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Announcing the Shortlist for the Billboard Canada Screen Composer of the Year Award
The Billboard Canada Screen Composers of the Year Award has its inaugural shortlist.
The award, presented by SOCAN, is shining a light on five talented composers who have made a global impact, scoring some of the most powerful moments in film and television.
Together, these musicians are responsible for the sounds behind some of the most talked about television and cinema of the past year, from The White Lotus to Palm Royale, massive IMAX documentaries to video games to major broadcasts of one of Canada’s national pastimes: hockey.
The winner will be announced at Billboard Canada Power Players on June 11, giving these pivotal artists – often positioned behind the scenes – a position onstage alongside the most powerful executives in Canadian music.
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In no particular order, here are the five accomplished composers shortlisted for the 2025 Billboard Canada Screen Composer of the Year Award along with an overview of their work in screen composing.
Pierre Barlier
Cristo is a3-time EMMY and BAFTA-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist, whose classical music training and ingenious sense of composition opened a new dimension to cinematic music and brought him iconic status. He is widely known for his works on critically acclaimed cult series like C4’s Utopia, Black Mirror, The White Lotus and No. 1 box office surprise hit Smile (Paramount). 2024/25 comes full with high notes, with Babygirl, now one of A24’s top-10 grossing movies of all time, competing at Venice International Film Festival; Smile 2 being another No. 1 box office hit, having the queer genre-defying feature Ponyboi to be released in June via FOX Entertainment Studios and being part of the line-up of Trent Reznor’s (Nine Inch Nails) highly selective film composer festival in November in L.A., called Future Ruins.
Andrew Lockington
Farrah Aviva
Andrew's hybrid score for the sci-fi Feature film Atlas found him recording Buddhist monks at an Ancient temple in Northern Japan, orchestra and choir at Abbey Road, and woodwinds in an abandoned tube station beneath Central London. His collaborations with Taylor Sheridan included his score for Mayor Of Kingstown where he and a group of percussionists used the prison gates, walls, doors and cages of a decommissioned penitentiary as instruments. The score for Lioness combined Western orchestra with non-western time signatures and instruments from Middle Eastern cultures to project the cacophony of internal chaos Zoe Saldana's CIA character endures. For Landman, Andrew's sound exploration turned inward, performing many of the instruments himself and humming his melodies as a ghostly echo behind the instrumentation. The score serves the humanity of Billy Bob Thornton's character in the oil business where economics and politics typically dominate it's public perception. An avid Maple Leafs fan, Andrew was honoured to compose the theme for Amazon Prime Video's NHL Hockey Broadcast. Andrew often talks about how fortunate he feels to get to do what he loves and credits the talented musicians / good friends he collaborates with for bringing so much magic to his compositions.
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Michelle Osis
Four-time Canadian Screen Award nominee Michelle Osis is best known for her score to the gigantic screen documentary TRex in IMAX, as well as for her collaborations with composer Mark Korven on Netflix’s Don’t Move, and the MGM+ series Billy the Kid. Michelle often collaborates with partner Terry Benn, most recently on the horror film, Carved for Disney+, and the festival favourites film Dark Match and Sway. She and composer Steph Copeland recently completed co-scoring the German based-on-a-true-story mystery/crime series Murder on the Inca Trail for ARD Degeto Film.
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Mark Korven
Award-winning composer Mark Korven is best known for his scores to the industry-shaking A24 features The Witch and The Lighthouse, and for the over 10 million YouTube views of him performing on his world famous invention, the Apprehension Engine. The last two years have seen him working on Universal Pictures’ The Black Phone, 20th Century Studios’ The First Omen, as well as the enhanced and rebuilt game Until Dawn for Sony Playstation. He is currently scoring the 3rd season of Billy the Kid with composer Michelle Osis and the first season of The Institute, both series for for MGM+.
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Jeff Toyne
Canadian composer Jeff Toyne blends orchestral virtuosity with dramatic sensibility to tell stories with a distinctive musical voice. His score to Apple TV+’s Palm Royale (Kristen Wiig, Laura Dern, Carol Burnett) combined jazz, Latin and orchestral elements to evoke the 1960s in a cinematic way. Nominated for two Primetime Emmy® Awards in 2024 (winning for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme), Palm Royale went on to win two Canadian Screen Music Awards, a Music+Sound Award, an SCL Award and two ASCAP Composers’ Choice Awards. Born and raised in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Jeff attended the University of Western Ontario, the University of British Columbia and the University of Southern California. An alumnus of the Henry Mancini Institute and the Sundance Composers Lab, Toyne is one of Playback Magazine’s “Ten to Watch.” He composed “Splendor Sine Occasu,” March of the British Columbia Brigade, for the Canadian Armed Forces.
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