MYCHAEL DANNA

Music for Film

Studio • Equitable Building • Hollywood California

Bio

BIOGRAPHY

Mychael Danna is an Academy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. His works include the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, following his collaborations with Lee on The Ice Storm (1997) and Ride with the Devil (1999). Among his other awards are the Emmy for Outstanding Composition for the mini-series World Without End (2013), the Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing (2013), the World Soundtrack Awards for Film Composer of the Year, and Best Score of the Year (both 2013), and the Hollywood Film Award for Composer of the Year (2016).

WORKS

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“The most gratifying filmmaking experiences are ones that take effort to unpeel the layers surrounding the heart of the story, and to find the best musical expression of that heart,” says Danna. “Those are always the film scores that I am most proud of.”

His passion for presenting complex ideas in a musically accessible way began as Danna learned his craft at the University of Toronto. There, he was exposed to early- and world-music that later influenced his style. Danna earned the school’s inaugural Glenn Gould Composition Award in 1985 and also began scoring for student theatre groups, as he launched his artistic partnership with filmmaker Atom Egoyan. Danna has scored all of Egoyan’s films since 1987’s Family Viewing.

Life of Pi’s rich soundscape reflects a deeply trans-national story with inventive cross-cultural arrangements: Indian sitars play French melodies, European accordions

play South Asian motifs, a church choir sings in Sanskrit,

and a variety of other musical combinations soar alongside a full studio orchestra.

Danna says his approach is “making music an integral part of the storytelling, not simply repeating what is happening onscreen, but adding unexpected dimension and insight that enrich the experience of the director's vision.”