We are very pleased to announce that five film music journalists have joined the IFMCA in 2020.
J. Blake Fichera is the author of Scored to Death: Conversations with Some of Horror’s Greatest Composers, which was released in 2016 to positive reviews. He has taught film studies at the State University of New York at Purchase, has contributed as a writer to several noteworthy film and music-related publications and websites—including Rue Morgue magazine, Scream magazine, Video Watchdog magazine and MovieMaker magazine—and has also written essays and liner notes for several vinyl LP releases from Mondo/Death Waltz Records and Cadabra Records. He hosts Scored to Death: The Podcast and cohosts the popular film-themed podcast Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers. Blake is also a professional film/television editor and producer, as well as a gigging musician in the New York City area, and a New York Blues Hall of Fame inductee. His second Scored to Death book will be available in the Fall of 2020.
Erik Heine is Professor of Music at Oklahoma City University, where he has taught since 2005. In his youth, he was raised on the film music of John Williams by his parents. He earned a BM in Percussion Performance from Illinois Wesleyan University, an MM in Music Theory from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in Music Theory from the University of Texas at Austin. His graduate studies focused on the film music of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Dmitri Shostakovich. He has written a number of academic articles and book chapters on film music, as well as a book, James Newton Howard’s Signs: A Film Score Guide, published by Scarecrow Press in 2016. He has been contributing to Film Score Monthly Online since 2017, a job that he finds particularly interesting and rewarding. In his spare time, Erik is an avid runner and founded Team Hoyt Oklahoma, a non-profit dedicated to inclusion of disabled athletes in running events.
Jason Drury is a film music podcast producer and interviewer based in the UK in Ramsgate in Kent. A lifelong fan of film and TV music, Jason started writing and producing audio productions on film music in 2010 for his local community radio station KAASPAR. In 2016, Jason joined CINEMATIC SOUND RADIO with his epic 3 part audio documentary on the life and music of James Horner. In 2017, Jason began hosting his own show on CSR called THE ARCHIVE focusing on new releases of archival film music and forgotten gems. Jason also produces special shows for the station and conducts major interviews with people in the film and TV music industry.
Tomasz Ludward is from Poland and has been writing about film music since 2013 but his editorial efforts stretch back to 2007 and his first serious article on scores for a high school newspaper. Since his official debut on Filmmusic.pl, the most complete online source of film music in Poland, he has been a writer of reviews, articles and interviews with such composers as Terence Blanchard and Craig Armstrong. Always looking to promote and popularize the genre, he has been also collaborating with numerous cultural events and venues such as Krakow Film Music Festival, the National Forum of Music in Wroclaw and Znak publishing company. Occasional guest on radio shows. A die-hard fan of Thomas Newman
Nasrollah Davoodi is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, music scholar, film music historian, teacher, writer, linguist, polyglot (speaks 7 languages), translator, painter and calligrapher from Iran who did his BA in Business Administration and his MA in Translation Studies and Linguistics, He started learning music at the age of 5 and became serious about it at age 9 when he studied the basics of Santoor (the Iranian Hammered-Dulcimer) and Persian classical singing (known as the vocal Radif) under his father. Afterwards he began a lifelong passion with learning different instruments. He currently knows how to play 27 instruments including all the Iranian instruments as well as many classical instruments. Self-taught, Nasrollah began composing at the age of 12 writing solo pieces for Santoor. Later he studied classical music and became a professional composer. He also had his own orchestra at the age of 26. His association with film music began when he was 13 when heard his first film score album, Lawrance of Arabia by Maurice Jarre. From that point on he became a great film music fan. At 31 he began his long series of lecture in the most prominent cultural centers of Iranian capital Tehran. Nasrollah is the only serious film music journalist in his country and began giving lectures and writing about film music in 2013. He is also a scholar in fields such as Linguistics (semiotics), Visual Media, History of Art, Literary Criticism, Middle Eastern political history (in the 20th and 21st century) and Cinema.
Please visit our member’s section for more detailed biographies.