Germaine Franco is an American film composer, conductor, songwriter, arranger, record producer, and percussionist. She is a Grammy-winning and Oscar-nominated composer. Her extensive resume, coupled with her curiosity, and inventiveness, has made her a trailblazer. Franco was the first Latina to win a Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media with her score for Encanto (2021),[1] and the first to receive the Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature with Coco in 2018. In addition, Encanto received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, an SCL Award for Outstanding Original Score for a Studio Film, an Annie Award for Best Music in a Feature, a Billboard Music Award, and a World Soundtrack Awards nomination for Film Composer of the Year in 2022. She is also the first Latina to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, as well as the first to join the music branch of the Academy.[2] She recently completed work on the Netflix smash hit The Mother directed by Niki Caro. The film is one of Netflix's most successful releases to date, going No.1 in 82 countries.[3]
In 2018, Univision named Franco one of the Top 15 Latinas who are changing the world.[4] Other film and television scores Franco has contributed to include Coco (2017), Tag (2018), Dope (2015), Vida (2018), Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019), and Little (2019).[5][6] Her work has been performed at concert halls such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall with The Los Angeles Master Chorale,[7] The Puerto Rico Symphony, The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The National Symphony Orchestra, and The Chicago Philharmonic, among others.
Early life
Franco was born in California.[8] She attended the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University where she studied percussion and composition, earning a bachelor's degree in 1984 and a master's in 1987. It was during this time she started writing music in addition to performing.[9]
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