Mychael Danna

Mychael Danna (born September 20, 1958) is a Canadian film composer. Danna has been scoring films since his 1987 feature debut for Atom Egoyan's Family Viewing, a score which earned Danna the first of his eleven Canadian Film Award nominations. Mychael is recognized as one of the pioneers of combining non-Western sound sources with orchestral and electronic minimalism in the world of film music. This reputation has led him to work with such acclaimed directors as Atom Egoyan, Scott Hicks, Ang Lee, Gillies MacKinnon, James Mangold, Mira Nair, Billy Ray, Joel Schumacher, and Denzel Washington. He studied music composition at the University of Toronto, winning there the Glenn Gould Composition Scholarship in 1985. Mychael also served for five years as composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto (1987-1992). Works for dance include music for Dead Souls (Carbone Quatorze Dance Company, directed by Gilles Maheu 1996), and a score for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's Gita Govinda (2001) based on the 1000-year-old classical Indian erotic poem, with choreographer Nina Menon. Recent projects include Deepa Mehta's Water, Atom Egoyan's Where the Truth Lies, Terry Gilliam's Tideland, and Bennett Miller's Capote.