Grammy-Winning Composer Got His Start in Games

The composer of Pixar’s Up received 2 Grammys yesterday and said that it wouldn’t have been possible without videogames.

Michael Giacchino won two Grammy awards yesterday for his work on the Pixar animated film, Up (Best Score Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media and Best Instrumental Composition – “Married Life (from Up)” if you want to get technical about it.) None of that would have been possible though if Steven Spielberg hadn’t picked him to compose the music for the Lost World videogame, released in 1997. A young director remembered the music of that game and sought out Giacchino to hire him for a new TV series called Alias. Since then, he has composed music for hundreds of TV shows, movies and videogames, as you can tell from his impressive IMDB resume. None of his success would have happened without his first major job in the videogame industry.

“J.J. Abrams played those video games,” Giacchino said, “and called me out of the blue – ‘Hey, do you want to do Alias with me?'”

The composer now has a strong tie with Abrams, having worked on most of the director’s projects including the 2009’s Star Trek reboot, for which he was also nominated last night. “Right now I’m concentrating on the final season of Lost,” Giacchino said.

Although Giacchino has found great success with TV and movies, he also penned the soundtracks of some landmark videogames such as Medal of Honor and the first Call of Duty. Let’s hope he comes back to the fold and writes some great music for the game industry again, if nothing else as an homage for giving him his start all those years ago.

Source: Variety