How BlacKkKlansman‘s Oscar-Nominated Composer Channeled Jimi Hendrix

*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees. 

Terence Blanchard landed on this year’s Best Original Score Oscar shortlist by crafting the stirring score for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Based on a true story and set in 1971, the movie casts John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, a black cop who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) by impersonating a white supremacist over the phone.

Black Panther’s Oscar-Nominated Composer on his Global Collaboration

The minute Ludwig Göransson finished reading an early draft of Black Panther sent to him by director Ryan Coogler, the Swedish-born composer knew exactly what he needed to do. “I called up Ryan and said ‘I have to go to Africa,'” recalls Göransson, who is now reaping the benefits of his due diligence. Additional to the Best Score Emmy he won, Göransson is also vying for an Academy Award this Sunday for his Black Panther music.

Oscar-Nominated Composer Nicholas Britell on Nailing the Tone for Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk

*In the run-up to this Sunday’s Oscars telecast, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews with nominees. 

Juilliard-trained New York composer Nicholas Britell worked non-stop in 2018 and now he’s got two Oscar shortlisted movie scores to show for it. Early in the year, he teamed with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins to write the music for If Beale Street Could Talk,

Oscar Watch: Composer Nicholas Britell on Nailing the Tone for Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk

Juilliard-trained New York composer Nicholas Britell worked non-stop in 2018 and now he’s got two Oscar shortlisted movie scores to show for it. Early in the year, he teamed with Moonlight director Barry Jenkins to write the music for If Beale Street Could Talk, the tragic love story set in early-’70s Harlem. Then he scored Dick Cheney bio-pic Vice, featuring Oscar front runner Christian Bale,

Oscar Watch: How BlacKkKlansman‘s Composer Channeled Jimi Hendrix’s Iconic Riffs

Terence Blanchard landed on this year’s Best Original Score Oscar shortlist by crafting the stirring score for Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Based on a true story and set in 1971, the movie casts John David Washington as Ron Stallworth, a black cop who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with his Jewish colleague (Adam Driver) by impersonating a white supremacist over the phone. Blanchard, a jazz trumpeter who grew up in New Orleans alongside Wynton Marsalis,

Oscar Watch: Justin Hurwitz on Composing the Emotional Toll of Reaching For The Moon in First Man

Oscar and Golden Globe-winning composer Justin Hurwitz crafts scores that feature stirring and beautiful notes and chord progressions, but they are born from human experiences. Hurwitz mines melodies alongside his longtime creative partner, Damien Chazelle, who directs with music in mind. Their first three films together examined the human condition through musicians including a jazz trumpeter (Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench), a drum student (Whiplash),

Exclusive Video: Oscar Short-Listed The Death of Stalin Composer on Scoring Lunacy

When we interviewed composer Christopher Willis about writing the now Oscar short-listed score for Armando Iannucci‘s hilarious, bleakly resonant dark comedy The Death of Stalin, he told us that one of his major influences in the film was the legendary Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich. “Because he was famous, he had a complicated relationship with Stalin, he was in and out of favor. There were times he thought he’d written a piece that had offended the authorities,

Oscar Watch: How Composer Brian Tyler Spiced Up Crazy Rich Asians Score

Brian Tyler started playing drums at age four, taught himself piano, guitar and cello soon after, toured the world at age fifteen performing a concerto he’d written and paid his way through Harvard by playing in rock bands. More recently, he’s scored more than $1.2 billion worth of global blockbusters including Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fast & Furious, and Iron Man 3. His latest hit,

Composer Dustin O’Halloran Finds Music to Express The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give premiered at TIFF one day after the first airing of the Colin Kaepernick Nike ad. That the add went viral and became such a controversy only added to the fame and buzz around the composer of the music used in the ad, Dustin O’Halloran, who also provided the score for The Hate U Give. The films follows 16-year old Starr (an outstanding Amandla Stenberg) as she goes back and forth between her working-class Garden Heights neighborhood and the predominantly white Williamson Prep School across town—until a tragedy collapses the siloed world Starr had created.

TIFF 2018: The Tender Fragility of the Boy Erased Score

Boy Erased is a shattering portrayal of a family fractured by a challenge to their stringent religious beliefs. Based on the memoir by Garrard Conley, Lucas Hedges plays Jared, a young man from a religious family who begins to realize he is gay. Jared’s parents send him to a church-sanctioned conversion therapy camp where he struggles to find acceptance even within. Hedges’ performance is fragile and vulnerable, which makes many of the story’s events difficult to watch.

TIFF 2018: The Front Runner Composer Rob Simonsen on Scoring a Political Upheaval

Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner centers on Gary Hart (Hugh Jackman)’s doomed 1988 presidential campaign, undone by the candidate’s extramarital affairs and a media landscape shifting beneath his feet. The film plunges you into the fevered weeks when Hart’s campaign unravels, seemingly hour by hour, as the talented senator refuses to face the reality of his actions and his staff is left scrambling to play defense.

You’ll likely be too caught up in the drama (and marveling at a time when a politicians’ infidelities were career-enders) to notice just what composer Rob Simonsen‘s score is doing,

TIFF 2018: Hans Zimmer on The Dark Knight, Wonder Woman 1984 & More

Hans Zimmer is no stranger to working with directors who have a ferocious passion. Yesterday, we published our interview with the Oscar-winning composer about his score for Steve McQueen’s thrilling crime drama Widows. Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score blended perfectly with McQueen’s film about three women navigating the criminal underworld in Chicago to pull off a nearly impossible bank heist. They’re attempting to pay off their dead husband’s deaths and forge their own paths,

TIFF 2018: Legendary Composer Hans Zimmer on Scoring Steve McQueen’s Sensational Widows

Hans Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score for Widows gets under your skin. The legendary composer creates a sonic environment that feels as pressurized and cloistered as the predicament of our four heroines. When you see Steve McQueen’s brilliant crime drama, you’ll notice a persistent humming throughout. As the stakes rise for the three women at the center of the story (the widows of three dead criminals who now must pull off a monumentally dangerous heist to pay off their debts and forge a path of their own),

The Riverdale Composer on Mixing Melodrama with Archie’s Innocent Past

Riverdale of the classic Archie comics was a quaint and wholesome every town with a spotless reputation. In print for more than 75 years, a recent shakeup led Archie Comics CCO, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, to create Riverdale. The edgy soap opera saga finally acknowledged that so many rivalries couldn’t remain peaceful and there had to be a dark underbelly in the town. Criminal empires, student-teacher relationships, and murder mysteries plague Riverdale with the heart of the original Archie characters intact.

Jimi Hendrix-Style Cello Hybrid Defines Sicario: Day of the Soldado‘s Brooding Score

Icelandic musician Hildur Guðnadóttir was all over the first Sicario movie: She played the cello throughout the Oscar-nominated score written by her longtime collaborator Jóhann Jóhannsson. He died suddenly this winter. For the sequel Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Guðnadóttir scored the picture herself, but this time around, she cranked up the sense of menace by playing a one-of-a-kind instrument dubbed the “dorophone.” “It’s based on a cello,

How Ryan Lofty Helps Make Every Day Sound Like Saturday on Harvey Street

Ryan Lofty comes from humble beginnings in Robins, Iowa, raised in a log cabin his parents built. With his insanely sweet, talented piano-and-organ-playing mother, he grew up in a household that appreciated music in all its forms. “I went through all the phases… played trumpet in high school band, went to college on a jazz scholarship, toured the country with a rock group, and ended up in California as a DJ… turns out, experience with a lot of genres really helps with producing music for TV.

Bringing the Music of the Muppets to a New Generation of Muppet Babies

There are few American icons that have been more places, done more things, and spread more joy than the Muppets. Miss Piggy, Animal, Fozzie, Gonzo, and of course, Kermit, are always game for an adventure. Music has always been an integral part of their career as entertainers. Andy Bean pens catchy tunes while composer Keith Horn writes the score for a younger generation of Muppets fans. And also, a younger generation of Muppets. Disney Junior relaunched Muppet Babies in March featuring the puppet heroes in toddler form.

Actress-Turned-Composer Amelia Warner Helps Re-Imagine Frankenstein Origin Story in Mary Shelley

It was a dark and stormy night two centuries ago when 18-year old Mary Shelley, staying at Lord Byron’s estate in Geneva, Switzerland, responded to her host’s scary story contest by writing “Frankenstein.” Then came the hard part: persuading someone in London’s male-dominated book industry to publish the story under her own name. Starring Elle Fanning, Mary Shelley, which recently opened wide, tracks the heroine’s love affair with poet Percy Shelley and the crushing disappointments leading up to her creation of the now-classic horror tale.

13 Reasons Why‘s Music Supervisor on Selecting Music for the Mayhem of High School

Netflix’s hit show 13 Reasons Why has had its share of controversy from the beginning. The show centers around teen character Hannah Baker’s suicide, how various traumatic experiences led to her deciding to end her life, and how friends and classmates deal with the knowledge that they potentially had a hand in her decision. Though mental health professionals and other groups have had concerns around the depiction of rape, bullying, suicide, and gun violence,

The Music of Lizzie Strikes a Sympathetic Tone for the Famous Killer

The four-line Lizzie Borden rhyme is graphic, if not particularly sympathetic. A woman commits a double homicide and the victims are her own parents. The real Borden was acquitted of the 1892 murders, but her legacy was condemned to the role of cold-blooded killer. Sundance selection Lizzie, starring Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart, revisited the infamous crime with a compassion for Borden and explored the motivation that drove her to pick up the axe.