BMI Returns to Tribeca Festival with Two Engaging Panels

BMI is thrilled to return to Tribeca Festival's Music Lounge with two panels giving an insider's look into creating the music behind some of today's most popular films and TV shows. On June 10, BMI Presents How I Wrote That Song® for Film & TV featuring songwriter/producer Ali Dee and composer/songwriter PT Walkley, and on June 11, BMI Presents How I Wrote That… Behind The Score featuring composers Jongnic Bontemps, Anna Drubich, Meredith Ezinma Ramsay and Gil Talmi. Both panels will be moderated by BMI's VP, Creative, Film, TV and Visual Media Tracy McKnight at Baby's All Right (146 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY) and are free with a ticket. More information is below.

BMI Presents How I Wrote that Song® for Film & TV
Featuring Ali Dee and PT Walkley
Moderated by BMI VP, Creative, Film, TV and Visual Media Tracy McKnight.
Saturday, June 10 at 4pm
Baby's All Right
Tickets available here

Go behind the scenes as songwriter/producer Ali Dee and composer/songwriter PT Walkley give an insider's look into the creative process behind some of the most memorable songs that have helped shape the narrative for countless films and television shows. Dee's music can be heard in the new Super Mario Bros. Movie released this past April, the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, the hit Netflix series Julie & The Phantoms, Mattel/Netflix's He-Man: Masters of the Universe reboot, Nickelodeon's Bubble Guppies, Noggin, Sponge On The Run and more. Walkley's current projects include Nickelodeon's Blue's Clues and Team Umizoomi, and Netflix's highly successful Gabby's Dollhouse. His film and tv credits include Public Morals and Purple Violets, among others. Listen as these music creators delve into how they got their break, the relationship between directors, studio heads, composers and songwriters, what inspires them to create, and so much more.

ABOUT THE COMPOSER PANELISTS:

Ali Dee
Ali Dee Theodore has over three decades of experience in the entertainment industry as a songwriter, producer, composer and artist. In 1989, Dee signed a recording deal with Chrysalis Records for his group The Next School, which was the first African American & White rap duo. Dee would go onto joining the famed Hip Hop production juggernaut, The Bomb Squad, from 1990 to 1993. During the Golden Era of Hip Hop, Dee wrote and produced for Big Daddy Kane, Eric B & Rakim, YBT, Arron Hall, Slick Rick, Dana Dane, Mary J Blige, Natasha Bedingfield, Kool G Rap, and M.O.P, among many others.

In 2002, Dee saw tremendous opportunity in music for film and television and migrated from working with recording artists to creating songs & music for film & television. He has written songs and produced music for over 250 feature films and is ranked the #3 highest grossing Executive Music Producer on Worldwide box office receipts. Dee's music can be heard in the new Super Mario Bros. Movie released this past April, the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, the hit Netflix series Julie & The Phantoms, Mattel/Netflix's He-Man: Masters of the Universe reboot, Nickelodeon's Bubble Guppies, Noggin, Sponge On The Run and more.

PT Walkley
PT Walkley is a New York based composer and singer-songwriter. As a composer, PT has a large footprint in the world of Kids TV - composing for the popular Nickelodeon series Blues Clues (2019- Present), Team Umizoomi (2010-2015), and the Netflix series Gabby's Dollhouse (2021-present), on which he wrote the theme song "Hey Gabby." Gabby's Dollhouse recently celebrated 1 billion views on its YouTube Channels. He has also composed national TV commercials for Nike, Pepsi, MasterCard, McDonald's, and more. PT is a longtime close collaborator of filmmaker Edward Burns, the worked together on the 2018 United Artists Releasing film Summer Days, Summer Nights, TNT's 2015 TV Series Public Morals, and 10 other projects. Some of his compositions for TV & film include Lez Bomb, Gravitas Ventures (2018), The Wilde Wedding, Vertical Entertainment (2017) starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart and Minnie Driver, and Alex Gibney's documentary Spring Broke, Showtime (2016). As a solo artist, he released his first LP, Mr. Macy Wakes Alone, in January 2009, which includes contributions from artists such as Larry Campbell, David Campbell, and Sean Lennon.

BMI Presents How I Wrote That… Behind the Score
Featuring Composers Jongnic Bontemps, Anna Drubich, Meredith Ezinma Ramsay and Gil Talmi
Moderated by BMI VP, Creative, Film, TV and Visual Media Tracy McKnight.
Sunday, June 11 at 3pm
Baby's All Right
Tickets available here

Whether it's for a feature film, network TV, streaming platform, gaming, or other visual media source, music can make a storyline more memorable with the perfect score. Featuring some of today's top composers with music in films screening at Tribeca, this panel will dive into the creative process of composing, how to bring a director's vision to life, the stories behind what inspires them to create every day, getting your music heard by the right people and more.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS:

Jongnic "JB" Bontemps
Jongnic Bontemps is a uniquely modern composer known for his fusion of contemporary sound with timeless emotion. The Brooklyn-born musician studied music at Yale and went on to pursue his passion at USC by joining their Film Scoring Program and participated in the Sundance Film Music Lab.

Bontemps has scored dozens of features, series and video games in all genres. Most recently, he worked on the score for the sci-fi action blockbuster Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. He has also worked on the drama The Land, for which he orchestrated the song "This Bitter Land" performed by Nas and Erykah Badu, the highly successful drama Creed II, Netflix's Wedding Season, the CW's 4400 and Last Night in Rozzie, among others. Bontemps has worked on several acclaimed documentary projects including United Skates and My Name Is Pauli Murray, which was nominated for a Critics' Choice Award. Other projects include Lifetime's Clarke Sisters: The First Ladies of Gospel, the drama Faith Under Fire, BET's Boomerang, Epix's series Godfather of Harlem and the award-winning game Call of Duty: WWII.

His soon-to-be-released projects include Disney+'s World's Best and Choir, as well as Arkane Studios' video game Redfall and the film Jagged Mind.

Anna Drubich
Anna Drubich is an award-winning film composer from Moscow who studied at the Moscow Chopin Music College, Munich School for the Performing Arts, and the University of Southern California where she graduated from the prestigious Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program in 2012. Her diverse body of work includes live action features, animated features, television series, documentaries, plays and concert halls across the world.

Drubich's first film music project was About Love in 2002, which went on to receive the Best Music Award at the Russian National Film Festival Kinotavr. In 2018, she won a composer fellowship at the renowned Sundance Film Music lab and was nominated for a Golden Eagle Award for her score on the film Bolshoy. Drubich has also worked on the drama Odessa, co-scored with Oscar-nominated composer Marco Beltrami on Guillermo Del Toro's adaptation of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the horror-comedy Werewolves Within, Netflix's Fear Street: 1994, the horror feature Barbarian, and the 2022 Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary Navalny, which also won the 2023 BAFTA and Oscar for best documentary.

Meredith Ezinma Ramsay
Meredith Ezinma Ramsay is a violinist, film composer, artist, performer and educator who has collaborated with the likes of Beyonce, Rihanna, Stevie Wonder, Kendrick Lamar, Khalid, Joshua Bell, Yo-Yo Ma and Clean Bandit. She studied at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and completed her master's degree in violin performance at The New School in New York City in 2012. In 2020, her debut EP Classical Bae was released under Universal Music Group's Decca Records. That same year, Ezinma's self-titled documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in partnership with Bulgari. She later earned her master's degree from Berklee College of Music and was selected to participate in the Sundance Film Institute's Composer's Lab.

Ramsay has composed music for documentaries and short films, including the Oscar-nominated Stranger at the Gate and worked on the 2018 Black Panther soundtrack. She is currently working on the upcoming HBO series Angel City, and in 2022 created Strings By Heart, a music-based youth development program for children K-5 from underserved communities in NYC.

Gil Talmi
Gil Talmi is an Emmy-nominated film composer, sonic activist and recording artist with a passion for socially conscious films. Some of his most recent work includes original music for Netflix's Harry & Meghan, Lead Me Home and The Great Hack, Hulu's Jacinta, Safe Space Pictures' Battleground, The Atlantic's White Noise, Amazon's All In: The Fight for Democracy, and Aubin Pictures' Chavela. Talmi's score for Chavela was nominated for Best Original Film Score at the Music & Sound Awards and his score for Tales of The Waria won Best Documentary Score.

In addition to these stellar composers, BMI is proud to name many other of our immensely talented composers who will also have music featured in films at Tribeca. They are:

Tribeca Festival 2023 - BMI Composers

Documentary Feature: Breaking The News - Gil Talmi & Meredith Ezinma Ramsay
Documentary Feature: Lead Me Home - Gil Talmi
Documentary Feature: Between The Rains - Kevin Matley
Documentary Feature: Cypher - Bobby McFerrin
Documentary Feature: Somewhere Quiet - Ariel Marx
Documentary Feature: Lost Soulz - Adam Robl & Shawn Sutta
Documentary Feature: Maestra - Anne Chmelewsky
Documentary Feature: Take Care Of Maya - James Daly & Dan Krysa
Documentary Feature: This Is Not Financial Advice - Gil Talmi
Documentary Feature : The Space Race - Anna Drubich & Jongnic Bontemps
Documentary Feature: Against All Enemies -Tony Morales
Documentary Feature: Uncharted - Mary Lattimore
Documentary Feature: Rather - Jeff Beal
Documentary Feature: Songs About Fucking - Marc Rebillet
Documentary Feature: It's Only Life After All - Lyris Hung
Documentary Series: Choirs - Jongnic Bontemps
Narrative Feature : Downtown Owl - T Bone Burnett, Zachary Dawes, Patrick Warren
Narrative Feature: The Listener - ASKA
Narrative Feature: Shortcomings - Gene Back
Narrative Feature: The Blackening - Dexter Story
Narrative Feature: He Went That Way - Nicolas Rosen
Narrative Feature: Maggie Moore(s) - Ben Sollee
Narrative Feature: Perpetrator - Nick Zinner
Narrative Feature: Final Cut - Alexandre Desplat
Animated Feature: Elemental - Thomas Newman
Short: Goodbye Morganza - Gil Talmi & Meredith Ezinma Ramsay
Short: A Cow In The Sky - Robert Lydecker
Short: Everybody Dies…Sometimes - Carla Patullo

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