Mark Isham
Trumpeter, Composer & Synthesist
Mark Isham is an electronic music innovator, jazz artist and prolific film composer. Isham’s ability to create unforgettable melodies, combined with his willingness to experiment with innovative musical palettes, has earned him accolades including Grammy and Emmy awards, and Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
Isham’s inimitable musical voice is evident in his memorable scores for award-winning features including the Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah, Crash and A River Runs Through It (Oscar nomination) along with Golden Globe winning Bobby, and Nell (Golden Globe nomination). For The Black Dahlia, Isham was awarded “Best Score” by the International Film Music Critics Association.
He has collaborated with top directors and artists including Robert Redford, Robert Altman, Sting, Jodie Foster, Shaka King, Lynn Shelton, Swizz Beatz, George Tillman, Forest Whitaker, Tom Cruise, Brian De Palma, Chick Corea, Will.i.am, Sidney Lumet, and Mick Jagger.
Most notably, Mark has scored films such as The Cooler (2003), Blade (1998) and Miracle (2004), as well as TV shows such as Hulu’s limited series Little Fires Everywhere for which he garnered his sixth Emmy nomination, EPIX series The Godfather of Harlem, and the long-running hit show Once Upon a Time.
In 2020, Isham made Cannes Film Festival history as the first film composer to perform a live in-studio concert of some of his most beloved scores, for the inaugural film music summit of the Cannes Film Market, the business counterpart of the prestigious festival.
Today, GRAMMY and Emmy Award-winning artist Mark Isham has announced At the Carousel Club, his first new solo album in 15 years, arriving August 21. Having spent his career moving fluidly between jazz, electronic music, orchestral writing, and cinema, the Academy Award-nominated composer has drawn from all of these disciplines, to create a recombinant musical statement. Alongside the release, Isham shared the title track, a vivid opening statement that brings together the opposing forces that have defined his life in music: discipline and danger, composition and improvisation, machinery and breath.
Having spent his career often shaping the narrative of his collaborators - from performing with Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Stanley Clarke, while creating some of the most memorable film and television scores of the past four decades (including Once Upon A Time, Blade, Crash, A River Runs Through It, and more), Isham’s re-introduction as a solo artist challenges the assumption that a composer known for serving narrative must remain behind it. Here, he is not interpreting a director’s vision or reinforcing another artist’s emotional world. He is the author, protagonist, and risk-taker—placing his own trumpet voice at the center of a musical environment built without a script, a picture, or a guaranteed destination.
