“As soon as [Brady Corbet] finished the script, we started talking about what the music could be.”

Daniel Blumberg

The Brutalist’s 34-year-old composer created the film’s Oscar-nominated score while crashing on director Brady Corbet’s couch

By Zack Hauptman

In one scene in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, László Tóth—played by Adrien Brody—observes Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The ceremony holds a special significance for Tóth, who has just escaped the Holocaust in Hungary and landed in Philadelphia. It also holds significance for the film’s now Oscar-nominated composer, Daniel Blumberg.

“It’s a prayer that I know,” says the London-born Blumberg, 34, recalling the day on set when he taught the cast how to sing the confessional chant “Ashamnu” (“We Are Guilty”). “I go to synagogue on Yom Kippur with my dad,” he says, “and it’s just a particularly beautiful moment in the service.”