INTERNATIONAL FILM MUSIC CRITICS ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES WINNERS OF 2024 IFMCA AWARDS

• BEAR MCCREARY WINS SCORE OF THE YEAR FOR SECOND SEASON OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER 

• ALAN SILVESTRI WINS TWO AWARDS FOR HERE, HIS 20TH COLLABORATION WITH ROBERT ZEMECKIS 

• COMPOSERS FROM UK, FRANCE, ITALY, ALSO TAKE HOME AWARDS 

FEBRUARY 27, 2025 — The International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) announces its annual list of winners for excellence in musical scoring, in the 2024 IFMCA Awards. 

The award for Score of the Year goes to American composer Bear McCreary, for his score for the second season of the Amazon Prime fantasy television series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The score also won the award for its genre, being named Best Original Score for Television, while McCreary was also named Composer of the Year. McCreary’s work in 2024 in addition to The Rings of Power includes the nostalgic 1980s comedy The 4:30 Movie, the horror flick Imaginary, and music for the latest seasons of multiple TV shows such as Outlander, Halo, and Masters of the Universe, which he wrote along with his staff composers at Sparks & Shadows.  

IFMCA member Jon Broxton wrote that Season Two of The Rings of Power was “the equal of the score for Season One in every way, because not only does McCreary revisit each of his fantastic recurring themes, he augments them with a handful of brand new ones, and incorporates them all together to create a dramatically potent, musically compelling, emotionally satisfying, intelligently structured blockbuster that, to me, confirms why this type of leitmotivic approach to film scoring is the pinnacle of the art.”  

This is McCreary’s second Score of the Year victory in three years, having previously won for the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in 2022. These wins also take McCreary’s all-time IFMCA win tally to 12, making him the fifth most successful composer in IFMCA history after John Williams, Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, and Alexandre Desplat. 

British composer Daniel Blumberg is named Breakthrough Composer of the Year after impressing members with his score for the critically acclaimed epic drama The Brutalist, which looks at the life and experiences of a Hungarian-born architect as he emigrates to the United States in the aftermath of the Holocaust. IFMCA member Peter Simons lauded Blumberg’s work for its experimental and intriguing nature, noting its “moments of absolute grace and beauty,” and saying that “when it’s not so beautiful, it is genuinely inventive, original and different.” 

Also winning multiple awards in 2024 is American composer Alan Silvestri, who won the award for Best Original Score for a Drama film for Here, with that film’s end credits also being named Composition of the Year. The 20th collaboration between Silvestri and director Robert Zemeckis, Here is a fascinating ‘experiment’ film which tells the story of a specific place throughout time from the era of the dinosaurs through the ice age, to the dawn of humanity, pre-Columbian native Americans, and then after a house is built on that spot, the different families who live there, from the Colonial era to the present day.  

IFMCA member Christian Clemmensen praised Silvestri for “supplying some of the most powerful and compelling music of his career for this highly unusual film,” and said that the score was “consistently pleasant and emotionally inviting, compelling testimony that melodramatic scoring can still succeed brilliantly if you're in the mood for pure nostalgia.” These are Silvestri’s career first IFMCA wins, despite him having been nominated 18 times prior to this year, for scores as varied as The Polar Express, Van Helsing, Captain America: The First Avenger, Ready Player One, and Avengers: Endgame. 

The various other genre awards are won by: Daniel Pemberton for the moon landing hoax comedy Fly Me to the Moon, Chris Benstead for the World War II-set action adventure The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, John Powell and Stephen Schwartz for their work bringing the massively popular Broadway musical Wicked for the big screen, Robin Carolan for the gothic vampire horror Nosferatu, Kris Bowers for the soaring animated adventure film The Wild Robot, Raphaël Dargent for the paleontology documentary Why Dinosaurs?, and Gordy Haab for the video game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, based on the successful Steven Spielberg action movies. 

The first ever award for Best Original Score for a Short Film goes to Go for Grandma, written by Italian composer Fabrizio Mancinelli. The movie is a fantasy-adventure short film directed by Sabrina Doyle, about a young boy who escapes a neglectful home life through his grandmother’s love and the power of his imagination; members responded favorably to Mancinelli’s rich, warm, melodic orchestral writing, which drew inspiration from several great 80s and 90s orchestral composers and successfully captured a myriad of emotions over the course of just 20 minutes. 

This year’s Archival Award is presented to producer Thomas Van Parys of Film Fest Gent for the compilation album Elliot Goldenthal: Music for Film. Each year at the Film Fest one composer is awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Soundtrack Awards committee, and as part of that experience there is a live concert of their music, and an accompanying soundtrack compilation CD – this is that album. The album contains music from 11 of Goldenthal’s most well-loved scores, including Batman Forever, Interview with the Vampire, Frida, Titus, Alien 3, and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and was beautifully recorded in Belgium by the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dirk Brossé. The album features in-depth liner notes by Van Parys and Goldenthal, and art direction by Stuart Ford. Worth noting is the fact that Brossé conducted the original Final Fantasy score, and as such this album brings their long friendship and working relationship full circle. 

La-La Land Records is named Film Music Record Label of the Year, in recognition of their outstanding series of premieres, expanded re-releases, and re-mastered re-issues, which in 2024 included titles such as John Barry's Moonraker and John Williams’s The Sugarland Express – both IFMCA nominees this year – as well as classic scores like Top Gun, Torn Curtain, The Godfather Part II, Spider-Man II, and Goldfinger. 

This year’s winners of the Roberto Aschieri Special Award, which is awarded to an individual or group of individuals who have made an important and long-lasting contribution to the art and preservation of film music over a career, are William Stromberg, Anna Bonn, and the late John Morgan, who sadly passed away earlier this year. 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.  

Morgan and Stromberg are both outstanding composers in their own right, having worked together on scores including Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation, and the acclaimed atomic bomb documentary Trinity and Beyond. However, their most lasting legacy is their astonishing and vitally important work preserving, restoring, and recording new albums of classic film music, which they began in the 1990s. Along with Stromberg's wife Anna Bonn, they produced dozens of recordings for record labels such as Marco Polo, Naxos, BMG, Intrada, and their own Tribute Film Classics label, which they established in 2007. Most the scores were conducted by Stromberg, any many were recorded in Russia with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. In total the team has worked on more than 100 different scores over the course of more than three decades, culminating in their final triumph together: last year's recording of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein by Frank Skinner, paired with Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops by William Lava, Herman Stein, and Henry Mancini. Produced for Intrada Records and backed by an unprecedented number of supporters via Kickstarter, this soon-to-be-available album serves as a particularly fitting capstone to the team's efforts to newly record the music of classic Universal monster movies. 

In years past the team was recognized for their work with three IFMCA Awards: for Bernard Herrmann’s The Battle of Neretva/The Naked and the Dead in 2012, Dimitri Tiomkin’s Dial M for Murder in 2020, and Bernard Herrmann’s The Man Who Knew Too Much/On Dangerous Ground in 2024. The many other composers they championed with new recordings over the past three decades include Alfred Newman, Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Victor Young, Dimitri Tiomkin, Jerry Goldsmith, and Hugo Friedhofer. Thanks to their combined efforts, their artistry, and their love of the genre as a whole, Morgan, Stromberg, and Bonn have left an indelible mark on the film music industry, and through their preservation efforts have given future generations the opportunity to experience much wonderful music in superb modern performances and sound quality. 

This year, the IFMCA has also decided to present the Kyle Renick Special Award to Music by John Williams, the documentary film for Disney+ directed by Laurent Bouzereau. 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.  

Music by John Williams is the first-ever documentary feature about the life and work of the legendary composer, from his early days as a jazz pianist, to his unmatched career in film music, which has earned him 54 Oscar nominations and seen him write music for numerous iconic franchises; members felt that this landmark documentary was an important way of celebrating the now 93-year-old composer, and was worthy of special recognition. 

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The winners are: 

SCORE OF THE YEAR 

• THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER, music by Bear McCreary 

COMPOSER OF THE YEAR 

• BEAR MCCREARY 

BREAKTHROUGH COMPOSER OF THE YEAR 

• DANIEL BLUMBERG 

COMPOSITION OF THE YEAR 

• “END CREDITS” from HERE, music by Alan Silvestri 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A DRAMA FILM 

• HERE, music by Alan Silvestri 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A COMEDY FILM 

• FLY ME TO THE MOON, music by Daniel Pemberton 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN ACTION/ADVENTURE FILM 

• THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE, music by Chris Benstead 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A FANTASY/SCIENCE FICTION FILM 

• WICKED, music by John Powell and Stephen Schwartz 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A HORROR/THRILLER FILM 

• NOSFERATU, music by Robin Carolan 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR AN ANIMATED FILM 

• THE WILD ROBOT, music by Kris Bowers 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A DOCUMENTARY 

• WHY DINOSAURS?, music by Raphaël Dargent 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR TELEVISION 

• THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER, music by Bear McCreary 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A VIDEO GAME OR INTERACTIVE MEDIA 

• INDIANA JONES AND THE GREAT CIRCLE, music by Gordy Haab 

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE FOR A SHORT FILM 

• GO FOR GRANDMA, music by Fabrizio Mancinelli 

BEST ARCHIVAL RELEASE 

• ELLIOT GOLDENTHAL: MUSIC FOR FILM, music by Elliot Goldenthal; the Brussels Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Dirk Brossé; album produced by Thomas Van Parys for Film Fest Gent; liner notes by Elliot Goldenthal and Thomas Van Parys; album art direction by Stuart Ford (WSA/Silva) 

FILM MUSIC RECORD LABEL OF THE YEAR 

• LA-LA LAND RECORDS, MV Gerhard, Matt Verboys 

ROBERTO ASCHIERI SPECIAL AWARD FOR CONTRIBUTION TO FILM MUSIC 

• JOHN MORGAN, WILLIAM STROMBERG, and ANNA BONN 

KYLE RENICK SPECIAL AWARD 

• MUSIC BY JOHN WILLIAMS, directed by Laurent Bouzereau 

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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, Colombia, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iran, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. 

Previous IFMCA Score of the Year Awards have been awarded to John Williams’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023, 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, and John Williams’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. 

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/X @ifmca, or contact us at ifmca.main@gmail.com.