Yes,he was just announced recently as a replacement for Alexandre Desplat due to scheduling issues. Not too familiar with either of them, though I've heard good things about both composers.
From what I have read about episode 8, it sounds like we are going to get that.
I feel the same way. It seems kind of pointless to me. It hasn't been officially confirmed yet as far as i know, but there's a lot of talk about the third anthology being a Boba Fett movie. To me, that's even worse. We don't need to see that. Lets get an Old Republic anthology!