Curious composer Jed Kurzel knows the cinematic score

Jed Kurzel is up for feature film score of the year at the annual Screen Music Awards in Melbourne.

Jed Kurzel. Australian composer/rock musician nominated for best feature film score at the Screen Music Awards next month for his work on the western Slow West. Pictured at Surry Hills in Sydney.

Jed Kurzel’s first taste of music awards success was in 2008 when his blues-rock duo The Mess Hall won the Australian Music Prize for the album Devil’s Elbow.

The Sydney musician’s career has taken a significant left turn since, yet awards ceremonies still play a part.

Kurzel, now an established film composer, is up for feature film score of the year at the annual Screen Music Awards in Melbourne on November 12, for his work on this year’s Slow West, by Scottish director John Maclean.

The composer has one of those trophies on his mantelpiece already, from his success in 2011 for the score to the movie Snowtown, directed by his brother Justin.

“I’ve always been curious about music in films,” Kurzel said in Sydney yesterday.

“The biggest memory I have of really getting me into it was in my late teens, seeing Italian horror films on television. I saw Ennio Morricone had done a lot of them. That’s how I discovered him.

“Curiosity has always been the driving force of what I do.”

Kurzel has scored six films since making his debut on Snowtown, including last year’s horror success The Babadook and crime drama Son of a Gun.

“The more you do, the more you know where your patch of land is,” he said. “That’s important, that you have your voice.”

The musician’s score for Slow West, starring Michael Fassbender, will compete against work by David Hirschfelder (The Water Diviner), Michael Lira (Good ‘Ol Boy) and fellow rock musicians Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (Loin des Hommes).

Fassbender was also the star of the Kurzel brothers’ most recent collaboration, this year’s Macbeth. The musician sibling said working with his brother had taught him a lot about the discipline of filmmaking. “Working with him is a whole different experience,” he said. “We don’t have to tiptoe around each other. We can have an argument and then make up an hour later. It’s always fraught with heated debate. I love that.”

Kurzel won’t be in Melbourne to find out whether he has won the best score trophy: he is off to London for a month to work on his next project, Australian theatre director Benedict Andrews’s screen directorial debut.

The composer is much in demand, but he’s not ruling out a return to his band at some point. “You do one thing for a while, you really crave the other,” he said.