Virtual Music in Film Session supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Jennifer Maytorena Taylor makes colorful, character-based films about real people with extraordinary stories, often with Spanish-language content and frequently for PBS. Her features and shorts have shown at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, New York Museum of Modern Art, Sundance Channel, Al Jazeera, and NHK-Japan. Feature documentary and short film credits include NEW MUSLIM COOL, DAISY AND MAX, PAULINA, MESSAGE TO ZAIRE/THE TALK, HOME FRONT, STREET KNOWLEDGE 2 COLLEGE, VISITING DAY, and REDNECK MUSLIM.

Based in San Francisco and born in Los Angeles of Mexican, Sicilian, Irish and English heritage, Jennifer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is also the Director of Graduate Studies for the Social Documentation MFA program. She is a Sundance Documentary Institute fellow, and has held fellowships at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the USC Annenberg School for Journalism, and the MacDowell Colony. She is currently premiering her new verité feature FOR THE LOVE OF RUTLAND, about a small blue-collar town grappling with deep change in an era of refugee crises, the opioid epidemic, and extreme polarization. Supported by the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and the Sundance Film Music Program, For the Love of Rutland was recently named one of the “10 Most Exciting Films” at Hot Docs 2020 by Indiewire.

Emily Rice is a British born composer for film and TV, who started her musical life as a cellist playing in orchestras and rock bands. She has recorded and conducted her work at Warner Brothers, Capitol Records, and The Wiltern. She scored the Netflix series THE I-LAND and is in increasing demand as a composer for indie films. Emily’s most recent scores include the documentary feature FOR THE LOVE OF RUTLAND, and narrative feature MISS JUNETEENTH which featured in U.S dramatic competition at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Her music can also be heard in Hollywood blockbusters such as TOMB RAIDER and ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL. Emily recently finished scoring the short anime film SOL LEVANTE for Netflix, and is an alumna of the prestigious Sundance Institute Film Music & Sound Design Lab and the Ucross Foundation Artist Residency programme.

Peter Golub is the composer of numerous works for film, the concert hall, theatre and dance. His film scores include: Frozen River (directed by Courtney Hunt and nominated for 2 Academy Awards); The Laramie Project (for HBO); The Great Debaters (directed by Denzel Washington and co-composed with James Newton Howard); Wordplay (directed by Patrick Creadon); Countdown to Zero (dir by Lucy Walker); Sound of a Dream (dir by Zhang Wei); and Songs My Brothers Taught Me (dir by Chloe Zhao). Scores for Broadway include: The Country House (by Donald Marguiles, directed by Daniel Sullivan, with Blythe Danner), The Heiress (directed by Moises Kaufman, with Jessica Chastain) and Hedda Gabler (directed by Nicholas Martin, with Kate Burton). 

In his early career he was Composer-in-Residence for Charles Ludlam's legendary Ridiculous Theatrical Company in Greenwich Village, along with considerable work composing music for the theatre with Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival (including numerous productions at the Delacorte in Central Park as well as at the Public downtown) and at La Mama, including work with Ethyl Eichelberger, Ellen Stewart, Jospeh Chaikin and others. His musical, Ampigorey, with book, lyrics and designs by Edward Gorey, was produced at the American Music Theater Festival (Philadelphia), as well as at the American Repertory Theatre (ART) in Cambridge, culminating in an off-Broadway run at the Perry Street Theatre in NY. Amphigorey was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Best Musical. 

His ballet based on Gorey's The Gilded Bat, choreography by Peter Anastos, was commissioned by Ballet West and performed at the Kennedy Center and throughout the US. Other ballets were commissioned by the Miami City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, and Atlanta Ballet. Recent concert music includes: Sleepwalking (a cello concerto), Ghost Songs (for voice and piano, to texts by Thomas Hardy), Six Dirty Limericks, Garden Paths (for flute, viola and Harp), Florestan & Eusebius (for saxophone quartet) and A Child of Children and Art (commissioned by pianist Anthony de Mare as part of a set of original piano pieces in tribute to Stephen Sondheim). He studied composition with Toru Takemitsu and Henry Brant.

Golub is the Director of the Sundance Film Music Program and teaches at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Eva Rinaldi is the director of operations for Sundance Institute’s artist programs. She oversees the operational aspects of residency labs, workshops, and community screenings for programs such as Feature Film, Documentary Film, Film Music, and Theatre that span artistic activities including filming and editing, showcasing plays in progress, and film scoring. Eva has a master’s in community leadership from Westminster College with a focus on advocacy. She represents her community by serving on local boards and is politically active.