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The 36th Film Festival Ghent was drawn to a musical close this weekend with the staging of the 9th World Soundtrack Awards. As usual it welcomed a roster of film music VIPs including veteran composer/songwriter Marvin Hamlisch, who received this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The New York-based composer, who was recently coaxed out of retirement by director Steven Soderbergh for The Informant, conducted the Brussells Philharmonic Orchestra for a selection of his compositions. The ensemble, when not led by regular conductor Dirk Brosse, also found themselves under the baton of Alexandre Desplat who was ultimately the Awards’ big winner. The busy French composer took home the prize for Best Original Film Score – for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – as well the night’s top honour, Film Composer of the Year. It has indeed been a busy twelve months or so for Desplat who, besides scoring Button, brought us the likes of Coco Before Chanel, Cheri, Julie and Julia and Largo Winch, not to mention forthcoming highlights Fantastic Mr. Fox and Twilight: New Moon.
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Slumdog Millionaire continues to attract the attention of award-givers and the jury joined the pack, bestowing A.R. Rahman with the award for Best Original Song, recognising the ever-popular song ‘Jai Ho’, while this year’s Discovery of the Year Award went to Nico Muhly. Muhly has seemingly crept up on us with his fine music, first gaining attention here at Music from the Movies earlier this year with his creepy score for Joshua (released on CD by MovieScore Media) and then with his brilliant efforts for Sam Mendes’ The Reader. Definitely one to watch. Last year’s winner was of course Marc Streitenfeld, Ridley Scott’s current composer of choice, and a selection of his music was included in the performance line-up at the de Bijloke concert hall.
Congratulations to all this year’s worthy winners and don’t forget to check out our exclusive interviews with A.R. Rahman and Danny Boyle, who discuss the music of Slumdog Millionaire in our BackTrack section.
Michael Beek
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