BMI will pair with the Los Angeles Times to present the second annual “How I Wrote the Song” panel Saturday, February 9, from 1p.m. until 3p.m., at the Key Club in L.A. Mirroring the format of 2007’s sold-out forum, another elite cross-section of established hitmakers, including Rodney Jerkins, Chris Daughtry, Mos Def, Ben Moody of Evanescence, Polow Da Don, Anthony Hamilton and Brian Howes will discuss their work, the raw ideas and the occasionally idiosyncratic processes pooled into composing songs that resonate with a broad spectrum of listeners. Moderated by BMI’s Vice President, Writer Publisher Relations Catherine Brewton and Los Angeles Times Music Critic Ann Powers, the event is open to the public. Advance tickets are available now for $10 through Ticketmaster at www.keyclub.com or the Key Club box office; day-of admission at the door will be $20.

Grammy Award-winner Rodney Jerkins’s creative dexterity materializes in distinct but diverse musical triumphs. The pen behind take-charge smashes including Destiny Child’s “Say My Name,” Brandy & Monica’s duet “The Boy is Mine” and Beyoncé’s “Déjà Vu,” Jerkins has also produced work by contemporary superstars including Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez and Destiny’s Child. His unerring ear led to a vice president of a&r position with Island Def Jam, while Janet Jackson’s forthcoming project Discipline features his signature production.

American Idol alum Chris Daughtry has brazenly staked a record-breaking place in contemporary music, confidently fronting the aptly titled rock band Daughtry. The Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter signed with RCA and management powerhouse 19 Entertainment after his fan-propelled success on American Idol, and his band’s eponymous debut sold more than 1 million copies in only five weeks. The projectile success of the album, featuring songs “It’s Not Over,” “Home” and “Over You,” resulted in the fastest-selling debut in the history of SoundScan.

Rapper, actor, musician and activist, Mos Def’s sheer versatility places him amongst contemporary pop culture’s premier creators. Musically, his work includes blithe collaborations with legendary group De La Soul and artist Talib Kweli. Def’s partnership with Kweli, the duet album Black Star, resulted in underground frenzy and glowing critical praise. His subsequent solo album, Black on Both Sides, produced more of the same. Nominated for two Grammys, Def also boasts Golden Globe, Emmy and Source award nods.

Serial hitmaker Ben Moody first gained recognition as guitarist and co-founder of the Grammy Award-winning group Evanescence. His output during and after the band has further exposed an adroit singer/songwriter capable of powerful hooks and lush layers; songs including Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life” and “My Immortal,” along with Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You,” sprang from Moody’s id. Collaborations as a producer with Clarkson, Celine Dion, Bo Bice and Lindsey Lohan further emphasize his seemingly limitless versatility.

Super producer and innovative songwriter Polow Da Don’s quintessential hip factor springs from authentic skill. His innate musical savvy has finessed infectious hits including Fergie’s “Glamorous,” the Pussy Cat Dolls’ “Buttons,” Ciara’s “Promise” and Jamie Foxx’s “DJ Play a Love Song.” Fergie’s enthusiastic shout out, “Polow!” on her smash “London Bridge,” made Da Don’s fluid alias a pop culture catch phrase, adding household recognition to the power player’s growing reputation.

Singer/songwriter Anthony Hamilton’s blend of old-school soul and cool contemporary grit is artist’s art in the best sense of the phrase: Members of the neo-soul and poetic hip hop elite including D’Angelo, Tupac Shakur and Eve have looked to Hamilton for backup harmonies, while the North Carolina native’s critically-acclaimed solo work has landed on arguably avant-garde projects including the American Gangster film soundtrack. His 2007 effort, Southern Comfort, features eleven new songs all written by Hamilton.

Brian Howes' life in music did not come as a surprise with a great-great grandfather who was a baritone opera singer, a grandmother who was a songwriter, and a grandfather who played alto sax for swing band greats Benny Goodman and Louis Prima, his career choice was practically predetermined. As part of punk-ska-rap band DDT early on in his career, Brian toured with bands such as Public Enemy, Kid Rock, Alice Cooper, The Scorpion and DOA. Post DDT, he penned hits and earned placements in several movies all while maintaining number 1 and top 10 international hits. Brian then added production to is arsenal and has had success by writing and producing with Grammy-nominated Atlantic band Skillet amongst others. Brian’s recent success has included collaborations with Kara Dioguardi, Shelly Piken, Chad Kroeger, Hinder and Chris Daughtry of American Idol fame for his RCA Records Album.

The Gala will be held at the Highline Ballroom (431 West 16th, between 9th and 10th Avenues, NYC), 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.

For more information, go to Living Legends Foundation.

BMI honored the composers and songwriters of the music from the past year's top-grossing films, top-rated prime-time network television series and highest-ranking cable television shows at its annual Film & Television Awards dinner on May 12. Held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, the black-tie gala was hosted by BMI President and CEO Frances W. Preston. Preston and Doreen Ringer Ross, BMI's Vice President of Film/TV Relations, gave out more than 100 awards during the ceremonies.

Click here for the 2004 BMI Film/TV Awards Song List

Click here for Film/TV awards event photos

One of the highlights of the evening was the presentation of the BMI Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement to composer/artist Mark Mothersbaugh. Named after late BMI Vice President Richard Kirk, the prestigious award is given annually to the composer who has made significant contributions to film and TV music. Former recipients of the award include John Barry, Randy Edelman, Danny Elfman, Charlie Fox, Jerry Goldsmith, Earle Hagen, Michael Kamen, Alan Menken, Thomas Newman, Mike Post, Lalo Schifrin, Alan Silvestri, Richard and Robert Sherman, W.G. "Snuffy" Walden, John Williams, Patrick Williams and Hans Zimmer.

Mark Mothersbaugh	Mike Post

One of the most unique and prolific contemporary composers in film, television, interactive media and commercials, Mothersbaugh was a founding member of influential rock group Devo, parlaying his avant-garde musical background into the world of scoring for filmed and animated entertainment. An artist both musically and in the literal definition, Mothersbaugh has created an aural framework with his scores for the forthcoming films Lords of Dogtown and The Life Aquatic, as well as having scored the hugely successful Rugrats television, stage and film franchise. He has also scored a diverse array of films and television shows, including Thirteen, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore, 200 Cigarettes, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Happy Gilmore, The Mind of the Married Man, Power Puff Girls, Pee Wee's Playhouse, Beakman's World and more. With over 100 credits in the medium including over 400 commercial credits, Mothersbaugh is also co-owner of Mutato Muzika, an umbrella company that is home to a full-time staff of composers and music editors.

Korn

At the dinner, Mothersbaugh was honored by some of the directors he's worked with, as well as by the characters from Rugrats. Director Wes Anderson (Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic) called Mothersbaugh a "conceptual artist...his studio is kind of like Andy Warhol's factory. He's very versatile, his mind is constantly spinning and coming up with different things, and he's not locked into any one direction. He's more interested in trying everything."

"What Mark brings to my movies that's the most important to me has to do with the tone to them," said Anderson. "He's drawn to something - his sense of humor and a sort of wistfulness to him - that is the right kind of chemistry for my movies. It fixes the oddness of the movies and mixes into it something that has to be just right, and somehow he knows where that needs to fall."

Director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown) said she was a fan of Motherbaugh's work and wanted him to score her directorial debut Thirteen but was afraid he might not want to do the low-budget film. "I just tried to think of things that would get him excited about doing it," she said. Describing a scene in the movie that she thought would appeal to his creative side, she said she asked him, "Mark would you be interested in creating the sound of brain cells popping?"

Hardwicke went on to describe Mothersbaugh as, "Quirky, crazy, super imaginative, super creative...you don't know what the answer will be and that's the fun of it. He will surprise you with something you didn't plan on, or didn't anticipate. That's what I like, I want to be surprised," she said. "He wants to make it work and delight you too. He gets into a character's head and understands that words can be too heavy handed. I think his music helps carry us places and makes us feel things."

Other top winners at the BMI Film & Television Awards included legendary composer Mike Post, who received the most nods with three for Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: CI. Also feted were double winning composers Don Davis for The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, David Newman for Daddy Day Care and The Cat In The Hat, Theodore Shapiro for Along Came Polly and Starsky & Hutch, Rolfe Kent for Freaky Friday and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, Teddy Castellucci for Anger Management and 50 First Dates, Pete Townshend for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and CSI: Miami, and Rob Cairns for The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

BMI also honored the composers of the highest-ranking cable television shows of the year, including Butch Hartman and Guy Moon for Fairly Oddparents and Danny Phantom, Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh for All Grown Up, Stewart Copeland for The Amanda Show, Douglas Cuomo for Sex and the City, and Brian S. Friedman and Rick A. Friedman II for Punk'd.

The Most Performed Song from a Motion Picture was awarded to the band Korn for their song "Did My Time" from Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. "Did My Time" was written by Jonathan Davis, David Silveria, Munky, Fieldy and Head, and published by Evileria Music, Fieldysnuttz Music, Gintoe Music, Musik Munk Publishing and Stratosphericyoness Music.

BMI's Emmy Award winning composers were also honored, including Jeff Beal for Monk, Christopher Cerf and Glen Daum for Sesame Street, Lenny Williams and Chris Biondo for National Geographic Explorer - "Hornets From Hell," A.J. Gundell, Jerry Pilato, Dominic Messinger, Gary Kuo and Kim Oler for All My Children, John Henry Kreitler for "Forever Near" from Passions, and David Foster and Linda Thompson for "Aren't They All Our Children" from The Concert For World Children's Day.]]> 2004-05-12T18:00:00-05:00 http://www.bmi.com/musicworld/entry/233922 Artists, Avant, Wedren, Craig, Musical Styles, Rock, Musicworld, Hitmaker, Type, International For artist, composer and songwriter Craig Wedren, his current life is all about rock. Wedren just finished scoring as well as writing songs for director Richard Linklater's fall hit School Of Rock, starring Jack Black, as well as acting as musical director/kid-rock wrangler to the group of child actors in the movie for their live musical promotional appearances. He also is just finishing up the first full-length CD of his alt/electronic rock band Baby.

"I was first brought into School of Rock through Randy Poster, the music supervisor," said Wedren. "The movie needed a song to climax the battle of the bands sequence that the actors would pre-record and lip synch to. I wrote some songs that Richard liked and later, after the movie was finished, they brought me back in to compose the score."

The witty rock songs that Wedren composed merge with some of the classic rock source music used in the film. Wedren's new song, "Heal Me I'm Heartsick," is featured in the film's climactic battle-of-the-bands scene.

One of the founding members and lead vocalist/guitarist of influential avant-punk band Shudder To Think, Wedren began to branch into the world of composing while still in the band. "A lot of my friends were filmmakers and they asked me to get involved in the music and it just became a natural transition from writing songs to composing scores," he said. "But, even on our first Shudder To Think record, 'First Love, Last Rights,' we were writing songs for different singers, different genres, having a string section -- really going down the path that you take when you compose for a film."

Wedren's credits include the critically acclaimed film High Art ; contributing two "glam-rock" songs via Shudder To Think to the Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine ; writing and performing 25 songs for the Jesse Peretz film First Love Last Rites, starring Giovanni Ribisi; music for film Wet Hot American Summer ; and the score for the multi-award-winning Roger Dodger , which placed him on The Hollywood Reporter's "Oscar Watch List" and for which the International Press Academy nominated him for a Golden Satellite Award in the "Best Score." He recently wrote and recorded cues for Laurel Canyon and has his composition "We Are" in director Alan Rudolph' film Secret Lives Of Dentists .

"Sometime my job is to strictly compose the score, other times I get to flex both muscles and write both songs and score," he says. "It creates an interesting palette where I can weave different musical themes, not just to score but also to create source music which acts as a nice subliminal connection to all the music in the movie."

The end of 2003 finds him scoring the next Dylan Kidd film P.S., starring Laura Linney and Marcia Gay Harden.

"I knew these guys had quite a bit up their sleeves," says the Anaheim-born, UCLA grad, who majored in music theory and composition. "But, I had no idea it would turn into working on this kind of blockbuster."

Davis, currently hard at work in his Calabasas home studio on the final film, The Matrix Revolutions, which opens in November, has seen his music scoring for the series turn into a cottage industry. In addition to the three films, the 46-year-old composer provided the soundtrack for The Animatrix, nine animé shorts based on the movie and released on DVD by Warner Home Video, and the “Enter the Matrix” video game.

The Matrix showcases Davis’ ability to combine traditional movie orchestration with a pulsing, tribal electronic score (featuring rockers by Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Rage Against the Machine, P.O.D. and Deftones), underlining the movie’s blend of futurism and primitivism. He collaborated with Ben Watkins of the rock band Juno Reactor on The Matrix Reloaded’s two set pieces: the freeway chase and the "Burly Brawl" sequence where Neo battles multiple Agent Smiths.

"Our approach was for there to be no seams between the different musical styles," says Davis, whose scores for the series evoke avant-garde, post-modernist, new music composers like John Adams, minimalists Steve Reich and Philip Glass and even art-metal rockers Nine Inch Nails and Tool.

Indeed, the music for the climactic battle scene in The Matrix Revolutions will include a choir singing psalms from ancient Hindu texts in the original Sanskrit. "It will shed another light on the philosophies the Wachowskis want to convey," he explains.

Despite his success on The Matrix, Davis remains committed to continuing to compose outside film and TV. He is currently completing an opera, Rio de Sangre, to be performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale in 2005.

"Scoring a film, I have to parlay my time in terms of minutes written per day," he says. "When I’m writing concert music, it’s more like days per minute. It’s a real luxury to be able to jump back and forth between the two."

Shown at the luncheon are BMI songwriter Lamont Dozier, Barbara Cane, and honoree Clarence Avant. photo: Robbin Ahrold

]]> 2003-06-24T18:00:00-05:00 http://www.bmi.com/musicworld/entry/233330 Artists, Avant, White Stripes, The, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Musical Styles, Blues, Pop, Rock, Musicworld, Hitmaker It seems like Yeah Yeah Yeahs have been on the brink of stardom forever, even though the band has only been together for about two years. Tipped as one of New York City’s hottest young acts in everything from Rolling Stone to YM, the three-piece group is readying its first full-length album for release later this year.

The garage band certainly has its college-rock credits in order: lead singer Karen O. first met drummer Brian Chase at Ohio’s Oberlin College and hooked up with guitarist Nick Zinner after transferring to New York University to study film. At the time, Zinner, a Bard graduate, was playing with the Boba Fett Experience with four other Bard alums. "It was more like psychotherapy than a band," Zinner told New York magazine about the Experience.

Zinner and O. brought in Chase after the departure of their first drummer, and the current Yeah Yeah Yeahs lineup was born in late 2000. The group set to work writing material and soon found itself supporting both the Strokes and The White Stripes, building a reputation for its no-holds-barred live show, centered around Zinner’s avant guitar stylings and O.’s sometimes over-the-top vocals.

In late 2001, YYY released their self-titled debut EP, produced by former Boss Hog guitarist Jerry Teel, on their own Shifty label. The band consolidated its reputation by supporting Girls Against Boys in the U.S. and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in Europe, following that with its own U.K. headlining tour.

The YYY approach to songwriting can be deceptively simple. While O.’s punky vocals can be sometimes deliberately grating, conjuring up anyone from Iggy Pop to early Blondie, the group is sure to include pop-friendly hooks and an occasionally sly sense of humor. "That's been our M.O. since the beginning," O. told New York. "It's putting those hooks in places you wouldn't expect, pairing very discordant and very catchy stuff."

Critical and audience approval led directly to major label interest, with the result that YYY has been getting courted pretty heavily by some of the biggest executives in the rock business. Not too shabby for a group that, as of October of this year, had released precisely five songs.

As he listens carefully to the playback of the orchestral track, he paces the floor in his stocking feet, head buried in a score as several technicians await his direction. Intense and specific, he knows what he wants and asks for multiple run-throughs before he gets it.

During a lunch break, the wiry redhead sits down to discuss the honor that clearly leaves him uncomfortable: BMI's Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement. "Maybe I'm supposed to retire or die now," he quips. "I'm flattered. I still feel like an upstart."

Elfman, 49, is no longer an upstart. He's a well-established composer of movie scores with a Grammy, six other Grammy nominations and two Academy Award nominations to his credit. But what makes him unique - and what caused him to be regarded with suspicion for years by conservatory-trained Hollywood musicians - is that he comes out of rock & roll.

Specifically, he was front man for the highly regarded Los Angeles band Oingo Boingo. And before that, he spent eight years as a founding member of its predecessor, an avant-garde musical theater troupe called the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Although he could never have guessed at the time, all of this "street training," as he terms it, turned out to be ideal background for a film composer.

Despite his rock-artist background, some of Elfman's biggest hits have actually been large-scale orchestral scores, often with choral elements: the dark, gothic mystery of Batman (1989), which won him a Grammy; the touching fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990), with its delicately lyrical passages; the raucous, fun music of Men in Black and the haunting, sensitive score for Good Will Hunting, which earned him dual Oscar nominations in 1997; and the heroic, fast-moving music for this year's blockbuster Spider-Man.

Now, with more than 50 films behind him, Elfman can also point with pride to other projects that have demonstrated his stylistic versatility: the romantic Sommersby (1993), the vaguely English ambiance of Black Beauty (1994), the dissonance of Dolores Claiborne (1995), the urban funk of Dead Presidents (1995), the urgency and '60s-style suspense of Mission: Impossible (1996) and the unsettling, eerie musical effects of A Simple Plan (1998).

"My idol was Bernard Herrmann," Elfman explains, referring to the legendary composer of Citizen Kane and Psycho, "because I felt he could do anything. From day one, I wanted to feel that there was no genre that I couldn't tackle." Growing up, he adds, "the movies were my music school."

Yet he harbored no ambitions to write film music. That is, until director Tim Burton and star Paul Reubens approached him in 1985 to score Pee-wee's Big Adventure. "I thought they were crazy," says Elfman. But it was Elfman's sound they wanted, and the music (very much inspired by another of Elfman's heroes, Italian composer Nino Rota) bounced along with the wacky, offbeat comic's adventures.

Says Burton: "[Danny] brings that intuitive excitement to a project. He's able to understand things people don't understand on the surface and get underneath it, like a silent movie, where you're part of the emotion without overstating it."

Adds Spider-Man director Sam Raimi: "He gently carries the audience to that next place, but he allows them to do the work. He's a genius. That word can't be thrown about, but when you listen to his music and the diversity of it and how successful it is with the images, I don't know if there's a better word to describe him."

And although few people in movies mention it, Elfman's television themes are equally popular, especially the long-running theme for Fox's The Simpsons. "He was a natural, he's brilliant," says creator Matt Groening.

Elfman says that he often spends "three or four weeks, just banging away," in an attempt to find the right mood for a score. "If I can capture the tone for two or three scenes that are very important to the movie, but very different to one another, I have it," he says. "Then suddenly I'll go into hyperdrive and do the rest of the film in three or four weeks."

With Brett Ratner's Red Dragon on his agenda for later this year, Elfman says he plans to lighten the load, trimming back to "one big film a year, and leave myself open to a small one." Ever the maverick, he hopes to expand his musical horizons to encompass ballet (Edward Scissorhands, for London choreographer Matthew Bourne) and possibly a concerto ("I definitely want to get into pure orchestra," he says).

As for film, he says he keeps searching for the ideal project: "Looking for the chance to do something fresh, that canvas, that movie that will really allow a score to be special. You just have to keep doing it. You hope for that rare opportunity to do something wonderful and original."

Photo: Livia Corona

It's not hard to understand why David Byrne was initially hesitant to reunite onstage with former Talking Heads bandmates Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison when the band was recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. After all, in the decade-and-a -half since that seminal avant-art-punk-r&b combo quit performing, Byrne has expanded his artistic horizons far beyond the ones he explored in his original stint as the adventurous foursome's tightly wound frontman.

Byrne - who says that his early art-college background taught him "that anything could be art and art could be anything" - has long been adept at using his notoriety as a musician to expand his artistic horizons, regularly venturing into unexpected areas even further outside the mainstream than Talking Heads' boundary-breaking output. For instance, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, his 1981 collaboration with Brian Eno, helped introduce electronic music, third-world percussion and found voices to rock audiences. He's won acclaim for his scores for film (including Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor) and theatre (Twyla Tharp's The Catherine Wheel, Robert Wilson's Civil Wars), and emerged as an accomplished filmmaker with the 1986 feature True Stories. And for the past dozen years, he's put his eclectic musical tastes to good use as head of the esteemed Luaka Bop label, whose eclectic catalogue encompasses an array of sounds from around the world, and has helped to win new fans for such diverse acts as Cornershop, Tom Ze, Susana Baca and Os Mutantes.

Luaka Bop is also the home of Byrne's most recent album, Look Into the Eyeball, a typically eclectic - and typically accessible - fusion of influences that strikes a balance between personal introspection, wry humor and multicultural experimentation. The album's pleasures range from the Latin funk of "Desconocido Soy" to the gospel uplift of "Walk on Water" to the rhythmic, orchestrated pop of "Smile" and "Everyone's in Love With You" to the classic Philly-soul style of a pair of tracks that boast arrangements by legendary r&b producer Thom Bell.

Describing the album's aesthetic inspirations, Byrne says, "I had been wondering if there might be a way to include the warm, lyrical, beautiful, emotional sounds and associations of strings and orchestral parts with groove music and beats for the body. I want to move people to dance and cry at the same time.

"Like the song 'The Revolution' implies, I somehow imagine that a real revolution is won by seduction, by winning over not just the mind, but the body and the senses as well. And that the sadness of some of these melodies are countered by the vigor and persistence of the groove."

The same pitfall awaits recording artists who, having poured a lifetime's worth of experience into their first recording, are asked to repeat their initial success in short order. Fortunately, Avant, a Magic Johnson Entertainment/MCA recording artist, has been able to build his reputation and fan base with the release of Ecstasy, his second CD.

Avant is direct about the impulse that guided the creation of his new work. Comparing it to My Thoughts, his first CD, which was released in 2000, Avant says that "Ecstasy's more of a sexual album. Ecstasy is also a relationship album, but it's deeper in the game."

A native of Cleveland, Avant hooked up with producer Steve Huff on My Thoughts. "Separated," the first single from that album, reached the top of the charts. Following up with the release of a remake of Rene & Angela's 1989 hit, "My First Love," Avant proved that lightning does strike twice when this track also became a chart buster.

When it came time to buckle down to the business of writing and recording Ecstasy, Avant logically turned to Huff. The album, recorded at Stone Records in Chicago, Huff's hometown, found the artist and producer in tune from start to finish. "I don't know how other artists and producers work, but Steve and I get a vibe, and we both collaborate on a song. I think it's rare for a producer and artist to come off of each other the way we do."

Avant is quick to point out what the title of his latest work does not refer to. "Now, I don't want anyone to get confused with the drug. My 'ecstasy' is a feeling you get when you see that relationship go forward."

Based on his achievements with My Thoughts and the immediate follow up success of Ecstasy, it seems that Avant has established a relationship with his fans that is strong and secure.