Three Berklee Alumni Score Oscar Nods
David Rawlings '92 and Gillian Welch '92 received their first Academy Award nominations on Tuesday.
Image by Henry Diltz
Berklee alumni Gillian Welch ’92 and David Rawlings ’92 received their first Oscar nominations Tuesday morning for Best Original Song. They composed “When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings,” performed by Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson in the Coen brothers’ Netflix film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Alumnus Matt Schaeffer B.M. ’12 received his first Oscar nomination for engineering and mixing Kendrick Lamar’s “All the Stars” (featuring SZA) from the blockbuster Black Panther. The song is also nominated for Best Original Song. Schaeffer engineered and mixed the Black Panther soundtrack, which is nominated for multiple Grammy Awards including Record of the Year and Album of the Year.
Terence Blanchard, a visiting scholar in the Jazz Composition Department at the college, also received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. Blanchard composed the eclectic score for Spike Lee's film BlacKkKlansman, his 19th collaboration with the director.
The 91st annual Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre at the Hollywood and Highland Center in Los Angeles, California, on Sunday, February 24, and will be broadcast on ABC at 8:00 p.m. EST.
