Top Film Composers Working Today: Part 1

Film music is an art form that rarely gets the respect it deserves. Many people can leave a theater and hardly even remember the score let alone recognize it when it plays during the movie. Most people probably just tune it out, their brain registering the sound as background music and nothing more. But film geeks understand how important it is to marry picture and sound together. Imagine Star Wars without it's iconic sweeping horns or Batman without Hans Zimmer's brooding strings. It brings life to pictures. If the script is the soul of the movie, the score has to be the heart, beating along to keep our attention engaged and our emotions in check.  Here are my top composers working today that breath fresh life into those flicks and always continue to tickle our ears with majestic musical fanfare.

Michael Giacchino

Selected Tracks:

Letting Go - Super 8

Married Life - Up

John Carter Of Mars - John Carter

Special Order - Rataouille

Quite possibly the most lucky composer working today because of his working relationship with Pixar (I'm a Pixar fanatic) Michael Giacchino has quickly risen to become one of the most well known composers in film. A sort of successor to John Williams, Giacchino is all about big fanfare orchestral production. Whether it's the loud bombastic score of the Star Trek films or the melodic tunes of Ratatouille, Giacchino knows how to keep his scores fresh and in tune to what the theme of the story represents. While his live action film scores are more than generic, it's in animation that it feels like he really gets to cut loose and flex his musical dexterity. Up & Inside Out with it's childish themes or The Incredibles with it's homage to classic spy movies, every collaboration with Pixar brings something inventive and creative. Let's hope this continues with The Incredibles 2 and beyond.

Hans Zimmer 

Selected Tracks:

Mountains - Interstellar

A Small Measure of Peace - The Last Samurai

The Greatest Woman On Earth - As Good As It Gets

Watch The World Burn - The Dark Knight

Duh. This was a given. Hans Zimmer is probably the most popular film composer of our times scoring popular major pictures such as The Dark Knight, The Lion King, Inception, Blade Runner 2049, Gladiator, Dunkirk, and the masterful animation flick BOSS BABY. Even if you don't know his name, you will instantly recognize his iconic themes. What's great about Hans Zimmer is he ditches the sort of ADHD style of John Williams where the score changes every second and sometimes let's repetition do the work in pieces like Watch The World Burn or Mountains. There isn't horns blasting you in the ear drum but actual melodic tunes you can hum with most of his work. Not afraid of fusing electronic and orchestra together and even sampling real world sounds like an actual train for The Lone Ranger, it's no wonder every time a Hans Zimmer score comes out the world listens.

Johann Johannsson

Selected Tracks:

Rowing - The Theory Of Everything

Desert Music - Sicario

Through Falling Snow - Prisoners

Cambridge 1963 - The Theory Of Everything

Johann is somewhat new to blockbuster film scoring but he is instantly becoming one of the most sought after. His music reminds me of Japanese composers such as Joe Hisaishi & Yoko Shimomura and how fantastical their music sounds. Japanese composers are masters at creating music at home in a fantasy world with colorful strings and warm melodies and while Johann's music can grow very dark, it feels almost as loose and majestic as those from the east. Mozart wrote about creating "natural music" which means "unexaggerated sound, clear structures and simple melodic lines" and Johann's music feels like it encapsulates that definition. It isn't heavy, filled with sounds crashing into each other. Most tracks are able to breathe, falling onto the moving pictures with ease. Like falling snow.

Steven Price

Selected Tracks:

Shenzou - Gravity

Emma - Fury

Gravity - Gravity

You Die We Die - Suicide Squad

Steven Price exploded onto the scene with Gravity: a creative bombastic score that combined itself into the story in fascinating ways using the music as actual sound effects in the movie. Pretty clever. And since then Price has constantly shelved out great music whether it was the furious score of...Fury or the explosive rhythm of Suicide Squad. Price has gotten so much acclaim so quick and it hard to deny why. The dude is talented as fuck. While most generic film composers chuck out generic memorable scores, Price continues to elevate the art form to new heights. One listen to Shenzou and it's no wonder that coveted Best Score Oscar was all his.