Studio Soundtracks takes listeners behind the scenes of how music is crafted for film and television by hearing directly from composers, songwriters and music professionals in the Entertainment Industry. Listen to inspiring conversations about composition and hear works from Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar-winning film scores on the show.

SIMON FRANGLEN

Simon Franglen is a multi-award-winning composer and record producer whose work spans some of the most acclaimed films of recent decades, seamlessly bridging the worlds of popular, electronic, and symphonic music. Most recently, Franglen composed over three hours of original music for James Cameron’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, continuing his close collaboration with Cameron and further expanding the musical universe of Avatar. The score introduces major new themes, textures, and pushing the sonic language of Pandora into bold new territory. As part of the film, Franglen co-wrote the Golden Globe–nominated original song “Dream as One,” performed by Miley Cyrus, further underscoring the emotional core of the story.

Franglen previously composed the celebrated score for Avatar: The Way of Water, for which he received a 2023 World Soundtrack Award. Widely praised for its epic scale and emotional intimacy, the score became a global phenomenon, with the soundtrack album surpassing 750 million streams worldwide.

Beyond Avatar, Franglen has collaborated with a wide range of visionary filmmakers, including Terrence Malick, Antoine Fuqua, and Jean-Jacques Annaud, contributing music to films defined by ambition, emotional depth, and scale. Franglen’s path to film composition began in the recording studio, where he built an extraordinary career working with iconic artists such as Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Céline Dion, Toni Braxton, and Quincy Jones, and contributing to landmark films including Titanic, Skyfall, Moulin Rouge, and Se7en. His production of “My Heart Will Go On” earned him a Grammy Award and helped make Titanic one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time.

A pioneer in immersive and spatial audio, Franglen has been at the forefront of redefining how audiences experience music and sound. His innovative work in three-dimensional audio environments includes collaborations with Pink Floyd and large-scale installations around the world. Notably, for the art space on the 126th floor of the Shanghai Tower, he composed an immersive symphonic suite inspired by the tower’s architecture and the city of Shanghai, allowing audiences to physically move within the soundscape.

Franglen continues to craft emotionally rich, forward-thinking scores defined by innovation, scale, and a deep commitment to storytelling through sound.