Mychael Danna

Mychael Danna isn’t your run-of-the-mill film composer—he’s like that friend who shows up to the party with a sitar, a laptop, and a full orchestra in tow. The guy’s got an Oscar and an Emmy sitting on his shelf, thanks to his wild mashups of non-western vibes with big, lush orchestral and electronic sounds. Most folks know him for the dreamy, otherworldly score in Life of Pi, which, yeah, snagged him both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 2013. But honestly, he’s been racking up Genie Awards way before that, mostly from his long-time collab with director Atom Egoyan. Back in his University of Toronto days, Danna was already flexing his musical muscles. He dove deep into world music, picking up bits and pieces from everywhere—Europe, India, you name it. Scored his first award there too, the Glenn Gould Composition Award, then started cooking up scores for student theater. That’s also when he kicked off his decades-long partnership with Egoyan, scoring every one of his films since ‘87. Danna’s fingerprints are all over films like Ararat, The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica, and even Deepa Mehta’s Water. His music for Life of Pi is wild—think sitars playing French tunes, choirs belting out Sanskrit, and a swirl of cultures all crashing together. He’s teamed up with Bennett Miller (Moneyball, Capote), Terry Gilliam, Mira Nair, Marc Webb, and more. Little Miss Sunshine, (500) Days of Summer, Girl, Interrupted... the man’s basically everywhere.