Mychael Danna has won his first Academy Award in the Best Original Score category for his music for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. The composer was also nominated for the first time. The other contenders in the category were John Williams (Lincoln), Alexandre Desplat (Argo), Dario Marianelli (Anna Karenina) and Thomas Newman (Skyfall). All five nominated composers were in attendance at the awards ceremony.
In the Best Original Song category, Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth received the award for the title song of the James Bond film Skyfall.
The show featured numerous musical performances, including Adele who performed the Oscar-winning song from Skyfall, Shirley Bassey who sang the title song from Goldfinger, as well as Hugh Jackman performing a section from the nominated song Suddenly from Les Miserables and the full cast performing One Day More. In a tribute to movie musicals from the past decade, Catherine Zeta-Jones performed the song All That Jazz from the Academy Award-winning film Chicago and Jennifer Hudson performed the song And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going from Dreamgirls. Several film composers/songwriters were featured in the In Memoriam segment, including Hal David (1921-2012), Richard Robbins (1940-2012), Richard Rodney Bennett (1936-2012) and Marvin Hamlisch (1944-2012). Barbra Streisand performed the title song from The Way We Were, for which Hamlisch received an Academy Award in 1974.
William Ross conducted the Oscar orchestra at Capitol Records in Hollywood and composer Joel McNeely composed the opening and closing numbers performed by Seth MacFarlane.
