INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2023 IFMCA AWARDS

• JOHN WILLIAMS WINS SCORE OF THE YEAR FOR FIFTH INDIANA JONES FILM, DIAL OF DESTINY

• CHRISTOPHER YOUNG WINS FOUR AWARDS FOR OUTSTANDING WORK IN HORROR FIELD

• COMPOSERS FROM JAPAN AND POLAND ALSO TAKE HOME AWARDS

The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its list of winners for excellence in musical scoring in 2023, in the 2023 IFMCA Awards.

The award for Score of the Year goes to American composer John Williams, for his score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in the beloved action-adventure series starring Harrison Ford as the eponymous globetrotting archaeologist. The score also won the award for its genre, being named Best Score for an Action/Adventure film.

IFMCA member James Southall praised Dial of Destiny as “a nostalgic throwback to those great times of the past – a set of meticulously-composed new music by one of the greatest film composers we’ve ever had – an exhibition in skill and technique with the orchestra which is guaranteed to go beyond almost any other film music we hear this year.” IFMCA member Christian Clemmensen said that the score was “an especially gratifying treat and an immense pleasure to hear in the 2020’s… it continues to espouse the uniquely superior aspects of Williams’s writing from decades past”. Similarly, IFMCA member Anton Smit said the score was “a fantastic listening experience from start to finish… a masterpiece… one of the highlights of this final phase of John Williams’ career.”

This is John Williams’s fifth Score of the Year victory, having previously won for Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005, War Horse in 2011, Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. These wins also take Williams’s all-time IFMCA win tally to 21, not including those for archival releases of his older scores, making him the most-awarded composer in IFMCA history.

American composer Christopher Young is named Composer of the Year, and also wins two awards for his score for The Piper, a music-themed horror film directed by Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen and starring Charlotte Hope and the late Julian Sands. IFMCA member Jon Broxton stated that the score was “sensational… an encapsulation of everything that has ever made Young’s music great… a huge Gothic horror score for the full orchestra, choir, and various specialty instruments which is endlessly creative, compositionally and intellectually, and as well as being scary and chilling, also packs an emotional punch.” Likewise, IFMCA member Conrado Xalabarder described the score as “a powerful creation with symphonic and choral music for adults and children… it is deceptively innocent, it is macabre and insane, it causes madness and death… another of Christopher Young’s dazzling creations”.

These are the seventh, eighth, and ninth IFMCA wins of Young’s career; his previous wins were for Urban Legend in 1998, two for Drag Me to Hell in 2009, The Rum Diary in 2012, The Monkey King in 2015, and The Monkey King 2 in 2017. This is Young’s first win for Composer of the Year; he was previously nominated in 2000 and 2009.

This year, the IFMCA has also decided to bestow the Kyle Renick Special Award on Young and his new score for the classic 1922 German expressionist horror film Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens directed by F. W. Murnau. The award is named in honor of Kyle Renick, the film music journalist and theater producer from New York who was a member of the IFMCA until his death in 2019. Young was commissioned to write a new score by the Europäische FilmPhilharmonie to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the film, and it had its world premiere performance in February 2023 at the Tonhalle in Zürich, Switzerland, conducted by Frank Strobel. The score is utterly spellbinding, with those who attended the performance commenting that it was a “horror masterpiece” that ranks among the greatest scores of his entire career.

Young wrote a huge Gothic horror score for the full orchestra, choir, and various specialty instruments, most notably a pipe organ, which adds a significant religioso element to the work as a whole, while also offering a throwback to the way silent films were accompanied back in the 1910s and 20s. The work is anchored by a dark main theme for strings that drips with brooding romance. Rampaging action sequences enhance the threat posed by the evil vampire at the core of the story, and moments of extreme dissonance enhance the horror. In a career that has overflowed with outstanding work in the horror genre - Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, The Fly II, Species, Urban Legend, Bless the Child, Drag Me to Hell, and Priest among them – the IFMCA felt that Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie Des Grauens was worthy of special recognition as one of the great works of contemporary horror scoring.

Polish composer Paweł Lucewicz is named Breakthrough Composer of the Year after being widely heralded for his outstanding score for Forgotten Love, a remake of a beloved Polish film from the 1980s, which elicited a score of great beauty and deep emotion to follow the story of man searching for his lost family. IFMCA member John Mansell described the score as “a mesmerizing and beautiful score, utilizing tender sounding strings and piano to purvey an air of heartfelt moments … subtle but affecting thematic interludes and nuances adding depth, and deep emotions creating an atmosphere and mood that is overflowing with poignancy that gives the already touching storyline greater impact.”

The various other genre awards are won by: Ludwig Göransson for the critically acclaimed biopic drama Oppenheimer, Laura Karpman for the satirical comedy American Fiction, Naoki Sato for the Japanese monster fantasy-sci-fi epic Godzilla Minus One, Joe Hisaishi for the beautiful Japanese animated film The Boy and the Heron, George Fenton for the BBC nature documentary Wild Isles, James Newton Howard for the WWII-set period television series All the Light We Cannot See, and Pinar Toprak and Neal Acree for the video game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, based on the massively successful James Cameron sci-fi movies.

Producer Douglass Fake and Intrada Records receive the Archival Award for their new recording of the music for two classic Bernard Herrmann thrillers, The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1956 and On Dangerous Ground from 1951. The music was recorded in Glasgow by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by William Stromberg, and the album was produced as a limited edition release that features in-depth liner notes by writer Steven Smith and art direction by Stéphane Coëdel and Kay Marshall. Intrada Records is also named Film Music Record Label of the Year, in recognition of their outstanding series of expanded re-releases which in 2023 included titles such as the aforementioned The Man Who Knew Too Much/On Dangerous Ground, as well as the 1990s action classic The Rock, Jerry Goldsmith’s MacArthur, and several early James Horner genre efforts such as Humanoids from the Deep, Battle Beyond the Stars, and Deadly Blessing.

This year’s winner of the Roberto Aschieri Special Award, which is awarded to an individual who has made an important and long-lasting contribution to the art and preservation of film music over a career, is film music journalist Jon Burlingame. The award is named in honor of Roberto Aschieri, the film music journalist and author from Argentina who was a member of the IFMCA until his death in 2017.

Burlingame is considered by many to be the world’s leading writer on the subject of music for films and television. He writes regularly for Variety and, over the past 30 years, has also written on the topic for such leading newspapers as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, as well as such magazines as Premiere and The Hollywood Reporter. He is the author of five books, and has twice won ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music journalism. For more than 25 years he has taught film music history courses at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, and he has lectured on film and TV music at locations around the world. Burlingame is also a 12-time IFMCA Award nominee for his work as an album producer and liner note writer, winning the award in 2007 for Amazing Stories Anthology 3 in 2016 for Mission: Impossible - The Television Scores, and in 2020 for the John Williams/Anne Sophie-Mutter compilation Across the Stars.

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The winners are:

SCORE OF THE YEAR

• INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, music by John Williams

COMPOSER OF THE YEAR

• CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

BREAKTHROUGH COMPOSER OF THE YEAR

• PAWEŁ LUCEWICZ

COMPOSITION OF THE YEAR

• CONCERTO FOR FLUTE AND ORCHESTRA, MOVEMENT 2 from The Piper, music by Christopher Young

• BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A DRAMA FILM

OPPENHEIMER, music by Ludwig Göransson

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A COMEDY FILM

• AMERICAN FICTION, music by Laura Karpman

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN ACTION/ADVENTURE FILM

• INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, music by John Williams

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION FILM

• GOJIRA-1.0/GODZILLA MINUS ONE, music by Naoki Sato

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A HORROR/THRILLER FILM

• THE PIPER, music by Christopher Young

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN ANIMATED FILM

• KIMITACHI WA DŌ IKIRU/THE BOY AND THE HERON, music by Joe Hisaishi

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A DOCUMENTARY

• WILD ISLES, music by George Fenton

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR TELEVISION

• ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, music by James Newton Howard

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A VIDEO GAME OR INTERACTIVE MEDIA

• AVATAR: FRONTIERS OF PANDORA, music by Pinar Toprak and Neal Acree

BEST ARCHIVAL RELEASE

• THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH/ON DANGEROUS GROUND, music by Bernard Herrmann; the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by William Stromberg, album produced by Douglass Fake, liner notes by Steven Smith, album art direction by Stéphane Coëdel and Kay Marshall (Intrada)

FILM MUSIC RECORD LABEL OF THE YEAR

• INTRADA RECORDS, Douglass Fake, Roger Feigelson

ROBERTO ASCHIERI SPECIAL AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTION TO FILM MUSIC

• JON BURLINGAME

KYLE RENICK SPECIAL AWARD

• NOSFERATU: EINE SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS, music by Christopher Young

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The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) is an association of online, print and radio journalists who specialize in writing and broadcasting about original film, television and game music.

Since its inception the IFMCA has grown to comprise over 70 members from countries such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

Previous IFMCA Score of the Year Awards have been awarded to Bear McCreary’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in 2022, Maurizio Malagnini’s Coppelia in 2021, Christopher Willis’s The Personal History of David Copperfield in 2020, John Williams’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in 2019, John Powell’s Solo in 2018, Jonny Greenwood’s Phantom Thread in 2017, Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Arrival in 2016, John Williams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar in 2014, Abel Korzeniowski’s Romeo & Juliet in 2013, Mychael Danna’s Life of Pi in 2012, John Williams’s War Horse in 2011, and John Powell’s How to Train Your Dragon in 2010.

For more information about the International Film Music Critics Association go to www.filmmusiccritics.org, visit our Facebook page, find us on YouTube, follow us on Twitter @ifmca, or contact us at ifmca.main@gmail.com.