Anne-Kathrin Dern is a German film composer and CEO of e-Quality Music Productions LLC, currently residing in Los Angeles, California. She is mostly known for her scores to The Jade Pendant, "", and "", as well as her collaborations with Klaus Badelt, most notably on "Leap!".
Early life and education
Anne-Kathrin Dern was born in Eutin, Germany, to Kathrin Dern and Uwe Dern. She later grew up in Hildesheim, Oebisfelde, and Peine. After graduating from the Ratsgymnasium Peine in 2007, she went on to study at a private film scoring academy called musicube. Once she had obtained her Basic Film Music Composer certification, she moved to the Netherlands to further her studies in the newly developed film scoring program at the ArtEZ Conservatory. After receiving her bachelor's degree in 2012, Dern moved to Los Angeles to attend the UCLA Film Scoring program where she concluded her studies.
Sample library development
While still at UCLA, Dern was hired by sample developer Cinesamples in early 2013. As part of their in-house team she helped develop new virtual instruments as well as updates to existing libraries. Products Dern worked on include
CinePerc Core / Pro / Epic / Aux v1.1
CineWinds Core / Pro v1.1
CineBells v1.1
CineSymphony Lite
World Series: Dulcimer & Zither
CineStrings Core v1.0
CineStrings Runs v1.0
Artist Series: Tina Guo
Deep Percussion Beds 2
Tina Guo Acoustic Legato
After resigning from her full-time position at Cinesamples in late 2014, Dern continued to sporadically work for other sample developers, including SonicSmiths and VIR2 / Big Fish Audio. She also programmed a private percussion library for the music production and publishing company Ninja Tracks
Film composition
Cinesamples' sister company Hollywood Scoring hired Dern in 2014 as a mockup artist and staff composer. As part of the team she worked on productions like Riot Games' League of Legends, Microsoft's ', Disney's The Pirate Fairy, Fox's Gracepoint, and many more. A mockup she created for Alan Menken ultimately led to her being brought onto the Galavant composing team. Being located at Christopher Lennertz' Sonic Fuel Studios she transitioned into being an arranger for his score on the first season of ABC's medieval musical show in late 2014 / early 2015. At the same time she also worked as an orchestrator and technical assistant at William Ross' studio Momentum. Throughout most of 2015, Dern worked with Pinar Toprak on the Warner Bros. / Skydance production Geostorm, starring Gerard Butler. She also collaborated with composer Ryan Shore on his animated series ' and his Universal movie . Later in 2015, Dern also worked as a temporary assistant at Steve Jablonsky's studio Arata Music, lending a hand on The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel. In fall 2015, Dern resumed her work for Christopher Lennertz and Alan Menken on the second season of Galavant. In early 2016, Dern went back into a learning environment by accepting an internship position at Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions. Shortly after the internship, composer Klaus Badelt took notice of her and invited her onto his team for the animated movie Ballerina starring Elle Fanning. Aside from her involvement in the score, Dern also wrote orchestral arrangements to some of the movie's songs by Sia and Chris Braide. It was later picked up by the Weinstein Company and released in U.S. territories the following year under the title Leap!. While working on several theme park rides with Badelt, Dern was also selected as one of the 12 composers out of over 300 applicants for the annual ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop by Richard Bellis. In early 2017, Dern collaborated with composer Emir Isilay on the Pakistani drama Saawan. Their score was nominated for Best Original Score at the Madrid International Film Festival and later won the Best Soundtrack Award at the Salento International Film Festival. It was also selected as Pakistan's official entry for the Academy Awards. This production was quickly followed by the Chinese-American drama The Jade Pendant based on the novel by L.P. Leung, and the German fantasy movie Lilly's Bewitched Christmas based on the popular children's books by Knister. Both scores led to several positive nods by critics and most notably garnered her a coveted IFMCA nomination for Breakthrough Film Composer Of The Year. In spring 2017, Dern was chosen as one of the 10 female composers for the first installment of the now annual Future Is Female concert series, produced by composer and singer Tori Letzler. Dern conducted the Hollywood Chamber Orchestra throughout the entire second half of the concert and contributed her suite from The Jade Pendant. The suite was performed again later in fall of the same year by the Alhambra Orchestra in Florida during the Silver Screen Concert. Several other feature film productions followed, including the indie drama Captain Black by Jeffrey Johnson, a German kid's comedy called Help I Shrunk My Parents, and - resuming her work with Klaus Badelt - the Chinese drama Legend Of The Demon Cat by Chen Kaige. Dern also collaborated with British composer Daniel James on a Mongolian play and worked on iGot Games' Lords Mobile, once again with Badelt. In 2018, Dern continued to collaborate with Klaus Badelt on productions such as "Wish", "Ocean's 8", and iGotGames' mobile games "Castle Clash" and "Galaxy Mobile". She also wrote an orchestral song arrangement for the song "Back To Earth" by Chris Braide for 3QU Media's animated movie "Trouble". In mid 2018, Dern went on to collaborate with Enrico Natale and Elease Patrick for the award-winning short film "Broken". She later signed on to write the score for the award-winning Pakistani feature drama "Allahu Akbar", directed and produced by Farhan Alam. Throughout the winter of 2018/2019, Dern once again teamed up with blue eyes Fiction to write the score for "Sprite Sisters", to be released by Disney in January 2020. Dern travelled to Brussels to record and conduct the score at DaDa Studios with musicians from the Brussels Philharmonic. In spring 2019, Dern signed on to work with 3QU Media again to write the score for the animated science-fiction adventure "Fearless" which was performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra under the direction of Andy Brown, and recorded by Jake Jackson at Abbey Road Studios. Dern also wrote a few Mozart arrangements for composer Nicolas Repetto's feature documentary "The Sound Of Identity" and conducted them during a recording session at United Recording Studios. During fall 2019, Dern went on to write music for director Alex Perry's feature documentary "Angle", starring Kurt Angle, Dwayne Johnson, and Ronda Rousey. During winter 2019/2020, she is also set to write music for Julien Kerknawi's WWI drama "The Last Front", starring Liam Cunningham and Sasha Luss, as well as blue eyes Fiction's sequel "Help I Shrunk My Friends". Next to collaborating with other composers, Dern frequently works with several directors and producers, such as Blue Eyes Fiction, Julien Kerknawi, Galaxy Studios, Straw Weisman, Robyn Klein, and Enrico Natale. Her international catalogue ranges from the US to Canada, China, Mongolia, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Pakistan, Germany, and France. Her scores are frequently recorded at AIR Lyndhurst and Abbey Road Studios in London by the LSO and LMO. As part of her initiative to promote the visibility of ethnic and gender minorities in film scoring, Dern was featured on the official AVID blog and was invited to a roundtable at Output. Dern was also invited as a speaker on the AVID main stage at NAMM in January 2019. Her piece "He Is Not Coming Back" was performed by the Orchestra Moderne under the direction of Amy Andersson at Lincoln Center, NY, as part of the concert "Women Warriors: Voices of Change". Dern is a member of the performing rights organizations ASCAP and GEMA. Dern is represented by Michal Marks from A-Muse Management.
Reviews
Dern has received very favorable reviews of her works, most notably Lilly's Bewitched Christmas and The Jade Pendant. Jonathan Broxton, president of the IFMCA, particularly points out the very traditional melodic writing in his review for The Jade Pendant: "The score is built around a stunning – and I do mean stunning – main theme. Rich, classical, lush, emotional, written for the full orchestra, with the main melody carried by different instruments depending on the situation, it’s one of the best new main themes of the year. Think of all the great Chinese-style themes played by a western orchestra: John Williams’s Memoirs of a Geisha, Rachel Portman’s Joy Luck Club, Conrad Pope’s Pavilion of Women, Klaus Badelt’s The Promise . This is up there with them." About Lilly's Bewitched Christmas he says "...it shows her to have a fluid orchestral style filled with easy thematic ideas, lovely harmonies, and – on this score, specifically, a wonderful whimsical way of conveying the magic of Christmas. The score has quite a bit in common with other seasonal efforts like John Williams’s Home Alone, Danny Elfman’s Edward Scissorhands, John Debney’s Elf, Bruce Broughton’s Miracle on 34th Street, Alan Silvestri’s The Polar Express, and others of that type, in the way it blends a full and lush orchestra with seasonal orchestrations – chimes, sleigh bells, glockenspiels, and even an occasional choir. There’s also more than a hint of Williams’s music for the first two Harry Potter scores in the way it conveys the mood of magic and witchcraft – the string phrasing, the woodwind counterpoint, the frisky and mischievous tempos, the frequent use of a celesta." He further describes "Anne Kathrin Dern as a serious talent to watch".
