Randy Newman

Randy Newman (cousin of Thomas and David and nephew of Alfred) was best known early in his career for his songwriting, penning and performing such satirical hits as "Short People," "I Love LA," and "Louisiana 1927." Growing up in New Orleans gave him an excellent background for his first major score, Ragtime. His distinct style of Americana blossomed in his scores for The Natural and Avalon. He collaborated with director Ron Howard on Parenthood and The Paper and with Gary Ross on Pleasantville and Seabiscuit. Other credits include the stop motion musical James and the Giant Peach, Meet the Parents (and its sequel Meet the Fockers), George Clooney's Leatherheads, and Richard Donner's Maverick. Disney's The Princess and the Frog allowed Newman to use his knowledge of the many musical styles found in New Orleans for both songs and the score. Newman became the first composer for Pixar Animation Studios, scoring its first four features and three more since. His Toy Story scores feature lushly orchestrated yet frantic cartoon music, overshadowed by classic songs such as "You've Got a Friend In Me" and "When She Loved Me." Cars mixes small-town folk for scenes set in Radiator Springs with high energy rock for the racing sequences, though the film features much more pop songs than typical in a Pixar feature. Monsters, Inc. contains a highly entertaining blend of swinging jazz and a tender theme for the relationship between Sulley and Boo. Its prequel, Monsters University, eschews the jazz angle for a rousing fight theme complete with marching band snares and quads. A Bug's Life is, for me, his best score (which is not adequately represented on the commercial CD), with an epic theme, menacing music for the grasshoppers, adventurous action, and a tone more serious than that of his other Pixar films. Newman finally got two well deserved Oscars for "If I Didn't Have You" from Monsters, Inc. and "We Belong Together" from Toy Story 3. For those wondering how Newman got so sentimental lately, they only need listen to his acceptance speeches to witness that the bite is still there.

A Bug’s Life*

Cars
Cars 3

Monsters, Inc.
Monsters University

The Natural

The Princess and the Frog
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3

David Newman

David Newman is one of the mighty Newman clan, brother to Thomas, cousin to Randy, and son of Alfred. Compared to Thomas and Randy, David writes in a more classically orchestral vein. His longest collaboration has been with Danny DeVito, on the films Throw Momma From the Train, The War of the Roses, Other People's Money, Hoffa, Matilda, and Death to Smoochy. His most prominent features have been comedies such as Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Mighty Ducks, The Sandlot, The Flintstones, The Nutty Professor, Scooby-Doo, Daddy Day Care, and The Spy Next Door. A particular fan favorite is Galaxy Quest, which he scores as if it were an epic, serious sci-fi adventure film. But Newman has also scored for more serious films like The Affair of the Necklace and the comic book films The Phantom and The Spirit. He has also dabbled in animation, lending scores to The Brave Little Toaster, Anastasia (though he didn't write the mediocre songs), and Ice Age. When Joss Whedon requested a score with many disparate types of music for Serenity, Newman cooked up a complex, ambitious score. Newman was elected as president of the Film Music Society in 2007.

Fire Birds
Galaxy Quest
Jingle All the Way
The Phantom
Serenity

John Murphy

John Murphy's work tends toward the experimental. He uses innovative electronic methods and thrashing guitars that in depth, compositional skill, and dramatic suitability far exceed superficially similar music in films such as the first Iron Man, The Social Network, and Inception. Despite his preference for this type of music, Murphy can also write for orchestra. He deftly wrote around the needle-drop songs in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels as well as Snatch. City by the Sea displays Murphy's ability to write in a wide variety of styles while Last House on the Left features his adeptness at horror. But Murphy's most fruitful collaboration has been with director Danny Boyle. In 28 Days Later, Murphy uses his signature guitars and eerie effects to create a bold new style of horror scoring. The sequel 28 Weeks Later extends this approach even further, adding an expanded instrumental palette and new melodic ideas. His tender score for Millions perfectly expresses the selfless quest of the two young brothers. In Sunshine, Murphy takes his experimental, electronic approach to create a surprisingly moving and emotional musical accompaniment to the sci-fi film. Murphy modified a couple of cues from 28 Days Later and Sunshine and added some new material for Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass. The contributions he and Henry Jackman made to the score are unexpectedly entertaining, rousing, and, at times, poignant. One can only hope that this talented composer will find more assignments and maybe reunite with Boyle. While A.R. Rahman's Bollywood style was appropriate (and not much more) for Slumdog Millionaire, one can only imagine what Murphy would have done with 127 Hours.

Armored
Anonymous Rejected Filmscore
City by the Sea

Kick-Ass** (with Henry Jackman, Marius De Vries, Ilan Eshkeri, Danny Elfman)

Last House on the Left

Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels

Millions

Snatch

Sunshine*

28 Days Later

28 Weeks Later*

Ennio Morricone

Ennio Morricone is the most prolific living film composer, with over 500 scores to his name. Most of these films and shows are Italian, but Morricone has also composed for prominent Hollywood films as well, and his music has been tracked in films from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds to Matthew Vaughn's Kick-Ass. His most influential work has been for director Sergio Leone, especially the spaghetti Westerns. A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Once Upon a Time in the West feature eccentric orchestrations, bold vocal chants, rapid trumpet calls, and the signature electric guitar that has become associated with the genre. The sound he creates is almost indescribable to one who hasn't heard it, but is immediately and distinctively recognizable. Apart from these groundbreaking Italian westerns, Morricone also composed atmospheric music for John Carpenter's The Thing, expressive love themes for Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, a famous oboe melody and a stunning choral finale to The Mission, and the score to Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, including an exultant, triumphant fanfare. He also wrote a heavenly and glorious score to What Dreams May Come that was rejected in favor of Michael Kamen's more intimate (but still beautiful) approach. Although Morricone has won an honorary Oscar, he has for some reason never won an Oscar for Best Original Score. Nevertheless, his fantastic music will leave (and already has left) a legacy that will last far longer than the music of certain other composers who have won Oscars. Particularly one who inexplicably won two Oscars in a row in 2005 and 2006.

Fat Man and Little Boy
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly**

The Mission*

Once Upon a Time in the West*

The Untouchables**

What Dreams May Come (rejected)

Robyn Miller

Robyn Miller is best known for co-founding the computer game company Cyan and created with his brother Rand the landmark games Myst and Riven. Miller also played Sirrus in the first game and wrote the scores for both games. Myst features haunting electronic sounds and distinctive motifs that add an unsettling feeling to the already eerie game. (His themes for the brothers Sirrus and Achenar would be used by Jack Wall in his score for Myst IV: Revelation.) Riven's score is more atmospheric and less busy, with an emphasis on "ethnic" sounds. In 2005, Miller worked on a new musical project called Ambo.

Myst
Riven

Alan Menken

Alan Menken is nearly synonymous with the modern-day Disney musical. With lyricists Stephen Schwartz (of Wicked fame), Tim Rice, David Zippel, Glenn Slater, and the brilliant Howard Ashman, he has written songs that have become classics. One may take songs such as "Under the Sea," "Beauty and the Beast," "Friend Like Me," "Colors of the Wind," and "I See the Light" for granted. But one need only listen to the cringe-inducing songs in animated features like Thumbelina, The Pebble and the Penguin, Quest for Camelot, and the direct-to-video Disney sequels to witness how difficult it is to write a musical-style song that does not induce vomiting. Menken and Ashman's songs for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin contributed immensely to the revival and subsequent domination of Disney animation in the early '90s. Menken worked with Schwartz on Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Enchanted where the songs became darker and more dramatically complex. Hercules (with Zippel) and Home on the Range (with Slater) emphasized Menken's lighter side, while Tangled (with Slater) represented a recent, glorious return to his '90s work. Yet though Menken's songs take the spotlight, it is his scores that show his evolution and maturity as an orchestral composer, some of them among the most emotional and effective in modern film music. Menken really hit his stride with Beauty and the Beast, deftly capturing the drama and glory of the film's finale. Enchanted combines lush, fantasy scoring, modern pop, and a massive choral finale. Tangled features the requisite dramatic emotional cues, but also features folk stylings and swashbuckling, heroic fanfares. But The Hunchback of Notre Dame may be Menken's masterpiece score, with intense chanting and a sense of darkness and even apocalyptic doom that is only found briefly in his other scores. Menken will always be the master of the animated musical, but his scoring can, in some ways, be even more impressive.

Aladdin

Beauty and the Beast**
Beauty and the Beast (2017)*

Enchanted*

Hercules

The Hunchback of Notre Dame**
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Stage Musical)**

The Little Mermaid
Mirror Mirror

Pocahontas*
Sausage Party* (with Christopher Lennertz)

Tangled

Bear McCreary

Bear McCreary (awesome name) is primarily a composer for television, but his work is definitely of feature film quality. Science fiction geeks (and various other fiefdoms of the Geekery Kingdom) praise his music for the epic series Battlestar Galactica and its sister show, Caprica. McCreary also has scored Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and The Walking Dead as well as for the video games SOCOM 4 and Dark Void. His work for The Cape and the first season of Human Target display his potent orchestral chops, using streamlined yet thematically flexible writing to underscore the action and emotion.

The Cape
The Cloverfield Paradox
Colossal
Happy Death Day
Human Target
Rebel in the Rye
10 Cloverfield Lane

Dario Marianelli

Dario Marianelli is an Italian composer who uses complicated orchestral techniques to create scores of affecting and often profound emotion. His most popular and well known style is the tender, expressive idiom for the romances Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and the Academy Award-winning Atonement. The latter score is famed for its use of the typewriter as a supplement to the orchestra. His score for the Spanish film Agora takes emotion and spectacle to epic heights, while V for Vendetta features jagged action motifs and rhythms. Marianelli's score for Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm merges large-scale fantasy scoring with brutal action to create a sometimes exhausting, but ultimately exhilarating work. Marianelli's versatility and his adroit compositional writing make him a composer to watch.

Agora

The Brothers Grimm*
Darkest Hour
Kubo and the Two Strings

V for Vendetta