The young British composer Daniel Blumberg has won his first Oscar for his second-ever musical score for a feature film, for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist.
Blumberg, 34, won the Bafta award last month for the score, which has met with considerable praise and which plays a prominent role in the film. The Brutalist is the story of a fictitious Hungarian architect, László Tóth, who moves to the US after surviving the Holocaust.
The score for the film mixes piano and saxophone jazz with abrasive brass and percussion to convey Tóth’s inner torment. Blumberg’s work was compared by many to that of Mica Levi, another young British avant-garde composer and the frequent collaborator of Jonathan Glazer.
Blumberg’s sole previous scoring credit on a full-length film is Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, which won him an Ivor Novello award. Fastvold is the co-writer of The Brutalist, alongside her husband, Corbet. The film is dedicated to the memory of Scott Walker, who scored Corbet’s previous films.
Blumberg was a founding member and lead singer of the band Cajun Dance Party from 2005–09, after which he sang and played guitar as part of indie rock band Yuck. He released his first solo work in 2013 and has since worked mostly from Cafe Oto in Dalston, east London. His most recent solo album, Gut, was released two years ago.
In his speech, Blumberg sung a shoutout to his friends at the venue, as well as to the “radical, uncompromising” musicians who worked on The Brutalist alongside him.
Blumberg said that it “means a lot to be championed like this” and thanked Corbet, who he described as an “artistic soulmate”.
He composed the music for a short film by Peter Strickland, and for the British Film Institute’s 2018 Agnès Varda season. Blumberg is also a visual artist, specialising in silverpoint.
Read more about the 2025 Oscars:
Anora takes home best picture Oscar
Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison win best acting prizes
Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña win supporting awards
Anora’s Sean Baker wins for directing, editing and screenplay
