to supervisors that are currently working on projects. The limited enrollment of 16 people per session guarantees that they meet and get face-time with the guest music supervisors.
Registrants get a brief of the guest supervisor’s CURRENT music needs, a chance to pitch plus immediate feedback at each session, taking the mystery out of why a piece of music does or doesn’t fit. On-the-spot feedback can help registrants to re-work tracks and perhaps get them licensed – or at the very least brings them valuable market knowledge.
Two events are planned this year:
Attendance is free for Berlin Music Week attendants but you must sign up by August 26, 2014. So click through right now.
Details on the Narip site or the Berlin Music Week.
Postbahnhof am Ostbahnhof
Straße der Pariser Kommune 8
10243 Berlin
Germany
Frenchman Francis Lai, the cult soundtrack composer who gave a distinctive feel to films such as Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman/Un homme et une femme”), “Bilitis and “Love Story” will receive a lifetime award at the upcoming World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium in October 2014.
UPDATE: Francis Lai died at the age of 86 on November 7, 2018. Continue reading Francis Lai to receive lifetime award at soundtrack event
