The John Powell score for Solo: A Star Wars Story has won the top award at the International Film Music Critics Association Awards, winning the prestigious Score of the Year award as well as Best Original Score for a Fantasy/Science Fiction/Horror Film. In further good news, John Williams won Film Music Composition of the Year for the albums opening track The Adventures of Han.
In describing the score, IFMCA members Asier Senarriaga and Óscar Giménez called Solo “a spectacular score that combines the classic ideas of Williams with the talent of Powell,” and proclaimed it “the score of the year,” while IFMCA member Jon Broxton – speaking about the score’s multitude of recurring character themes – said that the way Powell “incorporates all the thematic complexity into his score is masterful, but best of all is the way he allows them to develop organically; this is not just a rigid leitmotif score where mathematics trumps emotion. Instead, Powell engages in sensible and appropriate development, meaning that when the emotional outbursts do come, they pack a real wallop, and satisfy both the heart and the brain in equal measure.”
These are the seventh and eighth IFMCA Award wins of Powell’s career; he previously won the Score of the Year award for “How to Train Your Dragon” in 2010.
It’s success at the IFMCA Awards only goes to reinforce the thought that whoever forgot to put the score for Solo forward for an Academy Award quite likely cost Powell and Williams Oscars for Best Score and Best Original Song.
