Composing for Film

at SoundTrack_Cologne 23

Music is one of cinemas's most powerful storytelling tools, shaping how we feel, remember, and understand what we see on screen. As part of the Composing for Film Day at SoundTrack_Cologne 23, taking place on Thursday, July 16, our guest composers will discuss their creative approaches to scoring for film: translating image, emotion, and story into music. From intimate, independent projects to genre-defining blockbusters, their work spans a remarkably wide range of genres and styles.

This year, we are proud to welcome Finnish composer Panu Aaltio, the 2026 HARPA Nordic Film Composers Award recipient for Little Siberia, and the only composer to have won the IFMCA Best Documentary Score award for all three films of a trilogy: Tale of a Forest (2013) · Tale of a Lake (2017) and Tale of the Sleeping Giants (2022).

Joining him is Nathan Larson, whose acclaimed scores for films such as Boys Don't Cry · High Fidelity · Margin Call and The Woodsman, have established him as one of independent cinema's most distinctive voices.

We are also pleased to welcome Swiss composer Mirjam Skal (Les Courageux), recently honoured with the Rolf-Hans Müller Prize for Best Film Score (awarded for her soundtrack to the Tatort episode Of Apes and Men) and the German Documentary Film Music Award (Vracht).

Closing this year’s Composing for Film Day is our Career Achievement Award 2026 honouree, Christopher Young, whose more than 160 film scores, from Hellraiser to Spider-Man 3, have made him one of the most versatile voices in contemporary film music.

Composing for Films
Thursday, July 16 · COMEDIA Theater, Roter Saal

10:30 - 11:30
Panu Aaltio
Little Siberia - winner of the HARPA Nordic Film Composers Award 2026
Workshop · Discussion

12:00 - 13:00
Nathan Laron
Boys Don't Cry · High Fidelity · Margin Call
Workshop · Discussion

14:30 - 15:30
Mirjam Skal
Les Courageux · Vracht - winner of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2025
Workshop · Discussion

16:00 - 17:30
Christopher Young
Hellraiser· Spider-Man 3 · Norma Jean & Marilyn
Conversation with the STC23 Career Achievement Award Winner

Panu Aaltio

Panu Aaltio is a film composer based in Helsinki and Los Angeles. He has scored more than 30 feature films, along with TV Series, video games, and a full-length ballet for the Finnish National Opera.

He is the only composer to have won the International Film Music Critics Association's Best Documentary Score award for every film of a trilogy: Tale of a Forest (2013), Tale of a Lake (2017), and Tale of the Sleeping Giants (2022). Tale of a Lake also brought him a Jussi, the Finnish Oscar. In 2022 he was nominated for IFMCA Composer of the Year alongside Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, and in 2026 he received the HARPA Nordic Film Composers Award for the Netflix film Little Siberia.

His recent work includes 5000 Blankets (Sony Pictures), and Super Furball and the Lying Squirrel. He studied Music Technology at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television at USC in Los Angeles.

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Nathan Larson

Nathan Larson cut his teeth in the DC punk scene of the 1980s with the seminal hardcore band Swiz. After relocating to New York City in 1989, Nathan joined Shudder To Think, who jumped from DISCHORD Records to EPIC in 1992 and enjoyed a wild run of touring and recording.

After a solo album (1999’s Jealous God) Larson dug into film scoring in earnest. To date Larson has made music for upwards of 70 films, documentaries and TV series, including titles like Boys Don´t Cry (Kimberly Peirce), Palindromes and Storytelling (Todd Solondz), Lilja-4-Ever (Luka Moodysson),The Messenger (Oren Moverman), Dirty Pretty Things (Stephen Frears), Margin Call (J.C. Chandor) and The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson). Recent projects include HBO’s The Lion Queen. 

In 2010, Nathan learned to meditate in the mantra-based Vedic tradition, and would become a teacher of this modality in 2021. 

In 2015 Nathan's wife Nina Persson and son Nils moved back to Nina’s native Sweden, where Nathan co-developed the Lumen Project a format that re-contextualized concert into ritual. Since 2018 Lumen Project has held events in Eric Ericson Hall in Stockholm, a decommissioned church on the Skeppsholmen island in the middle of Stockholm. Inspired by LaMonte Young and Marian Zazella's Dream House, Lumen Project offers a unique, non-religious format where art, music and reflection merge into transformative experiences. 

In 2025 Larson and family returned to New York City. Now the Lumen Project format enters a new chapter as Lumenyc, in conjunction with SOS. 

He continues his work in film. Shudder to Think is preparing a new album for early ’27 release, and will be touring extensively beginning Fall 2026. 

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Mirjam Skal

Mirjam Skal is a freelance film composer based in Zurich. She holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Composition for Film, Theatre and Media from the Zurich University of the Arts. Her work combines synthetic textures with orchestral sounds and spans documentary, feature, and television productions.

In 2021, she was selected for Berlinale Talents and contributed additional music to the American feature film Where the Crawdads Sing, following a mentorship with Academy Award-winning composer Mychael Danna. Since then, she has composed scores for numerous national and international productions, including TV series Blind and The Angel Maker, three Tatort episodes, the feature films Les Courageux by Jasmin Gordon, Enjoy Your Stay by Dominik Locher (Berlinale 2026), Safe Spaces by Sarah Horst and the upcoming 111 – Echoes From Halifax by Mauro Müller.

In 2024, she received the Rolf-Hans Müller Prize for Best Film Score at Televisionale Baden-Baden. In 2025, she was awarded the German Documentary Film Music Award and the Zurich Film Award for her score to Max Carlo Kohal’s Vracht. She was selected as one of ten international composers for the 2026 Cannes Film Festival's Spot the Composer programme.

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Christopher Young

Named the "Greatest Horror Film Composer of All Time" by BBC Music Magazine, Christopher Young is one of the most prolific and versatile voices in contemporary film music.

Originally trained as a jazz drummer, Young discovered the world of orchestral scoring through the work of Bernard Herrmann. After studying at UCLA's Film School under legendary composer David Raksin, his breakthrough came with the orchestral-and-choral score for Hellbound: Hellraiser II, which earned him a Saturn Award and established him as a distinctive voice in film music.

Across more than 160 feature films, Young has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to work across a wide range of genres, from the visceral horror of Hellraiser and the hit Pet Sematary, to the electro-trance textures of Swordfish, the Celtic intimacy of The Shipping News, and the large-scale action of Spider-Man 3.

He has collaborated with directors including Sam Raimi, Guillermo del Toro, Norman Jewison, Curtis Hanson, Barry Levinson, among many others. Young received a Golden Globe nomination and a Critics' Choice nomination for The Shipping News, two Emmy nominations for his television work, including the fall-of-Saigon drama Last Flight Out and the HBO picture Norma Jean & Marilyn. In 2023, he was named Composer of the Year by the International Film Music Critics Association and he is also the recipient of BMI's Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement.

In recent years, Young has scored the AppleTV+ series Echo 3, returned to the horror genre that made his name with the Blumhouse production Sinister, ranked the scariest film of all time in 2020, and lent his music to the video game Marvel's Deadpool VR for Meta. He also scored André Øvredal's newest film for Paramount Pictures, Passenger, which will have it's theatrical release this summer.