Category Archives: #ListenLA

Final Note: Kevin Hiatt

Life Member. Composer
7/7/1947 – 8/8/2021

by Carl Rigoli

Kevin was a great musician, composer and friend. I had known him since 1970. I played drums and percussion in his rehearsal band and recording sessions that he composed and arranged for his musical projects.

Kevin was always considered one of the best big band jazz composers in Los Angeles. Many great jazz and studio players played his compositions. He was also a masterful copyist and proofreader for some of the top film composers.

Kevin was a kind and respectful gentleman. Goodbye old friend, and Rest In Peace.

fb-share-icon
Tweet

2021 Oscars

Congratulations 93rd Annual Academy Awards nominees! Three of the Best Original Score nominees were scored with members of the American Federation of Musicians Local 47 in Los Angeles:

  • “Da 5 Bloods” (Terence Blanchard)
  • “Mank” (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross)
  • “Soul” (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste)

Listen to our “Oscars 2021 – #AFM47” playlist here:

The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, April 25, televised live on ABC from 5-8 p.m. (PST). 

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Congratulations 2021 Grammy winners & nominees!

Congratulations 2021 GRAMMY winners & nominees! AFM Local 47 musicians can be heard on many of the hottest hits of the year. Listen to our #AFM47 2021 Grammys Playlist while you review our list of #AFM47 63rd Grammy honorees below, and be sure to check out the live broadcast of winners airing Sunday, Jan. 31 Sunday, March 14 on CBS (new date!).

* UPDATED 3/15/2021 WITH WINNERS*

Record Of The Year Continue reading →

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Unsettling the Score: Interview with composer Nathaniel Blume

How fraught familial drama and steely surgical tools inspired Nathaniel Blume’s killer soundtrack for ‘Prodigal Son’

by Max Weinstein

To say that stories about serial killers enjoy a permanent residency in popular imagination would be to state the obvious. The challenge, now, isn’t for stories about psychopaths to draw an audience, but to offer a fresh take on a subject done to death.

Composer Nathaniel Blume says that “Prodigal Son” — the Fox crime drama he recently scored—meets that challenge by putting family first. The series follows Malcolm Bright (Tom Payne), an ex-FBI profiler whose relationship with his father, serial killer Dr. Martin Whitly (Michael Sheen), gives him unique insight into murderers’ motives. Blume, whose credits include “Arrow” and “The Flash,” approached “Prodigal Son” by focusing more on its characters’ blood ties than on the blood itself. Continue reading →

fb-share-icon
Tweet

#AFM47 Spring playlist

Sound clips below. To hear the full playlist, click here to listen on Spotify.

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Now More Than Ever, Union Contracts Can Help

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our industry to a complete halt, and even as we are socially isolated from one another, we are suffering together both economically and artistically.

But we are a diverse union. Our members include musicians who compose, prepare and perform music in an incredibly wide variety of fields, from theater and club work, symphonic, opera and ballet, film, television, sound recordings and other recording work — if it involves music, at least some of us are doing it as part of our livelihoods Continue reading →

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Women Who Rock: #AFM47 Playlist

March is Women’s History Month, and to celebrate we’re highlighting just a few of our wonderfully talented female members with our “Women Who Rock” #AFM47 playlist. 

Listen below to hear music made by women members of the American Federation of Musicians Local 47, recorded union in Los Angeles.

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Congratulations 2019 Emmy Nominees!

Congratulations to all of the fantastic AFM Local 47 members who worked on this year’s Emmy®-nominated television shows! 

The 71st Annual Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards ceremony will be held over two nights on September 14 & 15, 2019.

Best of luck to all!


Outstanding Music Composition for a Series

Jeff Beal 
House Of Cards – “Chapter 73”
Netflix

Siddhartha Khosla
This Is Us – “Songbird Road: Part One”
NBC

Adam Taylor
The Handmaid’s Tale – “The Word”
Hulu Continue reading →

fb-share-icon
Tweet

Member spotlight: Finneas O’Connell

This week’s member spotlight: FINNEAS O’CONNELL. Singer, songwriter, record producer, musician, and actor, he has released several singles and has written and produced music for other artists, including his sister, singer Billie Eilish. As an actor, O’Connell is also known for his roles in the TV series Glee, Modern Family and Aquarius, and in the film Bad Teacher.

Making one of the hottest selling records of all time doesn’t always require a fancy, expensive recording studio. Case in point: the March 2019 release by Billie Eilish, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? In this second episode of AWAL’s SPACES series, we follow O’Connell at the humble family abode where he and Billie have written and produced all of their creations currently redefining pop music:

fb-share-icon
Tweet