Celebrate the sounds of Sundance as composers and music flood Park City

PARK CITY, Utah — Music is a large part of films these days, and composers and musicians are flocking to Park City. Joseph Shirley and Andrew Orkin, who recently co-scored Cathy Yan’s The Gallerist, are looking forward to the premiere of their first collaboration on Jan. 24 at the Eccles Theater.

Both composers now live in Los Angeles, but all of their collaboration happened online. Joseph Shirley is known for his work on Creed III, The Mandalorian, and Tenet, while Andrew Orkin is known for Rule of Two Walls, Dead Pigs, and The Graduates and, to Sundance Film Festival fans from the 2020, the film Save Yourselves! Orkin jokingly says, “We are both from the South.” Shirley is from Mississippi and Orkin is from South Africa, but they discovered “they speak the same language” as far as music is concerned, as Shirley puts it.

Creating the score for The Gallerist was a big task. The movie is almost wall to wall score and there was no easy way to divide the work. The movie takes a lot of twists and turns and the ensemble cast brings more chaos and roadblocks into the mix for the two main characters. The two composers ended up creating a lot of material that, when whittled down, twisted together, and manipulated to bring their ideas together, came together as a cohesive score with different, disparate parts across the different characters.

The two composers were brought together by the director and enjoyed their collaboration so much they hope to do it again. All the performers also worked remotely, and they encouraged experimentation when they sent their music to the performers. During the pandemic everyone got used to working in their own studio and for them this way of working has become the norm.

Joseph Shirley is thrilled to be in Park City for the first time, especially for the last festival here and so is Andrew Orkin, returning for the third time.

Music can be found all over Park City during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Some performances are only open to those that happened to have a ticket to a premiere with a surprise performance, but others are available free to the general public.

On Sunday, January 25, 2–6 p.m., the ASCAP Music Café, together with Acura, longtime Presenting Sponsor and Official Automotive of the Sundance Film Festival, will feature live performances and conversations with top composers and directors with films in this year’s program at 550 Swede Alley in Park City.

Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and director Tamra Davis discuss their music doc, The Best Summer, drawn from never-before-seen footage of a 1995 Australian indie music festival. Composer Anna Meredith and directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer discuss their collaboration on their film Wicker, an audacious story about a medieval oddball village.

Performances by Grammy and Emmy Award-winning composer and songwriter Emily Bear, Grammy-winning artist-songwriter Nathalia Marshall, soulful singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ron Artis II, and American glam rock band Foxy Shazam.

On Monday, Jan. 26, from 2–5 p.m., at the ASCAP Music Café composer Shelby Gaines and director Padraic McKinley share their experience working on The Weight, a rich and harrowing Depression-era crime drama, starring Ethan Hawke and Russell Crowe, set against the stark beauty and treacherous backcountry of the Oregon landscape.

This will be followed by performances by Ron Artis II, country-rock singer-songwriter Josh Kelley, composer, drummer, DJ, producer and musical polymath Photay, and Foxy Shazam.