Discover the first nominees for the 2024 World Soundtrack Awards!

Jerskin Fendrix was raised in the rural county of Shropshire, England, where he learnt violin and piano. In his early twenties, he moved to London and spent two years nurturing a visceral live personality at the iconic South London venue Windmill Brixton. In 2018 he composed the music for an experimental opera UBU, performed at the V&A Museum. The Guardian called the score “brutal" and “unsettling”. He released his debut-album Winterreise in April 2020 via untitled (recs). An “unhinged collection of pop songs”, Loud & Quiet Magazine named it their 2020 Album of the Year.

In 2023, Fendrix scored the motion picture Poor Things directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It is the first time the director of The Favourite and The Lobster has worked with an original composer. The score was critically acclaimed and received a range of Best Original Score nominations from the Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and more. The pair have collaborated again on the 2024 feature film Kinds of Kindness.

Ludwig Göransson has earned extensive global recognition in both the recording and motion picture industries as a sought-out composer and musical collaborator, having received two Academy Awards®, a Golden Globe Award®, a Critics’ Choice Award®, two Emmy® Awards, and three Grammy® Awards, amongst other nominations.

Most recently, Göransson was once again enlisted by acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan to score one of the year’s most anticipated films, Oppenheimer, which has become a box office hit. Göransson earned a 2024 Golden Globe Award® and 2024 Critics’ Choice Award® for the ever-present score, which accompanies nearly every moment of the film, immersing the viewer in sound. The score also earned a 2024 Grammy Award®. Oppenheimer served as the second collaboration for Göransson and Nolan following their work together on the 2020 film Tenet, for which Göransson received critical acclaim for his innovative ways of depicting entropy, palindromic sequences and the very human consequences of time inversion through music in his score.

Oscar nominated, five-time Emmy award winning composer Laura Karpman creates powerful, imaginative scores that push the boundaries of storytelling. Her works span film, television, theater, interactive media and live performance, reflecting an audaciously creative spirit.

2023 was perhaps her most prolific year to date, with six film and TV projects. She scored Amazon MGM's American Fiction, starring Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown, written, directed and produced by Cord Jefferson, which garnered five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and for which Karpman received her first Oscar nomination for her original score. In addition to that, she scored The Marvels (Disney), Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed (HBO Max), for which Karpman was Emmy nominated, What If? (Disney+), Ms. Marvel (Disney+), and 61st Street (The CW). Karpman is a fierce champion for diversity, equity and inclusion in Hollywood, founding the Alliance for Women Film Composers, and serving as the first female Governor in the Music Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Anthony Willis is a BAFTA-nominated composer, known for his evocative scores for Emerald Fennell’s Oscars winning Promising Young Woman, Blumhouse’s Ai hit M3gan, and Fennell’s latest psychological thriller Saltburn from MGM/Amazon starring Barry Keoghan & Jacob Elordi. He was named one of Variety’s Top 10 Artisans to Watch in 2023 at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. His recent projects also include Dreamworks' Animation's Annie award-winning How To Train Your Dragon: Homecoming, Seasons 6-8 of Epic's video game sensation Fortnite, and Michelle Morgan’s comedy It Happened in L.A. As a protege of Oscar-nominated composer John Powell and Henry Jackman, Anthony has also contributed additional music to many of Hollywood’s most beloved franchises including: How to Train your Dragon, Jumanji, Wreck it Ralph, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Pirates of the Caribbean and Rio.

Hans Zimmer has scored more than 500 projects across all mediums, which combined have grossed more than 28 billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Zimmer has been honoured with two Academy Awards®, three Golden Globe® Awards, five Grammy® Awards, an American Music Award, and a Tony® Award, as well as six Emmy® nominations. Most recently, Zimmer scored Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed sequel, Dune: Part Two, which premiered in March 2024. The film is the follow-up to the 2021 Hollywood blockbuster Dune, which earned Zimmer his second Academy Award® in the category of Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures. He was recently nominated for three Emmy® Awards on behalf of his work on Planet Earth III and The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Zimmer’s additional work highlights include No Time to Die, Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, Thelma and Louise, The Last Samurai and Dunkirk, as well as recent film scores including Top Gun: Maverick, Wonder Woman 1984 and The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.

Nick Chuba is a composer living and working in Los Angeles. After studying at USC’s Thornton School of Music, he began working for Atticus Ross and has worked on numerous projects with him since 2014. Most recently, Nick composed the score for the feature film Thelma, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Festival. Other recent credits include Dr. Death (Peacock) and The Girl from Plainville (Hulu) with Leopold Ross,  Appendage (Hulu) and Operation Varsity Blues (Netflix) with Atticus Ross and Leopold Ross.

Known for his work alongside Trent Reznor both in the band Nine Inch Nails and as a film and television scoring duo, Atticus Ross has earned numerous awards and nominations including Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes, Oscars, GRAMMYs, Emmys and BAFTAs. In 2020, Nine Inch Nails was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In addition, he has been honoured by the American Film Institute and the Society of Composers and Lyricists.

Ross received the NAACP Image Award for the soundtrack to the Pixar hit Soul, alongside Reznor and Jon Batiste. Additional credits include The Book of Eli, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Love & Mercy, Gone Girl, Waves, Mank and Bones and All. He also scored Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary Before the Flood, The Vietnam War for PBS and Watchmen for HBO.

Leopold Ross is a musician, producer and composer whose scoring career began with The Hughes brothers’ 2010 film The Book Of Eli. He has gone on to create scores for acclaimed directors such as Michael Mann (Blackhat), Harmony Korine (Rebel) and John Hillcoat (Black Mirror) in his extensive film and television career. Most recently he composed the scores for Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild, Apple’s Godzilla franchise Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and FX/Hulu’s Shōgun.

Natalie Holt is a multi-award-winning British composer, known for her two-time Emmy-nominated score for Marvel Studios’ Loki and Loki S. 2, as well as the acclaimed Lucasfilm series Obi-Wan Kenobi. Her film and television credits include the BAFTA Award-winning series Wallander (BBC), Knightfall (History Channel), the BAFTA Award-winning series Three Girls (BBC), mini-series Deadwater Fell, the Emmy Award-nominated series The Honourable Woman (HBO Max), Victoria (PBS), Saul Dibb’s World War I feature Journey's End, Netflix/Claudia Llosa’s drama feature Fever Dream, and Fox’s female super hero feature The Princess, to name just a few.

Natalie’s numerous awards nominations and wins include the Primetime Emmy Awards, World Soundtrack Awards’ “Television Composer of the Year”, BAFTA, SCL Awards, the Royal Television Society Craft and Design Award, the HMMAs, and “Best International Score” at the Beijing International Film Festival.

James Newton Howard is one of the film industry’s most versatile and honoured composers, with a career spanning over thirty years and encompassing more than 140 film and television projects. He is a nine time Oscar nominee, and Emmy and Grammy winner. Howard has also been honoured with ASCAP’s prestigious Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement and the BMI ICON Award.

After scoring his first film, Head Office, in 1985, Howard quickly knew he had found his calling. He has since created the scores for a broad range of films, recently including Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Jungle Cruise, News of the World, Raya and the Last Dragon, A Hidden Life and all four instalments of The Hunger Games franchise. In addition to his contributions to film and television music, Howard has written a number of concert works and, as a record producer, arranger, and songwriter, he has collaborated with some of pop’s biggest names including Elton John and Barbra Streisand.

Coming from a musical background (he is Benjamin Britten’s godson), Martin read drama at Manchester University and fortunately for the acting profession, he decided to concentrate his energies on writing music. Since scoring his first TV drama, Eureka Street in 2002, he has won two BAFTAs, five Ivor Novello Awards and received multiple Emmy nominations for writing music to many of the most interesting series of recent years. These include the BBC’s War and Peace, Hugo Blick’s The Honourable Woman, Peaky Blinders, Black Mirror and season 3 through 6 of the acclaimed Netflix series The Crown.

Recently Martin has scored Sir Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, Ed Perkins’ The Princess, and Amazon Studios’ series Solos starring Morgan Freeman. Other film credits include Woman In Gold (scored with Hans Zimmer), starring Ryan Reynolds and Helen Mirren, Fox Searchlight’s The Aftermath, starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, Harry Brown and Brighton Rock.

Carlos Rafael Rivera is a Grammy and two-time Emmy winning composer and educator with a multifaceted career in Film, TV, and the performing arts. His work includes scores for Netflix’s Godless, for which he received a Primetime Emmy, his award-winning score for The Queen’s Gambit, for which he won his second Primetime Emmy and first Grammy Award, Universal Pictures’ A Walk Among the Tombstones, starring Liam Neeson, the hit show Hacks for HBO Max, Universal’s Chupa, as well as the global hit La reina del sur 3 for Netflix/Telemundo.

This past year, Carlos scored the Apple TV series Lessons in Chemistry, starring Brie Larson, for which he received a Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL) nomination for score and won for his main title sequence; the Netflix limited series Griselda, starring Sofia Vergara; Bleecker Street's Ezra, starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, and Robert DeNiro; as well as his continued collaborations with writer/director Scott Frank on AMC Network's Monsieur Spade and the Netflix series Department Q.

Jeff Russo is an Emmy Award-winning and Grammy-nominated composer, scoring varied and compelling music for film, television and video games. Russo’s film credits include, among others, Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Rob Peace, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, Bartlett Sher’s Oslo, which he co-scored with Zoë Keating and for which he received an Emmy nomination, and Paul Dektor’s American Dreamer, which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. His music can also be heard on shows such as FX’s Fargo, for which Russo received an Emmy in 2017 and four additional nominations, Netflix’s limited series Ripley, Peacock’s Mrs. Davis, HBO Max’s Love and Death, Amazon Prime’s The Consultant, and many more.

In addition to composing music for film and television, Russo is a founding member, lead guitarist and co-songwriter of two-time Grammy nominated, multi-platinum selling rock band Tonic. He also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Music for a Video Game for Annapurna Interactive’s What Remains of Edith Finch.

Mark Ronson is an internationally renowned DJ, OSCAR® Winner, and 8x GRAMMY-award winning producer and songwriter. Along with releasing five successful albums under his own name, Ronson’s resume includes production work for some of music’s biggest names, including Adele, Paul McCartney, Miley Cyrus, Duran Duran and more.

Most recently, Ronson served as the executive music producer of the Barbie The Album soundtrack for the 2023 motion picture Barbie. Alongside Andrew Wyatt and Barbie writer/director/executive producer, Greta Gerwig, Ronson also composed the score for the film. Ronson is currently based in New York where he operates his record label, Zelig Records. To date, Ronson has 1 Academy Award, 8 Grammy Awards, 2 Brit Awards, 1 Golden Globe Award, 1 Critics Choice Award and 1 MTV VMA Award to his name.

Dan Wilson is a Minneapolis-born, Los Angeles-based musician, singer, songwriter, producer, and visual artist. Wilson took home an Album of the Year Grammy for Adele’s 21, which featured three of his co-writes (including "Someone Like You"), landed a Song of the Year Grammy for The Chicks' "Not Ready To Make Nice," and was nominated for Best Rock Song for his song “Closing Time” he wrote for his band Semisonic. Wilson, a “songwriters songwriter,” has written with an eclectic range of collaborators including living legends Carole King and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and country artists Chris Stapleton and Tenille Townes.

Most recently, he co-wrote and produced Celine Dion’s “Love Again” from the feature film and soundtrack, as well as “It Never Went Away” from Jon Batiste’s documentary American Symphony.

Jon Batiste is a five-time Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-winning singer, songwriter and composer. Batiste is the subject of Matthew Heineman’s moving documentary American Symphony, which debuted in select theatres and via Netflix in partnership with Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground in November 2023.

The documentary, now shortlisted for three Academy Awards (“Documentary Feature,” “Original Song,” and “Original Score”) follows Batiste beginning in early 2022, when he finds himself celebrated with 11 Grammy nominations, including album of the year. Amid that triumph, he is immersed in his most ambitious challenge yet: composing an original symphony for a performance at the storied Carnegie Hall. However, this extraordinary trajectory is upended when his life partner, NYT bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning journalist Suleika Jaouad, learns that her long-dormant cancer has returned. Batiste penned the emotional original song “‘It Never Went Away’ to accompany the project.

Simon Farnaby is a screenwriter, actor and author. He is known for writing Paddington, Paddington 2 and the Wonka film alongside long-term collaborator Paul King. In recent years, he has also written the adaptation of the book The Phantom of the Open (co-written with Scott Murray) into a feature film of the same name, starring Mark Rylance. On the TV side, Simon is known as a long time member of the Them There theatrical production collective, starring in and writing Horrible Histories and the long-running BBC comedy Ghosts.

Neil Hannon is best known as the songwriter and driving force behind the band The Divine Comedy. Over twelve albums (and counting), his trademark orchestral pop, intelligent lyrics and legendary live shows have turned him into something of a national treasure. After two decades, the critically acclaimed album count is at twelve, with songs like “Our Mutual Friend”, “A Lady Of A Certain Age” and “To The Rescue”.

Hannon has written extensively outside of The Divine Comedy. His work for theatre includes a musical adaptation of Swallows and Amazons for the Bristol Old Vic which has since become a perennial favourite both in the UK and internationally. His classical pieces “To Our Fathers In Distress” and “As The Sun Brightens, The Shadows Deepen” were recently performed in Belfast by the Ulster Orchestra and recorded by the BBC for broadcast in 2024. He contributed songs and scores to 2022’s found-footage sci-fi film LOLA, and wrote the original songs for Warner Bros’ hit film musical Wonka (2023), starring Timothée Chalamet.