Composer Justin Hurwitz first rose to prominence through his jazz-infused scores for the films of longtime collaborator Damien Chazelle, beginning with their 2014 partnership on Whiplash and continuing with La La Land in 2016. For the latter he received Academy Awards for both his original score and the song “City of Stars.” During the 2010s he also wrote for television, contributing scripts to The Simpsons, The League, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Their fifth joint feature, the sprawling Hollywood chronicle Babylon, reached theaters in 2022.
Hurwitz grew up in California within a household steeped in the arts: his mother had been a ballerina, his father worked as a writer, and his sister played violin. He started piano lessons at six and was already writing music by ten. In eighth grade the family relocated to Fox Point, Wisconsin, where he attended Nicolet High School and simultaneously studied at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee under pianist Stefanie Jacob. After receiving his diploma in 2003 he enrolled at Harvard University.
Although his early training centered on classical repertoire and he admired the film scores of John Williams, a jazz recording by Oscar Peterson given to him by his uncle Ron during his teenage years proved decisive. At Harvard he met Damien Chazelle; the two quickly formed a close friendship and played together in the Brit-pop outfit Chester French, with Chazelle on drums and Hurwitz on electric piano. They eventually shared an apartment, and their mutual musical interests led to their first screen collaboration: Chazelle’s debut feature Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, for which Hurwitz composed the score.
While building his film career he continued writing for television, including episodes of The Simpsons and The League. The 2014 release of Whiplash, again directed by Chazelle, brought Hurwitz a Grammy nomination for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. The pair’s subsequent project, the romantic musical comedy-drama La La Land, premiered in late 2016, became their most widely celebrated work, and earned Hurwitz Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “City of Stars,” the latter shared with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. In 2017 he produced and wrote for Curb Your Enthusiasm, an effort that yielded an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series. He next scored Chazelle’s 2018 biopic First Man, which chronicles the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong. Their following collaboration, Babylon, depicts the turbulent transition from silent films to talkies and the fortunes of the performers caught in that shift.
