“It is particularly significant that this award recognizes highly talented composers who are in the prime of their careers, still reaching their full potential, and whose greatest contribution to the music of the film may be yet to come.” – Peter Bernstein (Son of the prestigious composer, Elmer Bernstein).
The Bernstein family and FILM MUSIC FESTIVAL have awarded the prestigious ELMER BERNSTEIN AWARD for their extraordinary contribution to film music to prestigious composer John Powell during hos attendance at the Movie Score Málaga, MOSMA.
Marco Beltrami was the first recipient of such a prestigious award. It was in 2013 during his visit to Córdoba, at the International Film Music Festival, “Province of Córdoba” where the Film Music Festival company co-organized the event with the Córdoba Provincial Government.
There, Marco Beltrami received the prized award from Peter Bernstein, son of the legendary American composer, Elmer Bernstein, who gives name to the award.
The important contribution that the composer made with his work to film music, in a clear reflection of a rising career that took him to the highest peaks of international prestige as a music composer for cinema, was valued for the granting of this award.
Afterwards, the award was handed out twice over the summer of 2014, again in Córdoba, to two prestigious professionals: Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski and Britsh composer Rolfe Kent.
Four years later the award will be delivered once more with a completely renovated design and in another Andalusian city, this time in Malaga, in the setting of the third edition of the prestigious International Film Festival of Malaga, the Movie Score Malaga, MOSMA.
On this occasion, the professional who will be recognized for his exceptional contribution to film music is another British composer, the renowned John Powell, who a few months ago was collecting in Los Angeles another prestigious award, the Henry Mancini Award, another recognition with one of the most important composer names in the history of cinema.
The composer will receive the award from the Film Music Festival CEO, David Doncel Barthe, also coordinator of MOSMA, and the director of the Festival, Juan Antonio Vigar. It will be on Wednesday, July 4th, during the concert ‘In Homage to the Heroes: A Prussian Requiem’ centered on a magnificent requiem that the British composer created in honor of the heroes of the First World War.
Elmer Bernstein (New York, 1922-2004) was one of the most influential and respected composers in Hollywood for more than five decades. He is credited with being one of the most innovative composers of the “young” generation in the 1950s and 60s, introducing a language based on jazz into the traditional vocabulary of film music. He composed hundreds of scores for films and television series, always with his own recognizable style, and won the Oscar for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Among his most popular compositions are Ghostbusters, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Escape, Airplane!, Wild Wild West, Nationla Lampoon’s Animal House, Trading Places, The Magnificent Seven, Bringing Out the Dead and An American Werewolf in London .
John Powell (England, 1963) is a British composer and conductor. Powell originally studied violin, as a child, before studying at the Trinity College of Music in London. Later he ventured into jazz and rock music, playing in the soul band The Fabulistics. After leaving the university, he composed music for publicity, which led him to work as an assistant to composer Patrick Doyle in several film productions, including Much Ado About Nothing. In 1995, he co-founded the music company Independently Thinking Music, based in London. The company produced the music for more than one hundred advertisements and independent films, both British and French.
The first score composed by Powell was for the series Stay Lucky, in 1990. He moved to Los Angeles in 1997, where he worked in one of its first successes, the film Face / Off. In 1997 he composed Antz, the first animated film produced by Dreamworks, where he worked with Harry Gregson-Williams. Two years later they returned to collaborate on Chicken Run, as well as in Shrek a year later. During 2001, Powell also worked in Evolution, I am Sam, Just Visiting, and Rat Race. In 2002, Powell was hired to compose music for The Bourne Identity, after Carter Burwell left the project, starting a working relationship with Doug Liman. In addition, he returned to work in the following sequels of the Bourne saga, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum and Jason Bourne, directed by British director Paul Greengrass. In 2005 he wrote the soundtrack for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, also by Doug Liman, as well as the score for the animation film Robots.
In 2006, he composed for the movie United 93, by Paul Greengrass, as well as the music for Ice Age: The Meltdown, replacing David Newman who composed the first film of the saga. He also composed X-Men: The Last Stand, and Happy Feet, for which he was nominated for Best Original Music for an Animated Film at the BAFTAs.
In 2008 he collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the Kung Fu Panda score. That year he also wrote scores for Jumper, Hancock and Bolt, and in 2009 for the third installment of the Ice Age saga, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. In 2010, Powell composed the soundtrack for How to Train Your Dragon, his sixth collaboration for an animated Dreamworks movie, which became his first work to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Score. That year he also composed Green Zone, for Greengrass, and Knight and Day.
Since 2011 his career has focused on animation with films such as Mars needs Moms (2011), Rio (2011), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Happy Feet 2 (2011), The Lorax ( 2012), Ice Age 4: Continental Drift (2012), Rio 2 (2014), How to train your Dragon 2 (2014) or Ferdinand (2017). Other outstanding scores have been Pan (2015) and Han Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). Powell has also composed for the concert hall, highlighting his work A Prussian Requiem, which has just been released on CD under the title of ‘Hubris: Choral Works by John Powell’.
MOSMA 2018 brings together, from July 3rd to July 7th, 2018, such outstanding professionals in international film music as John Powell, Christophe Beck, Taro Iwashiro, Jeff Russo, Jeff Beal, Victor Reyes and Marco Frisina. There will be a total of seven concerts focused on music for the audiovisual media (two of them with free admisision), as well as meetings, CD signings, panels and two new sections: masterclasses by international composers and an Industry Section, with reputed talks from professionals of the area.