TSS - I love the music he did on those films! 
JV: Exactly my point! Which is why he isnāt a bad canidate for a new Pixar Composer.
Harry Gregson-Williams wouldnāt be a bad choice either. Heās the composer of
the Chronicles of Narnia movies.
Never heard of him.
Narnia wasnāt all that bad, thoughā¦ 
I love the narnia movies! The music for the movie was incredible I think Harry
Gregson-Williams is a great choice.
HGW also did Shrek.
Michael Kamen would have been a great choice as a possible future composer. He has scored the Die Hard series, the Lethal Weapon series, and also scored The Iron Giant .
Bill - He was going to do TI score, but he died before he could.
Aha! So he was the guy who composed those Tiny Toons scores. Thatās hilariousā¦
It looks as if he also did some work for The Matrix and Jurassic Park III. Awesomeā¦
Good choice, Bill! 
ā Mitch
How about Alf Clausen? Heās the composer for The Simpsons . 
You are just totally obsessed with Simpsons are you?! 
I guess that could work.
Most of my favorites have already been mentionedā¦ Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, Alan Menkenā¦
I would love Jan A. P. Kaczmarek to do a Pixar film. He did āFinding Neverlandā which is one of my favorite soundtracks.
Has James Newton Howard been mentioned yet? I think heād be a great choice.
I am a huge fan of Alan Menken. He would be great for Pixar as long as the movie was not a musical. When he writes music for the Disney musicals, they turn out really Broadway, show tunes-y ā which is definitely not Pixar, in my opinion. But other than that, I agree with you. Heās a wonderful composer. You can just appreciate and differentiate all the parts in the orchestra while they still compliment eachother like, well, like magic.
I also would like Klaus Badelt who did Pirates of the Caribbean 1.
And John Williams, like a few people mentioned, is great at doing themes, so heād be good at Pixar.
David Newman (he did the score for Anastasia) could also be okay, because he is really good at creatively incorporating themes in a subtle way in his scores as well.
And of course, Michael Giacchino. Beautiful stuff. Amazing at using/blending different styles of music and unique exotic instruments/percussion to make it one great style (like Ratatouilleās got jazz, waltz-like Paris music, Latin sounds). If I were to give it a name, Iād call it gypsy jazz. It has a nice ring to it, no? He is so good at placing the right music at the right time. Take the track āColette Shows Him Le Ropesā from the soundtrack. Itās got a tango beat ā PERFECT for the scene because a tango is a fiery man vs. woman type dance. In this case, Colette is dominant, but thatās just her character. Anyway, Iāll end this novel here. If you read all this, congratulations!
Iām such a music geek.
Iāve been thinnking about that. That would be a good choice. Hans Zimmer has already been mentioned, and he did the other two Pirates films.
ME!! Hehe, just kidding. Maybeā¦
Realistically, I donāt really want to see the ābig guysā scoring Pixar films. Iām not a big fan of John Williams (too thematic) so I wouldnāt be very pleased if he scored a Pixar film. Hmmmā¦ that being said, I wouldnāt root for Danny Elfman, Hanz Zimmer, Alan Silvestri, James Horner, Howard Shore, or anyone else at the top of the scoring chain. I justā¦ hear too much of them. I wanna hear scores from new people!
Kinda like what happened with Harry Potter. John Williamsā last score for the film series was the third, and Patrick Doyle did the fourth. Doyle was pretty well-known at the time, but not as much as Williamsā¦ obviously. I think the fourth score of Harry Potter is the BEST out of the batch so far, and at that time, I enjoyed hearing music from composers that I did not know enough about.
That being said, I would like a Pixar film to be scored by the following composers: David Newman (I like his older stuff thoughā¦ from the 80sā¦ he should pick up from there, hehe), Patrick Doyle, Rachel Portman (she did some lovely scoresā¦ I think she could collaborate well with Randy Newman), Dario Marianelliā¦ heck. Pixar, hire someone I donāt know. I would love that.
Hmm, thatās a really interesting outlook, Aggie. Itās true that there are so many good composers out there that we donāt even know about because they arenāt famous. And Pixar is always really good at finding very talented, low-profile artists to work on their movies (like the voice actors for instance). They go for quality above the name and the quality of the music is much more important than who the composer is. Plus that gives support to these new artists rather than spoiling the already-rich, famous people. So youāve got a really good point. I applaud you.
Hmā¦ just found this topic. Gee, well I guess I should put my 2c in on it (for those of you who havenāt seen my posts elsewhere here on Pixar Planet, Iām a studio musician who plays in the orchestra for movie soundtracks, including for a bunch of the Pixar films). Just looking through some of the comments hereā¦
I still really want to see Danny Elfman compose a Pixar film.
For a long time Danny couldnāt even read music, and from what I understand his orchestators (like Steve Bartek) did most of the work. Thatās just what Iāve heard from my fellow colleagues, have no idea how true it actually is. Iāve done a few of his scores, and some of his scores Iāve really liked regardless of who actually wrote them (I canāt imagine Pee Weeās Big Adventure without his music in the background).
I would like the person who conducted the Pirates of the Carribean soundtrack to conduct one. I think that would be cool.
(I assume you mean ācomposeā) Actually if youāre talking about the first Pirates, it wasnāt Hans Zimmer, but rather Klaus Badelt who wrote it (he was one of Zimmerās apprentices or whatever youād call it). Zimmer was there at the sessions to supervise stuff, but the bulk of the score was written by Badelt (I believe because Zimmer was too busy with other projects, so he gave it to Badelt). But once Pirates became a hit, Zimmer took the 2nd and 3rd movies for himself. By the way, since you mentioned Silvestri as well, hereās some trivia. Silvestri was originally hired to compose āPiratesā but then at the last second (before any music was recorded) he was fired (never heard why), and they hired Badelt / Zimmer. It meant having to scramble to get everything done, and there were twice as many orchestrators working on the project as would be normal in order to finish it in time (and it went down to the wire).
The possibility of Alan Menken scoring a Pixar film is definitely something that I would like to see. Heās done so many great Disney films.
I donāt know if Pixar plans to do any āsinging musicalsā anytime soon. It may be unfair to typecast Menkin in that role, as his scores (not just the songs) have been quite goodā¦ but his background is from Broadway, and itās just a guess, but I think Pixar might not want to do what Disneyās done so many times in the past.
By the way, this is probably the most important thing to remember about all this discussion: as a general rule (itās not always followed, but is something you can generally count on), a director finds a composer he/she likes, and tends to stay with them, regardless of the projects. Thatās why John Williams wrote āIndyā music as well as āSchindlerā music, even though the movies are night-and-day different. Andrew Stanton seems to have found and like Tommy Newmanā¦ after Michael Kamen died, Brad Bird seems to have found and like Michael Giacchino, etc. There are times it doesnāt work (scheduling problems usually, though on very, very rare occasions, and arguement will break up a partnership) but generally directors tend to stay with composers they know will see and understand a film their way. By the way, an example of an arguement would be with Peter Jackson and Howard Shore. They collaborated together on LOTR, but got into an arguement during the scoring of āKing Kongā ā so after a few days of scoring King Kong in New Zealand with Howard Shore, they parted ways, threw out the music, and he hired (without ever having met in person yet) James Newton Howard to quickly score King Kong in Los Angeles. Jackson would listen to the sessions live from his studio in New Zealand (even with the time difference) and they didnāt actually meet in person until after the film was finished.
Iāve been thinking about John Powell possibly scoring a Pixar film in the future.
Powell tends to be a lot more into rhythm than sweet melodies. I personally think his scores for action films (āItalian Jobā remake) work better than his animated ones (āRobotsā) but thatās just me. Interestingly, Iāve noticed heās someone (or his orchestrators) who isnāt afraid to give the string sections some rhythm instead of just the melody. And of course, lots of brassā¦
I want Trevor Rabin to score a Pixar film!
Same general comment applies to him. Heās good with big, loud action ā donāt know how heād be with a lot of intimate detail, in a character-driven story. His background (heās South African originally) is with an old SA rock band called YESā¦
Don Davis
Aha! So he was the guy who composed those Tiny Toons scores.
Actually, Bruce Broughton (āRescuers Down Underā) was the head composer for āTiny Toonsā. Don Davis was one of the many other composers that worked under him on that show (wowā¦ Tiny Toonsā¦ I miss that show).
Speaking of Broughton, hereās an interesting experiment for those who like movie scores. Find a copy of āRescuers Down Underā and then find a copy (if you can) of an old Lorimar film from the 1980s called āThe Boy Who Could Flyā ā and listen to the scores (both written by Broughton). He basically used the same score for both pictures! (Boy Who Could Fly came out first). I guess he figured no one ever saw it, so why not just copy yourself and re-use the same music again? I actually like Broughtonās work, so I donāt mean to dis him, but if you can track down an old VHS copy of āBoy Who Could Flyā somewhere, listen to the score on that, then listen to the āRescuers Down Underā score, and youāll see what I mean.
How about Alf Clausen? Heās the composer for The Simpsons
Alf writes the music every week to The Simpsons, but as a prime example of how back-stabbing Hollywood can be, when it came time to make the movie (where thereās much more money and prestige), they hired someone else. This is after he has written over 400 episodes for the show, all the songs, everything. āThanks for your work. Oh by the way, weāre hiring someone else for the movie.ā Thatās Hollywood for you. His music has been good enough to keep him on for over 400 episodes (good enough to where a movie gets to be made from it) yet heās passed by for someone else (Zimmer).
Itās true that there are so many good composers out there that we donāt even know about because they arenāt famous.
Thatās very true.
By the way folks, another thing to remember is that itās not only the composer, but the orchestratror (or group of orchestrators) that give a score āthat sound.ā Theyāre the unsung heroes of the scoring world. Not to slight the composers (who compose the music in the big picture) but the orchestrators are the ones that will give it āthat sound.ā Theyāre the ones that take a general sketched score and actually decide on, and write out all the details. Some composers are very specific with what they want; others just notate general ideas, and itās up to the orhcestrator to decide which instruments play what, what might work for a good effect (should it be a bassoon or tuba? Two harps or one? What kind of drums?) and all the nitty-gritty details. There should be a National Orchestratorās Appreciation Day (naturally right after the National Studio Musicians Appreciation Day).
Most certainly, and I applaude them for it.
ā Mitch