From Batwoman to The Witcher, 10 Composers to Watch

 Posted on July 25, 2024  |  13 minutes  |  2606 words  |  Jenniffer Sheldon

Thanks to the advent of original content on streaming services, recent years have seen a steady influx of newcomers entering the field of film scoring. So for the first time, Variety has chosen 10 talents (really, 11, as one of our choices is a two-person team) to watch.

Some are young and fresh — recognition can take years — with only a handful of film or television credits, others are veterans just breaking into the front ranks. Half, we are proud to say, are women — a reflection of the importance of gender parity in Hollywood despite the continued dominance of men in this profession — and three of those are people of color. Two hail from the pop world; two come from the United Kingdom; and one is a unique composing duo: Russian Sonya Belousova and Swiss-Italian Giona Ostinelli.

Such diversity bodes well for the resulting work and brings with it a unique sonic point of view that can be heard beyond the traditional feature film to reality competitions, video games and documentaries.

Pictured, from left: Gordy Haab and Tamar-Kali

  • Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli

    “The Witcher”

    When the song “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” went viral shortly after “The Witcher” debuted on Netflix in December, it caught everyone by surprise — even its composers, Belousova and Ostinelli, who created
    the soundtrack in their L.A. studio.

    “We knew that it was going to attract attention,” says Belousova, a classical pianist. “But to this degree, hell no!” Ostinelli adds: “When we were writing the song, it was stuck in our heads for such a long time. That’s a great way to see if what you write is good.”

    They penned more than nine hours of music for the dark fantasy and played most of the period instruments (hurdy-gurdy, lute, ethnic flutes) themselves; they also wrote all the songs, dances and folk tunes peppered throughout.

    The duo have been collaborating for six years, working together on the Stephen King miniseries “The Mist,” the Amazon series “The Romanoffs,” the 2017 feature “M.F.A.” and the Facebook Watch series “Sacred Lies.” They are currently preparing an orchestra-and-choir version of “The Witcher” to debut later this year.

  • Nathaniel Blume

    “Prodigal Son”

    As with many young composers eager to make it in the scoring world, Blume graduated from USC’s prestigious film-scoring program and took a job assisting a high-profile composer: Blake Neely, who as one of TV’s busiest composers (with six series currently on the CW alone), was always in need of well-trained, dramatically astute musicmakers.

    Twelve years later, the Indiana native shares composing credit with Neely on “The Flash” and “Arrow” while also scoring his own weekly thriller, Fox’s “Prodigal Son,” and has worked on several high-profile CNN documentaries including “The Movies,” “1968: The Year That Changed America” and three of its decades series (“The Eighties,” “The Nineties” and “The 2000s”).

    To create a unique sound palette for “Prodigal Son” (about a New York detective whose father is an infamous serial killer), Blume acquired a set of surgical tools and bone cutters, sampled the sounds they made and turned those into a percussive foundation for the score. Adding a string ensemble, he “ups the adrenaline every possible place that I can,” Blume tells Variety.

  • Kathryn Bostic

    “Clemency”

    Bostic is the first African American female composer in the Academy, but it’s not something she gloats much about. “How absurd we are still talking about pigment in 2020,” she says with a laugh. In fact, Bostic likes having her accomplishments in scoring do the talking: including Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ 2019 Toni Morrison documentary, “The Pieces I Am.”

    “It’s one of the few films I’ve ever scored where I only got three notes from the director,”says Bostic, who tapped into the energy of the iconic storyteller. “I was given a scene where she’s at home and she’s talking about her process — there was something so embryonic about that pure moment that I just started to write from that feeling. I always write from feeling, not from places of thinking about how to feel.”

    Ironically, for Chinonye Chukwu’s recent prison drama, “Clemency,” the director requested emotional restraint to reflect the starkness of death row. “That was one of the hardest movies I’d had to score because it relies so much on silence — silence as music, silence as a part of sonic conversation,” she says. She embraces her chosen career path. “Let’s just cut to the chase — it’s a real gift to be paid to write music for someone’s vision.”

  • Sherri Chung

    “Batwoman”

    It makes sense that Chung, who works on many of Greg Berlanti’s DC Comics empire shows including Riverdale, Blindspot and Batman, was inspired by the proto-superhero of English folklore. “I decided I wanted to be a film composer when I saw ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,’” she says of the 1991 movie. “It doesn’t really hold up these days but I was taken with Michael Kamen’s score.”

    Chung’s musical education began with piano lessons at age 5 and by the time she got to college, she double-majored in composition and theory and went to USC for grad school.

    Chung paid her dues on low-budget indies until one of her mentors, Blake Neely, expanded his business. “That’s when my career turned a corner because he pulled me in on higher-profile projects,” she says, including “Batwoman,” with Neely. “Now I’m getting projects of my own because of those credits. Yes, I had to bring my A-game to be on Blake’s radar and step up when he needed help — I was like: ‘Well, s–t, I’ve honed my skills’ — but honestly, the hardest part of our job is landing the gig.”

    That’s especially true for female composers. Says an incredulous Chung: “There are horrific stories of gender issues and people flat out saying, ‘I’m not going to hire this woman because she’s a woman.’”

  • Germaine Franco

    “Dora and the Lost City of Gold”

    With roots in El Paso, Texas, family in Northern Mexico and a current home in California, Franco’s music knows no borders. “I grew up with both Western and orchestral music, then also Latin music I heard in Mexico,” says the classically trained composer, who moved to L.A. with a master’s degree in music from Houston’s Rice University and a van full of instruments.

    Franco landed a job at the Los Angeles Theater Center, a gig that led her to Universal’s (now defunct) Hispanic Film Project and her first scores: “Tanto Tiempo” (1992) and “Breaking Pan With Sol” (1993). Later she met her mentor, the prolific John Powell. “That was my door opening within Hollywood,” says Franco, who collaborated with Powell on franchises in the animated (“Ice Age”) and feature realm (“Bourne”). Her solo credits include 2015’s Sundance hit “Dope” as well as family pics “Coco” and “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” along with the TV series “Vida.”

    The only Latina composer in the Academy, Franco says: “I never thought that was even a possibility with my last name. So that stamp of approval has made me feel proud of my background — I brought something to the table that was not there before.” That includes more diversity: Franco works on an executive committee to promote inclusion among the music ranks. “There’s a lot of work to be done, but we can only go forward from here.”

  • Gordy Haab

    “Star Wars: The Old Republic”

    John Williams may be the musical architect behind the “Star Wars” movies, but Haab is clearly the leading composer for the franchise’s video games.

    His “Star Wars: The Old Republic” soundtrack won kudos at the Game Audio Network Guild, while “Star Wars: Battlefront” won Gang’s Music of the Year honors, “Battlefront II” won ASCAP’s Video Game Score of the Year award and “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order” won the interactive media trophy at the inaugural Society of Composers & Lyricists awards in January.

    Haab estimates that he has written approximately 35 hours of “Star Wars” music, much of it recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road. He has also scored “Halo Wars 2” and is working on a Chinese-produced big-screen epic.

    “My goal was to be the symphonic composer in a world of hybrid scoring,” Haab says, referring to today’s more common mix of orchestra and electronic instrumentation. “I saw this opportunity to stand out from the crowd. If I could just keep doing this, I’d be thrilled and happy for the rest of my life.”

  • Tom Howe

    “Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon”

    The English composer is best known for the tasty accompaniment to the international TV hit “The Great British Bake Off,” but his musical resume also encompasses animation (“Early Man”), documentaries
    (“I Am a Killer”) and network TV (“Whiskey Cavalier”) as well as “additional music”credits on such big-budget films as “Wonder Woman.”

    Howe moved to L.A. in 2014, initially working with fellow Brit Harry Gregson-Williams. Their collaboration on “Early Man” led to a solo credit on last year’s “Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.”

    He has just finished the Channel Four documentary “Putin: A Russian Spy Story,” airing now in the U.K., and is currently scoring the Jason Sudeikis comedy “Ted Lasso” for Apple TV Plus and the upcoming Disney Channel movie “Upside-Down Magic.”

    “When I was younger, I wanted to be an actor,” Howe says. “My parents are musical, so I went off and did songs and bands. When I was able to combine the two, that to me was kind of the ultimate. It’s all storytelling, isn’t it?”

  • Paul Leonard-Morgan

    “Tales From the Loop”

    Twenty years after winning a BAFTA for his first film score and nine years after being nominated as “Discovery of the Year” at the World Soundtrack Awards, Scottish-born Leonard-Morgan is happily ensconced on the West Coast and busier than ever.

    His new sci-fi series, “Tales From the Loop,” for which he collaborated with celebrated composer Philip Glass on its soundscape, just debuted on Amazon. (The two had documentary filmmaker Errol Morris in common — Leonard-Morgan scored the Steve Bannon portrait “American Dharma” and the docu-series “Wormwood.”)

    “As a musician, the most wonderful thing is when people say, ‘I listened to this track with my granddaughter,’or ‘I played this track when I got married,’” he says. “That’s what music is about, isn’t it? Whether you’re writing for the theater or the screen, it’s about having an impact on someone.” Currently finishing work on the much-anticipated video game “Cyberpunk 2077,” due out this fall, Leonard-Morgan is also writing his first symphony.

  • Isa Summers

    “Little Fires Everywhere”

    Florence Welch may be the face of Florence and the Machine, but now her bandmate Summers is carving out her own identity as a composer. Trading England for L.A., she’s reinventing herself as modern-day lady of the canyon.

    “After a dozen years of being the ‘sound guy’ who makes the music, this is the most joyous progression — watching TV for a living is fantastic,” says Summers, who cut her teeth at composing by collaborating with Mark Isham on Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere.” Summers credits the show’s “genius” music supervisor, Mary Ramos, for offering her the opportunity.

    The self-described “hard-working Polish girl” found success in scoring as fast as she did with Florence. “With the band, I threw a snowball and created an avalanche, and now I feel like I’m doing it again with this motion-picture stuff,” she says. “I went straight into scoring for Reese [Witherspoon], an Oscar-winning actress, and now I’ve got three shows coming up.” They are: “Sex/Life” for Netflix, “Panic” for Amazon and the third, she says, is a “secret” — and deeply personal — project.

  • Tamar-kali

    “The Assistant”

    Tamar-kali’s relationship with music runs deep: the performer, composer and songwriter grew up with it. Her father was a bass player, playing jazz, and her aunt ran a club. As a young child, Tamar-kali would find herself sitting in with her dad’s band as they performed. She also sang soprano in the church choir growing up. “I knew it all: ‘Ave Maria’ and ‘Salve Regina,’” she cracks.

    Tamar-kali’s feature film score debut was for 2017’s “Mudbound,” director Dee Rees’ Jim Crow-era story
    of life on a rural farm in Mississippi following World War II, told from the perspectives of two races. The duo had previously worked together on Rees’ “Pariah” and “Bessie,” for which she had contributed songs.

    “Mudbound” required Tamar-kali to compose a mainly string-based score with a sonic palette reflecting the mud, rain and farmlife. “It was a process of learning about what it was to be a film score composer,” says Tamar-kali. “The process of working with a very small amount of resources and getting the most out of them.”

    Three years later and Tamar-kali was the buzz of Sundance in January, contributing to a trio of movies there: “Shirley,” “The Assistant” and “The Last Thing He Wanted,” the latter reuniting Tamar-kali with Rees.

    Hildur Guðnadóttir’s historic Oscar win in the original score category was an achievement Tamar-kali celebrated, too, and she hopes more women will come into the field as a matter of course. “There is a responsibility and an accountability that comes after that. I want to see palpable and sustainable change because these are issues our society is dealing with.”

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