June 28, 2018
Annual Lab Marks First Time Over Fifty Percent of Participants Are Female Composers and Fiction and Documentary Films Are Combined
Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), the global leader in rights management, is proud to continue its support of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program, in collaboration with the legendary Skywalker Sound to host the Sundance Institute Film Music and Sound Design Lab from July 10 through July 23.
As a founding supporter of the Institute’s Composers Lab, BMI has played a critical role in the long-term development of the Lab and through its involvement, has enhanced the careers of many film composers who have participated. Building on its support of the Film Music Program, BMI produces a composer/director roundtable each year at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, highlighting its composers who have scored films in the prestigious festival.
“BMI has been a proud supporter of the Sundance Institute Film Music Program since its inception,” said Doreen Ringer-Ross, BMI Vice President Creative - Film, TV & Visual Media. “The Lab is an inclusive creative development forum that has flourished immensely since partnering with Skywalker. This year, we are especially pleased that over fifty percent of our composer lab Fellows are female.”
For the first time, the Lab will join fiction and documentary films into one program and is once again, a joint initiative of the Institute’s Film Music Program, Feature Film Program and Documentary Film Program. At the Lab, composers, directors and sound designers will collaborate to develop music and sound for documentary and narrative film projects. Leading film composers and sound designers will serve as creative advisors, mentoring Fellows to explore sound and music’s crucial role in storytelling. At the conclusion of the Lab, a live chamber orchestra will perform each composer/director team’s original scores.
The participating composer fellows are Amit May Cohen, Anna Drubich, Carla Patullo, Christy Carew, Dara Taylor, Bill Laurance, Carlos Simon and Rasmus Zwicki.
Amit May Cohen, originally from Israel, is the composer of the recent award-winning doc, Wrestling Za’atari, and of Black Down. Since graduating from Berklee College of Music, she has assisted several prominent film composers, including George S. Clinton and Roger Neill.
Anna Drubich is a Los Angeles based composer, originally from Russia, whose diverse body of work, which includes big international projects, animated features, documentaries and plays, can be heard on television, at the cinema and in theatre.
Carla Patullo is a composer, songwriter and sound designer who has composed scores for many films including Letter to Anita, Choke, Pizza Face, Lotte that Silhouette Girl and Jean Cordova. Patullo has worked on film and TV productions that have won various awards having had over 100 song placements on Emmy-award winning shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Young & the Restless and Skins.
Christy Carew is a Canadian-American composer for film, TV, advertising, multimedia and the concert world. Highlights include the 2012 martial arts action crime thriller The Lackey and the powerful 2016 short form documentary about infertility, The Empty Womb.
Dara Taylor is an HMMA-nominated composer for film and television. Taylor composed a wide variety of independent films, working with GRAMMY-winning composer Chris Lennertz. She has also provided additional music for A Bad Mom’s Christmas, Sausage Party, Baywatch and Netflix’s Lost in Space.
Bill Laurance soon to release his fifth solo album, is an original member of three-time GRAMMY-winning band Snarky Puppy and composer of Un Traductor, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Carlos Simon recently won the prestigious Marvin Hamlisch Film Scoring Award in 2015, the Presser Award from the Theodore Presser Foundation in 2015, and the Underwood Emerging Composer Commission from the American Composers Orchestra in 2016. During its 2015–2016 season, the Detroit Chamber String and Winds also named Simon its young composer-in-residence.
Rasmus Zwicky originally from Denmark, is completing his composition studies at the Guildhall School in London. He was the winner of the 2018 Oticons Faculty International Film Music Competition. His work explores various combinations of music, drama, movement and video as he explores transdisciplinary approaches to composition and collaboration.
This year, creative advisors include BMI’s Doreen Ringer-Ross, BMI composers Harry Gregson-Williams, Thomas Newman, Tyler Bates, Blake Neely, Mark Isham and Heather McIntosh, as well as Rob Epstein, Yance Ford, Catherine Hardwicke and composer Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum.
Director/Filmmaker fellows are: Jackie Olive, Tom Quinn, Rania Attieh & Daniel Garcia, Maya Newell, Michael Tyburski, Keola Racela, Daniel Hymanson and Zeshawn Ali.
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