Composer Information

Name:
Mychael Danna
Born:
September 20, 1958
WWW:
Official Website
Trailer Music:
Trailer Usage

Top Grossing Films

Movie Box Office
Bounce (2000) $36,805,288
8MM (1999) $36,663,315
Girl, Interrupted (1999) $28,912,646
Hearts in Atlantis (2001) $24,185,781
Antwone Fisher (2002) $21,078,145

Box office results courtesy of Box Office Mojo
Click for Mychael Danna's full box office

Biography

Mychael Danna has been scoring films since his 1987 feature debut for Atom Egoyan's Family Viewing, a score which earned Danna the first of his eight Canadian film award nominations. His work with Egoyan continues through five features, including Exotica, where Danna was able to incorporate his interest in Middle Eastern and South Asian music. His fascination with combining non-Western sound sources with electronics, minimalism and manipulation is pushed to a further limit in Mira Nair's Kama Sutra (1997). Danna's work with Ang Lee on The Ice Storm (1997), used native American flute player Dan Cecil Hill in concert with The Evergreen Gamelan Ensemble to portray the forces of nature at play under the suburban 70's of Connecticut. A very different sonic world was explored in John Greyson's feature Lilies ( 1996-1997), where Danna wrote a Latin vocal mass with Gregorian and other early music influences; performed by England's premier male choir TheHilliard Ensemble. Danna also scored Regeneration, a film by Britain's Gillies MacKinnon based on the Pat Barker novel of the Great War, as well as Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, which portrays the parallel story of the Pied Piper with the ney playing of Hossein 'Omoumi and early music ensemble TheToronto Consort.

Most of his filmscores are available on CDs by Varese Sarabande Records, Virgin Records and other labels. Other recent work includes The Confession with Ben Kingsley and Alec Baldwin, and Three Seasons, for which the composer traveled to Viet Nam to work with Vietnamese folk instruments. He also served for five years as composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto.