Speakers

Christopher Young

Composer

One of the foremost talents in film music today, Golden Globe & two-time Emmy nominated composer Christopher Young has scored an impressive number of features in virtually every genre, all with strikingly original music. Christopher was honored to be the recipient of several awards including The Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement from BMI and was named #1 Greatest Horror Film Composer Of All Time by BBC Music Magazine. In 2023, Young was bestowed the high honor of being “Composer Of The Year” by the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) as well as many other prestigious awards from the IFMCA over the years. In 2020, the Young scored film Sinister (Blumhouse), for director Scott Derrickson, was ranked as the scariest movie of all time. Most recently Young has teamed up with the master of horror, Guillermo del Toro, on his Cabinet Of Curiosities series for Netflix. And AppleTV+ has Chris scoring their exciting new series, Echo 3. Coming in 2022 are two studio features Abyzou & The Piper. Young had a box-office hit in 2019 with Pet Sematary for Paramount Pictures. The 2021 crime/thriller The Empty Man for 20th Century Fox/Studios let Young experiment with different musical colors to create a gritty musical landscape. Young retimed with legendary director Sam Raimi on his 50 States Of Fright series on the brand new streaming service, Quibi. These along with over 160 more films embody the work of this prolific composer. Other notable credits include, the spine-tingling Hellraiser, which showcased the composer’s seminal upbringing in horror; the new-techno sound of Swordfish displays his versatility; the resonant, genuine Celtic sounds of The Shipping News display his attention to detail; to the heart-pounding rhythms of Spider-Man 3 are all evidence of his willingness to experiment. Born in Red Bank, New Jersey (birthplace of Count Basie), Young graduated from Massachusetts Hampshire college with a BA in music, and did post-graduate work at North Texas State University before moving to Los Angeles in 1980. At the time, Young was a jazz drummer, a precursor to some of the edgier scores he would later complete. Soon, an introduction to esteemed composer Bernard Herrmann’s movie scores (Vertigo, Citizen Kane) opened up a new world for Young, who was unfamiliar with film scoring. “Here was someone doing everything I wanted to do. I fell in love with the music before I realized that it was written for movies”, said Young.

Though Young had built a solid reputation scoring horror and science fiction pictures, Director Jon Amiel recognized that the composer’s talent transcended genre. Amiel entrusted Young to score Warner Bros.’ dramatic thriller, Copycat. The film and score received critical-acclaim and Amiel requested the composer for his follow-up film, the Bill Murray comedy, The Man Who Knew Too Little. Young proved that he could not be pigeonholed by genre. The professional kinship ensued, and they subsequently would work together on the Fox feature, Entrapment and later, The Core.

Young had established himself as working with the brightest and most-talented directors. Sam Raimi hired Young to score his high profile film The Gift. The relationship would continue to include additional music on Spider-Man 2, scoring The Grudge and The Grudge 2 and scoring Spider-Man 3. Young continued his successful working relationship with Raimi more recently on the thriller Drag Me to Hell.

Christopher Young says he has been blessed with his career so he gives back to the film music community. He has taught a film scoring class at USC for over ten years, a two-term past president of The Film Music Society, and the president of the Madrid Film Music Festival in Spain.

Michael P. Aust

Festivaldirector SoundTrack_Cologne and Producer TelevisorTroika GmbH

Business graduate (Dipl.-Kfm.) Michael P. Aust is a German curator, organiser of cultural events and film producer born in 1965. His focal point of interest lies in the intersectionality of art forms, especially in the relationship of music and moving pictures. He heads the filmmusic festival and conference SoundTrack_Cologne that he founded in 2004 – with 850 accreditations Europe’s leading filmmusic industry event – as well as SoundTrack_Zurich since 2020. Parallel from 2014-2019 he was festivaldirector of Braunschweig International Filmfestival that grew to 28.000 admissions under his direction.

Aust has worked in the film industry for more than 25 years with producer credits for 21 feature films and feature-length documentaries, including “101 Reykjavik”, “Stumbling Block”, “Low Lights”, “Parallax Sounds Chicago”, “Eva Hesse” and “The Sound of Cologne”, focusing on music and art. His directorial debut “Can and Me”, co-produced by WDR, hit the cinemas and film festivals in spring 2023. 

Michael curates exhibitions and festivals e.g. DuKunst Media Art Festival 1992, Klangvisionen sound art exhibition 1994, StadtKlangNetz conference on cultural education 2007-2014, European Film Music Day at Cannes Film Festival 2009-2016, the highly successful The Art of Pop Video exhibition (MAKK Cologne 2011, Odessa Art Center 2012, Liverpool FACT 2013), Next Level Conference on video games 2012, PLAY!CGN exhibition and conference on video games in art 2013, Digital Distribution conference 2014, BIFF Film Criticism LAB: on the Future of Film Criticism 2015, Hostile Sisters - Interdependencies of Theatre and Film conference 2016, FxM Film meets Music Festival 2018+19. His latest project is the 30-month Re-Educating Digitisation funded by Erasmus+.

He is a voting member of the German Film Academy, Filmbüro NW and of the World Soundtrack Academy and Board Member of KinoAktiv, ON Neue Musik Köln and MusicFilmFestivalNetwork. He is Managing Director, Owner and Producer at TelevisorTroika GmbH, a Cologne-based company established in 1993 for film production, art events and public relations in arts.

Roman Beilharz

Composer, Multi-Instrumentalist, Educator

Roman Beilharz began his career as a jazz drummer and, even as a teenager, accompanied internationally renowned soloists such as Randy Brecker, Albert Mangelsdorff, and Roger Cicero. To put his skills as a multi-instrumentalist and composer to use, he shifted his professional focus increasingly toward the production of TV, film, and theater music after completing his studies at the Cologne College of Music, which earned him various awards at film festivals. 

With well over 30 years of experience as an educator in the field of media music (Institute of Music at the University of Kassel, HfMDK Frankfurt am Main) and as CEO of his own high-end recording studio UVASONAR, he emerged as the ideal candidate for the position of European Director of the IMMSANE network, which is meeting annually at SC. With his wide-ranging wealth of knowledge and experience as a multi-instrumentalist, composer, sound engineer, and media producer, Roman Beilharz embodies stylistic and media crossover like no other.

Helge Borgarts

Composer, Audio Director

Dr. Yati Durant

Composer, Lecturer, Musician

Dr. Yati Durant is a U.S. born composer, lecturer, trumpeter and conductor. His musical background began with composition and jazz music from the age of 7. He was a founding member of the experimental jazz ensemble Honey Junkie and The Yati Durant Project Band in the 1990s. He studied with Portland trumpeter (and Grammy winner) Thara Memory before moving to New York, where he began a successful stint as a TV and film music composer. Yati holds a PhD in Composition from the University of Edinburgh along with a prestigious Konzertexam Meisterklasse in composition under the composer Krzysztof Meyer at the State Conservatory of Music in Cologne, Germany, and a Diploma in Electronic Composition under Hans Ulrich Humpert. He has also studied with George Crumb, Philip Lasser, Narcis Bonet, Lee Konitz and conducting with Jonathan Brett. From 2010 - 2019 Yati was a Lecturer and Programme Director of the MSc Composition for Screen Programme at the University of Edinburgh. His compositions and films have received many prizes from International festivals, including a Panorama Prize at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival for Erika Rabau – Der Puck von Berlin and a BAFA National Commerce Film Award nomination for the WDR/ARD documentary Ein Klavier geht um die Welt. 
He is a finalist of the 2009 Concorso Giovani Musicisti Europei in Aosta, Italy with his score to C. Chaplin’s The Vagabond. His contemporary compositions have been commissioned and performed in New York, Seattle, Berlin, Edinburgh, Cologne and Sao Paolo, released on CD and DVD by Film Dienst/Normal Records, Filmmuseum München and he remains an active performer of jazz, with regular appearances and recordings throughout Europe and USA. His TV and Film credits include work for WDR, ARD, HBO, MTV, Disney and many others. He was Orchestra Mentor-in-residence for the WDR Funkhausorchester Köln from 2021 - 2023, and currently composes, performs and directs the MSCN Film Music Festivals Academy at film music festivals worldwide.

Sarah Schygulla

Author, Presenter, Digital Marketing Specialist

After completing a Drama degree and a joint Bachelor's degree in Romance Languages, Literature, and Linguistics and Asian Literature and Societies, Sarah completed a master's degree in Creative Writing in Edinburgh in 2018.

Sarah then worked as a junior curator for SoundTrack_Cologne before joining, among others, the UK branch of Hachette Publishing as a Digital Marketing Specialist.

She writes novels and screenplays, of which her scripts for the documentaries 'The Sound of Cologne' and 'Can and Me' were released in 2023. In addition, Sarah is also a presenter for events and advises SoundTrack_Cologne as a consultant for film, TV series, video games, and pop culture.