# Pinar Toprak

Pinar Toprak (born 18 October 1980) is a Turkish-born American composer, conductor, and musician, who specializes in creating thematic scores.

## Early life and education

Toprak was born and grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Her father was an accountant who supported Toprak's interest in music and movies, particularly westerns and Superman. Toprak has said she was always drawn to superheroes and comic books growing up. She memorized the dialogue from the 1978 film starring Christopher Reeve, and dubbed it to Turkish.
Toprak enrolled in the Istanbul State Conservatory, the oldest conservatory in Turkey. During her studies there, she focused on composition and multi-instrumentalism. She began as a violinist and later switched to guitar."
She finished high school at 16, and, after her 17th birthday, moved to the United States. She lived with her brother in Wisconsin where she completed a short ESL program before enrolling at Berklee. During that time, she found work as a jazz guitarist and pianist."
She received her Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring from Berklee in 2000 when she was 19 years old. Following her move to Los Angeles, she received a Master's in Classical Composition from the California State University, Northridge in 2002. It was at CSUN where she was recommended for an internship at Paramount Pictures at the age of 20.

## Career

At Paramount, she attended scoring sessions and worked for Hans Zimmer's production company, Media Ventures International (now Remote Control). She also trained in programming sample instruments. She left Zimmer's company after a year to work as assistant to composer William Ross.
In 2006, she composed the score for the video game Ninety-Nine Nights, and then for Behind Enemy Lines 2. From that time onward, she worked on more than forty feature films and several video-game and television projects. She worked on the fanfare of Skydance Media from 2010 to 2022.
Among her work was the score for the romantic comedy The Lightkeepers (2009), which won the 2010 International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) Award for Best Comedy Score. Toprak's score for The Lightkeepers made it to the 2011 Academy Award Shortlist for Best Original Score. She composed the music to the documentary The Wind Gods (2011) for which she received a second IFMCA award for Best Documentary Score in 2011. In 2017, she was hired by director Dean Devlin to compose the score for Geostorm but was laid off after production companies Warner Bros. and Skydance Media hired a new director for the movie's reshoots. The same year, composer Danny Elfman hired Toprak to write additional scores for the 2017 DC superhero film, Justice League (Dir. Zack Snyder).
Toprak auditioned and pitched a main theme for the film Captain Marvel, which became a hit. She is the first woman to ever score a major superhero movie, and the first to compose for a film that made more than $1 billion.
In 2019, she received a nomination for the World Soundtrack Awards.
Toprak's other works include the score for the 2018–2019 series, Krypton, prequel to the Superman series; DC's television series, Stargirl; and the HBO limited series, McMillions (2020), for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Original Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special. She is the first Turkish composer to be nominated for an Emmy. Her work on the 2018 movie The Tides of Fate earned her the 2019 ASCAP Shirley Walker Award, and also, her third IFMCA Award for Best Original Score for a Documentary Film in 2019.
In 2022, Amazon picked Toprak to compose and conduct a new theme for its Thursday Night Football telecasts, marking the first time a woman composer wrote an original theme for the National Football League. Toprak recorded it at the Ocean Way studio in Nashville with an 70-piece orchestra. The new theme was met with wide praise.

## Personal life

In 2008, Toprak married Thanos Kazakos, a music composer and sound design major from Greece. They had met at Berklee, and had a son and a daughter. They divorced in 2013.
She currently resides in Los Angeles.

## Discography

Key :
| † | Denotes films that have not yet been released |

### Film

| Year | Title | Director | Notes |
| 2004 | Hold The Rice | Alfonso Pineda Ulloa | Short film |
| 2004 | Headbreaker | Alfonso Pineda Ulloa | Short film |
| 2005 | When All Else Fails | David Ellison | Short film |
| 2006 | Behind Enemy Lines II: Axis of Evil | James Dodson | |
| 2007 | Daydreamer | Brahman Turner | |
| 2007 | Sinner | Marc Benardout | |
| 2007 | Fall Down Dead | Jon Keeyes | |
| 2007 | In the Name of the Son | Harun Mehmedinović | Short film |
| 2007 | Say It in Russian | Jeff Celentano | |
| 2008 | Ocean of Pearls | Sarab Singh Neelam | with Karsh Kale & Snatam Kaur |
| 2008 | Light of Olympia | San Wei Chan | Animated feature |
| 2008 | Pregnant in America | Steve Buonaugurio | Documentary |
| 2009 | The Crimson Mask | Elias Plagianos | |
| 2009 | Breaking Point | Jeff Celentano | |
| 2009 | The Lightkeepers | Daniel Adams | |
| 2011 | Last Will | Brent Huff | |
| 2011 | The River Murders | Rich Cowan | |
| 2011 | Girls! Girls! Girls! | Shana Betz Beth Grant Tracie Laymon Jennifer Lynch Barbara Stepansky America Young | with Heather Schmidt |
| 2012 | Vamperifica | Bruce Ornstein | |
| 2012 | How to Have a Happy Marriage | Jennifer Lynch | |
| 2012 | Restos | Alfonso Pineda Ulloa | Short film |
| 2013 | The Wind Gods | Fritz Mitchell | Documentary film |
| 2015 | The Challenger | Kent Moran | |
| 2015 | The Curse of Downers Grove | Derick Martini | |
| 2015 | In Utero | Kathleen Man Gyllenhaal | Documentary film |
| 2017 | The Chainbreakers | Rui Yang | with Emir Işılay |
| 2017 | The Monster Project | Victor Mathieu | with Emir Işılay |
| 2017 | Justice League | Zack Snyder | Additional music Main score by Danny Elfman |
| 2018 | The Angel | Ariel Vromen | |
| 2018 | The Tides of Fate | Fritz Mitchell | Documentary |
| 2019 | Purl | Kristen Lester | Animated short film |
| 2019 | Captain Marvel | Anna Boden Ryan Fleck | Also writer of Captain Marvel theme in Avengers: Endgame |
| 2019 | Skyfire | Simon West | |
| 2020 | It's Time | Frank Waldeck | |
| 2021 | Us Again | Zach Parrish | Animated short film |
| 2022 | The Lost City | Aaron Nee Adam Nee | |
| 2022 | Slumberland | Francis Lawrence | |
| 2023 | Shotgun Wedding | Jason Moore | |
| 2023 | Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie | Cal Brunker | Toprak’s first score for a full-length animated film Replaced Heitor Pereira |
| 2023 | Family Switch | McG | |

### Television

| Year | Title | Notes |
| 2008 | Beyond Loch Ness | Television film |
| 2008 | Ogre | Television film |
| 2008 | Ba'al | Television film |
| 2009 | Wyvern | Television film |
| 2010 | Mongolian Death Worm | Television film |
| 2010 | Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf | Television film |
| 2015 | Clan of the Cave Bear | Television film |
| 2016 | Falling Water | 4 episodes |
| 2018–2019 | Krypton | 20 episodes |
| 2020–2022 | Stargirl | 39 episodes |
| 2020 | McMillions | 6 episodes |
| 2022–present | Prime Video Sports | Theme song |
| 2024 | Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft | 8 episodes |

### Video games

| Year | Title | Notes |
| 2006 | Ninety-Nine Nights | With Takayuki Nakamura |
| 2017 | Fortnite | Additional music |
| 2023 | Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora | |

## Other work

* Christina Aguilera: The Xperience Las Vegas Residency (2019) (residency intro)
* Skydance Media fanfare (2010–2022)
* "Learning to Fly", a single by Christina Aguilera (2023; producer)

## Awards and nominations

| Year | Recipient | Award | Category | Result |
| 2010 | The Lightkeepers | International Film Music Critics Association Awards | Best Original Score for a Comedy Film | Won |
| 2011 | The Wind Gods | International Film Music Critics Association Awards | Best Original Score for a Documentary Film | Won |
| 2019 | The Tides of Fate | International Film Music Critics Association Awards | Best Original Score for a Documentary Film | Won |
| 2019 | The Tides of Fate | American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Awards | Shirley Walker Award | Won |
| 2019 | Captain Marvel | World Soundtrack Awards | Public Choice Award | Nominated |
| 2020 | McMillions: Episode 1 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special | Nominated |
| 2024 | Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora | Grammy Awards | Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media | Nominated |