Egyptian composer Hesham Nazih won a special award at Movie Music UK Awards for the music and songs that he composed for the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade. The award was bestowed by the music critic Jonathan Broxton who stated in his reasoning for granting the award to Nazih that “the impressive part of the concert was the orchestral work by Nazih, which is filled with themes, drama, and powerful orchestral grandeur.”
Broxton is a member of the International Film Music Critics Association (IFMCA) and has been publishing music critical reviews of all genres of dramatic soundtracks since 1997. He had published a review of the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade music on his website after the event in April 2021, urging the public to listen to the celebration’s music on YouTube, describing Nazih’s orchestral part as “astonishing and breathtakingly beautiful.”
Among the winners of the Movie Music UK Awards (2021) was James Newton Howard, who won Composer of the Year award for the scores of “Jungle Cruise,” and “Raya and the Last Dragon.” Also, Maurizio Malagnini won the Best Score of the Year award for his feature film “Coppelia,” which was screened during the fifth edition of El Gouna Film Festival.
Hesham Nazih was honored by the Arab Music Festival in the opening of its 30th edition in November 2021 in recognition of his musical career for over 20 years, in the presence of the festival guest of honor Dr. Inas Abdel Dayem, the Minister of Culture. Moreover, he was featured in an in-conversation alongside the two- time Academy Award Winner A.R Rahman within the events of Cairo Industry Days of Cairo International Film Festival.
Hesham Nazih composed the soundtracks of more than 40 works that vary between TV series and cinematic blockbusters, working with prominent directors in the Egyptian film industry. Hesham also received a plethora of awards for many of his works, most notably receiving Faten Hamama Excellence Award from the Cairo International Film Festival (CIFF) in 2018, marking the first composer to receive this award.
Hesham began his artistic career composing the score of Hysteria in 1998. However Nazih’s breakthrough was through Tarek Alarian’s film El Sellem Wel Te’ban in 2001. The success of the soundtrack inspired Nazih to release it as an independent album, making it one of only a few albums of dramatic music to be commercially produced in the Arab world. In the same year, Hesham cooperated with Radwan El-Kashef on the film Al Saher.
Among his most notable works are, Sahar El Laiali (Sleepless Nights) in 2003. The following year, he returned to work with Tarek Alarian on the action picture Tito, then on Aswar Al-Qamar (The Walls of the Moon) in 2015 and the Welad Rizk film series in 2015 and 2019.
Hesham Nazih was recognised for his usage of music from many cultural backgrounds, such as the soundtrack of Sherif Arafa’s films The Treasure in 2017 and 2019, as well as the film Ibrahim Al-Abyad in 2009, and Marwan Hamed’s film The Originals in 2017. Hesham Nazih and Marwan Hamed had huge success in the film series The Blue Elephant in 2014 and 2019, which dominated the box office and became the highest-grossing film in Egyptian cinema history.
In TV drama series, Hesham composed the soundtracks of Sharbat Louz in 2012, Elsabaa Wasaya (The Seven Commandments) in 2014, and Khaled Marei’s Al Ahd: Al Kalam Al Mubah (The Covenant) in 2015, and Mohamed Yassin’s Afrah AlQoba (Celebrations of Al-Qobba) in 2016. In the beginning of 2020, Hesham introduced Shahid.net’s first original Egyptian series Fi Kol Osbu’Yowm Goma’a, which marks his first work to be screened on a digital platform.
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