Tag Archives: Galavant

This year’s music Emmy nominees

67EmmysPosterThe 2014-2015 Emmy Award nominees were unveiled this morning. Emmy divides TV music into five categories: original music for a series, original music for a movie/miniseries/special, music direction, music and lyrics (the song category) and main-title theme music. This year’s crop is especially diverse — everything from Penny Dreadful to Transparent —  but is equally notable for what wasn’t nominated (songs from Empire or Galavant, for example). Here is a complete rundown with a bit of perspective. (And if Bruce Broughton wins for Texas Rising, his will mark a record 11th Emmy win.) Winners will be announced Sept. 19.

Song possibilities for this year’s Emmys

TVTunesGetNewMojo-smThis was a challenge: Trying to anticipate what might be nominated for the song category in the 2014-15 Emmy Awards. You can never really tell what the Television Academy music branch will decide. I finally called songwriters from Empire, Galavant, Glee, Inside Amy Schumer and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt… that is, Jim Beanz, Glenn Slater, Darren Criss, Schumer herself and Jeff Richmond. Here’s the story I wrote for this week’s Variety. I’d be delighted if all of these were honored… but you can never really tell.

ABC’s risky new musical “Galavant”

galavantIn early December, I visited a fun scoring session with songwriters Alan Menken and Glenn Slater for the new comedy musical series Galavant. This piece goes behind the scenes to explain how difficult it is, and all the work that goes into producing a weekly musical for TV. I love delving into the history of these things, so I mentioned ABC’s landmark That’s Life and Cop Rock series right up front.