Ludwig Göransson on discovering Donald Glover was Childish Gambino, 'Black Panther' Oscar win and haunting 'Oppenheimer' score

[Nergal]

 

 

(l to r) Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ludwig Göransson and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Everett Collective, Getty Images

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It might seem odd to do a career retrospective for a 39-year-old composer.

But Ludwig Göransson has already achieved a career’s worth of milestones in under four decades in existence — and less than 15 years in Hollywood.

He’s become a go-to composer for highest-echelon filmmakers like Ryan Coogler and Christopher Nolan. He won an Oscar and a Grammy for his work on Black Panther. He entered the Star Wars universe with The Mandalorian and promptly won two Emmys.

He’s followed in the enormous footsteps of Bill Conti (evolving the composer’s famed Rocky score for Creed), Hans Zimmer (stepping in for Nolan’s longtime collaborator on Tenet when Zimmer was committed to Dune) and John Williams (performing some of the most innovative work this side of a galaxy far, far away since the 53-time Oscar nominee’s original themes).

Yet the Swedish composer, songwriter and record producer represents an entirely new school of composers. He can conduct the hell out of an orchestra, but he’s also a hip-hop and pop savant who helped introduce Donald Glover’s Childish Gambino to the world and has produced for the likes of Rihanna, Justin Timberlake and Kendrick Lamar. He can’t even tell you how many instruments he can play, but it’s probably pretty much all of them beyond the string section (though his wife, violinist Serena McKinney, has those covered).

And Göransson is very, very likely to bring home his second Academy Award in three tries for his brooding, overpowering (in a good way) work on Nolan’s nuclear weapon opus Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy as the eponymous, tortured creator of the atom bomb.

With Oppenheimer releasing this week on 4K Ultra HD, Göransson conducts us through some of the highlights of his still-young career, with many clearly still to come.