Austin Wintory is quite certain that the 21st Century is the greatest to have ever lived and worked as a composer. His career has thus far spanned concert music, film and television, video games, commercials, a wide array of so-called “digital media,” albums (both his own and in collaboration with others), installation art, modern dance and theater, and all manner of esoteric others.
His concert music has been performed by orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and Europe. Recent performances include “Woven Variations” (a miniature cello concerto fashioned from the score to an upcoming PlayStation3 game called JOURNEY), performed by Tina Guo (cello soloist) and the Golden State Pops Orchestra (conducted by Wintory); “Concatenation” for wind ensemble, by the Cherry Creek Wind Ensemble in May 2011; and “Shakes,” for chamber orchestra, by the American Studio Orchestra that same month in Baltimore, Maryland. Shortly thereafter recordings began of a chamber music album in collaboration with the LA-based group “Symbiosis.”
Austin’s first major effort at a video game, 2006′s FLOW on PlayStation3, earned him a British Academy Award nomination, a Game Audio Network Guild award for “Rookie of the Year,” and a handful of other industry awards. In 2011 another Playstation3 title, JOURNEY, will be released featuring a score that Austin has worked on for over 2 years. The score will feature acclaimed cello soloist Tina Guo, singer Lisbeth Scott, as well as the Skopje Radio Orchestra conducted by Wintory.
In the film world, Austin recently completed JUNCTION, his 30th feature film score. Other recent scores include LEAVE (starring Rick Gomez and Frank John Hughes) and A LITTLE HELP (starring Jenna Fischer and Chris O’Donnell) both due out in 2011. For his score to CAPTAIN ABU RAED, completed in 2007, Austin was shortlisted as a contender for the 2008 Academy Award for ‘Best Original Score,’ and won several other awards (such as the Hollywood Music Award for “Best New Composer”) and nominations (such as the International Film Music Critic Association’s “Breakout Composer of the Year”). His strange score (utilizing sampled recordings of horse flies and babies crying in addition to a large choir of contrabass clarinets recorded in London’s famed Abbey Road Studios) for the horror/drama GRACE also received attention; the notorious Fangoria Chainsaw Awards nominated it for “Best Original Score” in 2010 and Visions in Sound radio named it in the Top 10 Scores that year.
Beyond these activities Austin keeps busy with various odd pet projects. In 2010 he launched a blog called “Allogamy” which features one (short) piece of music for every day of the calendar year; the project ended up producing nearly 9 hours of music and featuring dozens of Hollywood’s top musicians. 2010 also marked the release of a solo meditation album called “Sounds of Darkness,” featuring ancient chants and poetry by the world’s last surviving Aztec Tetzkatlipoka medicine man, Miktlan Ehekateotl Kuauhtlinxan.
Learn more at Austin’s website!
