“Cursed Child” and John Williams Receive GRAMMY Award Nominations

by · November 20, 2019

The GRAMMY Awards, which will air on January 26, 2020, honor achievements in the music industry. The nominees have just been revealed, and those nominated from the wizarding world certainly cast a spell on our ears!

Imogen Heap’s music for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was nominated in the Best Musical Theater Album category. The album, titled The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – In Four Contemporary Suites, includes music composed and performed by Heap. She also produced the 42-track album herself.

Heap’s score is perfectly magical and adds incredible emotion and feeling to Cursed Child. It is just as integral to the show as the respective scores of fellow nominees Hadestown and Oklahoma!, which is impressive considering Heap’s score is the only one nominated that does not include lyrics.

 

 

John Williams, who composed music for the first three Potter films, earned nominations in two categories. For his new arrangement of “Hedwig’s Theme” with violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, Williams was nominated in the category of Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella. The arrangement is a beautiful and complicated twist on the classic tune (which was nominated for a GRAMMY in 2002 but did not win).

 

 

Williams also earned a nomination in the category of Best Instrumental Composition for his “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Symphonic Suite.” The suite was created exclusively for the Disney theme parks’ new Star Wars location. While entirely new, the piece includes the usual bold brass and high strings and immediately makes the listener think of a galaxy far, far away. You can hear this piece at Batuu in Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort.

 

 

Imogen Heap helped produce and engineer the 2015 GRAMMY Awards’ Album of the Year, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and won Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical at the 2009 GRAMMY Awards for her third studio album, Ellipse.

John Williams has won 24 GRAMMY awards, none of which were for a Harry Potter score. Though all three of his Potter scores received nominations, he failed to bring home the trophy. This means a win at the 2020 GRAMMYs for “Hedwig’s Theme” would be the first Potter win for Williams and the first win for the tune itself.

Will our wizarding world nominees take home the trophies? We’ll find out in January!