Cue & A with Robert Kraft featuring Michael Abels

Artists

Robert Kraft is an award-winning songwriter, film composer, recording artist and record producer. As President of Music at 20th Century Fox from 1994 to 2012, Kraft was in charge of scores and soundtracks for over 300 feature films, as well as dozens of TV shows.

Highlights during his tenure at Fox include the record-breaking scores and soundtracks from Titanic, Avatar, Moulin Rouge!, Garden State, Walk The Line, Once, Slumdog Millionaire, and Life of Pi.

In 2013, Kraft started Kraftbox Entertainment, which is currently in production on projects across several platforms, including the feature film, Rapper’s Delight at TriStar Studios, with co-producers Paula Wagner and Stephanie Allain, to be directed by Justin Simien.

In 2017, Kraft produced the award-winning independent film, SCORE: A Film Music Documentary, which is in development as a TV series. In partnership with Quincy Jones, Kraft is also producing Jazz Ambassadors at Blumhouse TV, the true story of a jazz band that toured the Middle East during the Cold War.

As a songwriter, Kraft has earned nominations for an Academy Award, two GRAMMY Awards and two Golden Globes. In 1989, Kraft co-produced all of the Oscar- and GRAMMY Award-winning songs on the multi-platinum soundtrack, The Little Mermaid, including the Academy Award-winning song, “Under The Sea”.

Two-time Emmy-nominated composer MICHAEL ABELS is best-known for his scores for the Oscar-winning film GET OUT, and for Jordan Peele’s US, for which Abels won the World Soundtrack Award, the Jerry Goldsmith Award, a Critics’ Choice nomination, an Image Award nomination, and multiple critics awards.  The hip-hop influenced score for US was short-tlisted for the Oscar, and was named “Score of the Decade” by online publication The Wrap.  Abels is co-founder of the Composers Diversity Collective, an advocacy group to increase visibility of composers of color in film, game and streaming media.

As a concert composer, Abels has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Meet The Composer, and his orchestral works have been performed by the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and many others.  As guest conductor of GET OUT IN CONCERT, Abels has led orchestras like the National Symphony and the San Francisco Symphony.  Several of his orchestral works have been recorded by the Chicago Sinfonietta on the Cedille label, including “Delights & Dances,” a work commissioned and premiered by the Sphinx Organization.

Recent premieres include the docu-series ALLEN v. FARROW for HBO, the film NIGHTBOOKS for Netflix, and AT WAR WITH OURSELVES with Nikky Finney for the Kronos Quartet.  Upcoming projects include CHEVALIER for Searchlight, and an untitled Jordan Peele project for Universal.

Abels is a graduate of USC Thornton School of Music.