World Soundtrack Academy announces second wave of nominees!

Named one of the Society of Composers and Publishers’ “Film Composers to Watch,” Gavin Brivik has won numerous awards, including the World Soundtrack Award for “Best Composition by a Young International Composer,” the ASCAP Jimmy Van Heusen Film Composer Award, the Alan Menken Composer Award, and the distinguished Elmer Bernstein Film Scoring Award.

Brivik recently scored Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s Wild Indian (Vertical Entertainment). Brivik’s credits also include the 90th Academy Award-nominated short, My Nephew Emmett, Netflix’s Emmy-nominated original series Living Undocumented, Netflix/Blumhouse Productions’ Cam, Justin P. Lange’s horror film The Seventh Day as well as numerous narrative and documentary short films.

Nainita Desai is a trailblazer in the world of documentary, having brought her unique voice to the scores of hundreds of acclaimed documentaries, including Academy Award and Cannes winning film For Sama. Her recent scores include Kevin MacDonald’s The Day That Changed Britain (2021) and John Dower’s Sophie: A Murder in West Cork (2021).

Following a degree in Maths and studying sound for film at the NFTS in the UK, Nainita began her career as a sound designer on feature films for directors including Werner Herzog and Bertolucci, as well as being an assistant music engineer to Peter Gabriel. She moves seamlessly between working with orchestras, to creating scores that incorporate electronics, ethnic elements and found sound, all of which has informed her experimental and deeply immersive approach to composition.

Praised by the Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, Florencia Di Concilio has composed scores for award-winning feature films that premiered at the film festivals of Cannes, Berlin and Sundance. She is the winner of the first Prix Michel Legrand, as well as a 2021 nominee for the Prix Lumières. Di Concilio’s work for Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary also earned her a nomination for the WSA Discovery of the Year Award.

Florencia Di Concilio has written major symphonic works as a composer-in-residence with the Miami Symphony Orchestra, and two piano concertos that have been performed by both South American and North American symphony orchestras. She is currently working on a large-scale symphonic and choral piece for the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, and has created music for groundbreaking visual artists and contemporary dance companies.

Natalie Holt's film and television credits include the Marvel television series Loki, the BBC’s Wallander (starring Kenneth Branagh), Knightfall (starring Mark Hamill), Paddington (starring Hugh Bonneville) and Deadwater Fell (starring David Tennant). She co-scored the WW1 film Journey’s End with Oscar winner Hildur Guðnadóttir (Joker), The Honourable Woman and Victoria with Martin Phipps (The Crown) and composed additional music for Hans Zimmer and Martin Phipps on the film Woman in Gold.

An accomplished violinist and violist, she has performed at the Royal Albert Hall and the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games. She is known for her experimental string-based scores, on which she plays violin, piano and vintage synthesizer, as well as for her large orchestral music.

Anthony Willis wrote music for many of Hollywood’s most loved productions. Willis’s original score for Emerald Fennell’s Oscar-winning thriller Promising Young Woman, starring Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham, earned him a 2021 BAFTA nomination a BMI Award, and now a WSA Discovery of the Year nomination as well.

As lead composer, Willis scored Dreamworks Animation’s Annie Award-winning How to Train your Dragon: Homecoming, starring Jay Baruchel and America Ferrera, Seasons 6 thru 8 of the video game sensation, Fortnite; Michelle Morgan's Sundance Selection comedy It Happened in L.A., Universal Pictures’ silent film What Happened to Jones?, and Sony Playstation's action platformer video game Knack II. Upcoming projects include Bron’s social justice drama/thriller Solitary, starring David Oyelowo.

Born in London in 1995, Dougal Kemp began writing music for different bands in High School (Jazz-Rock, World Music, Reggae-Swing...) and started developing an interest for all styles he came across.

He followed a Film Music Master's degree in Lyon before winning in 2019 the First Prize in Animation Category and becoming finalist in the Scenario Category of the Original SoundTrack Challenge in Clermont-Ferrand. Kemp joined the Lyon National Superior Conservatory of Music & Dance (CNSMDL) in 2019 in order to deepen his personal musical language and learn how to adapt it in the best ways to movies.

After finishing his philosophy studies, Matthew Lucado-Donner took up various online classes where he learned orchestration and discovered his deepest musical passion - film scoring.

For the next several years, Lucado-Donner scored the occasional short film while working part-time jobs. In 2018 he scored the “no budget” feature length film, The Cabin (Johan Bodell), where he learned in real time the demands and techniques of film scoring.

By the spring of 2020, Lucado-Donner discovered the world of film scoring competitions where he first began notating his music and learned how write for specific ensembles. Matthew’s music is characterized by a deep empathy with the characters on screen. His writing style is punctuated by his background in jazz performance and influenced by his life long love of film music.

Prokhor Protasov was conductor-in-residence of the Vyatka Symphony Orchestra from 2015 to 2018. During that period, he arranged performances of two of his major compositions, a concerto for violin, piano, and orchestra and a ballet named Town in a Snuffbox.

Protasov won a Fulbright Scholarship, which allowed him to study orchestral conducting at the Bard College Conservatory of Music with Harold Farberman, James Bagwell and Leon Botstein, and composition with George Tsontakis and Susan Botti. In 2020, he has become a DMA student of a renowned composer Christos Hatzis at the University of Toronto. He has received several awards for his compositions, including the St. Romanos Melodos International Composers Competition in Saint Petersburg and the international composers’ competition, ‘Musical Palette of Durdy Bayramov,’ in Canada.