Music in TV series

 

This year, the Saturday of SoundTrack_Cologne is dedicated again to TV series. The four guests draw a line from superheroes to innovative crime series: Lolita Ritmanis („Spectacular Spider-Man“), Eloi Ragot („The Break“), Ginge Anvik („State of Happiness “), Mac Quayle („American Crime Story“).

Emmy Award winning composer Lolita Ritmanis is one of the most sought after composers for animated series and superheroes. She and her scoring partners Kristopher Carter and Michael McCuistion are best known for memorable themes and underscores they have created for fan-favourite productions like Marvel’s Avengers Assemble, Warner Bros. Young Justice and Batman and Harley Quinn. Together they also composed the scores for the animated series Spectacular Spider-Man and Batman: The Animated Series. In addition, she is writing music for series like Flip the Script and documentaries like Wild Daze. She is also the current president of the Alliance for Women Film Composers.

When a composer and a showrunner already work together from the conception of the series, this is a very lucky chance for both and often leads to outstanding results. Hence it is no wonder, that the Belgian crime series The Break aired in several countries before being distributed internationally by Netflix. The series also won the “Award for Best French-Speaking Series” at Seriesmania in Paris 2016. It is also a lucky chance for SoundTrack_Cologne, that composer Eloi Ragot and showrunner Stéphane Bergmans provide insights in their workflow during the conception of the series in a workshop discussion: Since Eloi wrote around half of the themes already on basis of the script, they were able to work without temp tracks. Since 2008, Eloi Ragot has composed, arranged and produced music for many films and series such as EUH and Lucas etc. As a passionate sound tinkerer, he likes to combine field recording, sampling, electronic and acoustics sounds and instruments in order to design exciting textures and soundscapes.

Two of the five awards of the first edition of “Canneseries”, the international series festival in Cannes were awarded to State of Happiness – one for the script and one for the music by Ginge Anvik. The Norwegian composer started out in electronica in 1990, composing for radio-theater, dance performances and performing at raves and festivals. After 15 years meandering around in Oslo's musical underground, he accidentally ended up scoring the comedy drama Tommys Movie in 2005. Since then he has scored 23 feature films like Sons of Norway and Julekongen in addition to TV-series such as Varg Veum and documentaries.

Audiences worldwide have been captivated by the unique musical stylings of Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated composer, Mac Quayle. His credits comprise more than 40 films and TV series including Ryan Murphy’s new ‘80s NYC ball scene drama, Pose, USA Network’s Golden Globe-winning Mr. Robot, for which Mac won an Emmy, FOX’s 9-1-1 which Mac composes with Todd Haberman, and Feud: Bette and Joan, for which Mac received two Emmy nominations for his main title and score. Mac also scored American Horror Story seasons four through seven, and received his first Emmy nomination for his score on American Horror Story: Freak Show. Additionally, he scored FX’s Emmy-winning The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.