Mychael Danna

About Mychael Danna

Mychael Danna is an Academy Award-winning film composer recognized for his evocative blending of non-western traditions with orchestral and electronic music. He composed the transculturally inspired 2013 Oscar and Golden Globe-winning score for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. Danna also composed scores for Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm and Ride With the Devil. Other noted credits include Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated films such as his long time collaborator Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica, Moneyball and Capote with director Bennett Miller, Monsoon Wedding, Little Miss Sunshine, (500) Days of Summer, Being Julia, Deepa Mehta’s Water and Girl, Interrupted. He won an Emmy Award for outstanding music composition for the 2012 mini-series World Without End. Often collaborating with his brother Jeff, they have scored The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus for Terry Gilliam, The Breadwinner (Annie Nomination), Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, and television scores include Alias Grace (Emmy Nomination), Tyrant, (3 Emmy Nominations), and Camelot, (Emmy Nomination). Latest scores include The Addams Family (2019), and Onward (2020), a Pixar film about two brothers, both scored with his brother Jeff. “The most gratifying filmmaking experiences are ones that take effort to unpeel the layers surrounding the heart of the story and to find the best musical expression of that heart,” says Danna. “Those are always the film scores I am most proud of.”