Mychael Danna

Composer Mychael Danna is renowned for dozens of film and television scores since his debut on the Canadian sci-fi musical 'Metal Messiah' in 1978. He has worked with many of the top Hollywood movie directors and scored several pictures for Atom Egoyan and Ang Lee. He won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe for his music to Lee's 2012 film 'The Life of Pi' and he has won five Genie Awards in his homeland.

Born in Manitoba but raised in Ontario, he won the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship in 1985 and studied music at the University of Toronto. After a five-year term as composer in residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto he provided music for dance including the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan hired him to score his 1987 feature film 'Family Viewing' and they have worked together steadily ever since. Danna's music for Egoyan's films 'Exotica' (1994), 'The Sweet Hereafter' (1997), 'Felicia's Journey' (1999) and 'Ararat' (2002) all won Genie Awards as did his score for Deepa Mehta's 2005 picture 'Water'.

He also worked with Lee on 'The Ice Storm' (1997) and 'Ride With the Devil' (1999) and other directors include Bennett Miller on 'Capote' (2005) and 'Moneyball' (2011), Terry Gilliam on 'Tideland' (2005) and 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' (2009) and Mira Nair on 'Vanity Fair' (2004), 'Monsoon Wedding' (2001) and 'Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996)'. Other films have included 'Little Miss Sunshine' (2006), '(500) Days of Summer' (2009) and 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999). His television work includes the 2014 US miniseries 'Tyrant' (for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award with his younger brother Jeff Danna), 'World Without End' (2012), 'Camelot' (2011), 'Dollhouse' (2009) and 'New Amsterdam' (2008).

Noted for his ability to blend western and eastern music with the use of exotic instruments, Danna also writes for the concert hall and recordings. His 1997 album 'A Celtic Tale' with Jeff Danna peaked at number eleven on the Billboard World Albums Chart and his album 'Sirens' went to number 15 on the New Age Albums Chart in 1991. In 2017, he provided the score for the animated feature film 'The Breadwinner' and director Bharat Nalluri's biographic film about Charles Dickens titled 'The Man Who Invented Christmas'.