judith gruber-stitzer

Invited to Sundance Film Festival ASCAP Composer Spotlight

Member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences


Notable among Gruber-Stitzer’s soundtracks for the National Film Board of Canada is the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Palme d’Or winner, When the Day Breaks, which was also nominated for an Oscar. Other Oscar nominated films 

that she’s scored are Animal Behaviour and Wild Life. An Emmy nomination was awarded to the animated documentary Flawed.


Her career as a film composer began with Basements, a feature film directed by Robert Altman, comprising two short films: Dumb Waiter and The Room. Her career continued with scores for over 80 live action films . Recently, her music can be heard in the sci-fi adventure feature Polaris, as well as the documentaries Maboungou: Being In The World and Above the Drowning Sea, directed by Nicolas Zavaglia and René Balcer.


Her commercial animation work includes: The Most Magnificent Thing, a Nelvana animated special featuring 

Whoopi Goldberg; Zevo-3, a Nickelodeon action series; the Cartoon Network half-hour special Penguins Behind Bars and pilot Spang Ho.


Born in New York City, she studied piano and mandolin before getting a B.A. from The College of New Jersey and  the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.  Gruber-Stitzer moved to Montreal, Quebec, where she began playing in French bands that included Marie Savard’s folk group La Jaserie and WondeurBrass, a musique actuelle brass ensemble.


She garnered significant recognition for her soundtracks, which led to her being invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Her score for the distinguished Oscar nominated National Film Board animation director Caroline Leaf's film Two Sisters, launched her career scoring animated shorts. Altman’s two films, featuring 

John Travolta, Annie Lennox, Donald Pleasance and Linda Hunt, came to Gruber-Stitzer around the same time as 

Leaf’s animated short. 


These projects showcased her ease in composing to picture in all of its diverse forms.  A merry parade of  Oscar nominated directors  started asking her to compose the music for their films:  Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis, 

Janet Perlman, Paul Driessen, Chris Hinton, Georges Schwizgebel , Theodore Uschev, Bill Plympton and Oscar winning directors Alison Snowden, David Fine and Joan Gratz.  


Get in touch with Judith directly here

© 2024   judith gruber-stitzer