I’m still at the International Film Music Festival in Úbeda, Spain, so just a quick update for now – my score for the animated short film Sintel has won two Jerry Goldsmith Awards in the categories Best Score for an Animated Short Film and Best Song (for “I Move On”).

I’m incredibly excited about this recognition and have to express my sincere gratitude to the jury, everyone involved in the organization of the festival, and of course the entire “Sintel” team for making this an unforgettable ride.

I’m excited and honored to announce that my work as a composer on last year’s animated short film Sintel has been nominated in two categories for the 2011 Jerry Goldmith Awards:

• Best Score for an Animated Short Film
• Best Song for “I Move On” (performed by Helena Fix, Lyrics by Esther Wouda)

The Jerry Goldsmith Awards, which are intended to support and recognize the work of composers for the audiovisual media, are part of the International Film Music Festival in Úbeda, Spain. The annual event is both the largest European conference for film music professionals, as well as one of the premier music festivals for soundtrack aficionados worldwide. In past years, it has featured guests such as Patrick Doyle, Christopher Lennertz, and Academy Award winners Michael Giacchino and Gabriel Yared. The nominees and recipients of the awards are being established by a jury of 50 people consisting of composers, industry professionals, film critics, and festival organizers. The award ceremony will take place on July 22nd, 2011, at the Ideal Theatre in Úbeda.

I’m truly grateful and humbled to be named one of this year’s nominees, and look forward to the event.

I’m excited to announce that Sintel director Colin Levy has asked me to write the score for his upcoming short film The Secret Number, which is currently in post production.

Tomlin, a psychiatrist working at a mental hospital, has a disturbing session with one of his patients, a brilliant mathematician named Ersheim. Driven by a singular obsession, Ersheim seeks to prove the existence of “bleem” – a secret integer between three and four. Initially skeptical, Tomlin is unsettled by the idea. Over the course of 24 hours, the idea nags at him, causing him to question his preconceived notions of logic and reality.

Starring Daniel Jones and Tom Nowicki, The Secret Number is Colin’s senior thesis at the Savannah College of Art and Design and will run about 12 minutes. The screenplay is an adaptation of the homonymous short story written by Igor Teper. The crew is maintaining an online production diary with lots of insightful behind-the-scenes video material.

Collaborating with Colin on Sintel has been an exceptionally inspiring, productive and enjoyable experience throughout, so I’m looking forward to this opportunity to work with him and his team again on this striking and original story. Watch this space for updates in the coming weeks!

In the course of my recent move to SoundCloud, I have started to compile medleys of scores that I’ve composed and produced for various documentary features in the past. These music showcases will appear next to the entries of their respective projects on the references list, but I also keep them in an easy-to-browse track set on the music page. Check ’em out!

http://soundcloud.comJan MorgensternSince it went live in 2007, the music publishing platform SoundCloud has gathered a strong following of musicians and listeners alike. Its slick, no-frills Web 2.0 interface, along with its refined embedding features, makes it an excellent choice for putting music on-line; therefore I’m happy to announce that I will be hosting my music in my own SoundCloud account in the future. I’m also in the process of integrating everything they provide back into this site, so that listening to all music on these pages will get much easier and more hassle-free (of course, I will continue to provide download links to archives where it makes sense, e.g. for my short film score albums). As a start, the entire Music page is turbo-charged with dynamic SoundCloud listening facilities now; in the future, I’m also planning to add cues, excerpts and audio showcases to project entries on the References page.

Enjoy the new features, let me know if you run into any problems – and if you’re on SoundCloud yourself, maybe you’d like to follow me and be the first to know about new tracks!

In a recent collaboration with German motorcycling equipment retailer Touratech, I’ve written and produced the music for a documentary feature that follows adventurers Ramona and Herbert Schwarz on a motorcycle journey spanning large parts of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. The legs of this journey were planned on a day-to-day basis, leaving the two guided only by the advice and recommendations of local people. The tour, totalling 5,789 kilometres, ran down the Mekong through exotic villages and mysterious jungles, past bizarre mountain formations and powerful waterfalls, and across a 1,000-kilometres pass road.

Directed by Wolfgang Danner, the 50-minute documentary provides vivid and authentic insights into the street life in urban Thailand, the vast majesty of the tropical mountain landscapes, the stunning architecture of Asian places of worship, and the cordiality of the people the two meet on their journey. The music that I’ve written for the documentary blends traditional elements of Indonesian gamelan music with more modern, upbeat styles.

The film was released in January 2011 on a two-DVD set, which includes lots of bonus material. It can be purchased worldwide at Touratech retail stores or from their Webshop.

In collaboration with Norway’s largest public TV broadcaster NRK, Larvik-based design and animation house Sandnes Media is currently producing a series of animated shorts based on works by the famous and influential Norwegian songwriter and musician Alf Prøysen. The narrative for each short is provided by the lyrics of one of the children’s songs that Prøysen wrote and performed during his main period of work in the 1950s and 60s.

The visuals are rather distinct among modern animation in that they’re beautifully drawn and animated by hand in their entirety; this traditional 2D production technique, which has mostly gone out of fashion for reasons of cost efficiency, is masterfully revived by the artists at Sandnes Media with brilliant results.

In order to provide an appropriate soundscape for the visuals and to accompany Alf Prøysen’s playful music performances, I’m responsible for the creation and mixing of a cohesive and believable soundtrack for each short. The results of this collaboration will be aired on NRK around Easter 2011.

My music score for the CG short film Sintel, which was released to the public earlier this month, is now available for download under a Creative Commons license.

The release includes not only every bit of music that I wrote for the film, but also a cool music video for our credits song “I Move On (Sintel’s Song)” (performed by Helena Fix), which was directed by Colin Levy. Head over to the music page to download the score for free in either MP3 or uncompressed, CD-quality FLAC format!