Annal: 2013 Academy Award® for Achievement in Music (Original Score)

Canadian-born Mychael Danna is recognized as one of the pioneers of combining non-Western music with orchestral and electronic elements in his film scores. Life of Pi marks his third collaboration with Ang Lee, having previously written the original music for The Ice Storm and Ride with the Devil.

There are several themes in the score of Anna Karenina: sometimes appearing alone, often intersecting, their paths running alongside for a while. Those paths are shared by the characters in the story as they walk towards or away from convention, pretence, happiness, guilt, love, fun, and even truth.

In a very important sense, the musical motifs do not represent the characters themselves I prefer to think of them as spirits, perhaps demons, unseen, signposting the way, or simply bearing witness to the events.

Most of the action, in our version of Tolstoy’s novel, takes place in an abandoned theatre, upon or around a stage—a symbol of the make-believe life of the Russian aristocracy at the end of the 19th century. Having convention and pretence confined within the boundaries of an old theatre, hints of course to another life, one that must exist somewhere outside the confines of…[more]

Music by famed French composer Alexandre Desplat.

In a career spanning almost six decades, John Williams has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures. Winner of twenty-one Grammy® Awards, four Golden Globe® Awards and five Academy Awards®, Williams is easily the most recognized composer working in film today. He has a long association with Steven Spielberg, composing music for all but two of Spielberg’s feature films, most recently on the Academy Award®-nominated scores for The Adventures of Tintin and Warhorse.

The Skyfall motion picture soundtrack features original score music by Thomas Newman. Newman is one of the most respected and recognized composers for modern film. He has scored over fifty feature films in a career which spans nearly three decades.