Quick Beats – 10 Questions For BAFTA-Winning Composer Austin Wintory – Feature

Throughout the Nintendo Life Video Game Music Festival we’ll be speaking to a range of composers and musicians with a mixture of in-depth interviews and shorter, sharper (and perhaps a little goofier) Q&As where we ask just ten rapid-fire personal questions; we’re calling these shorter features ‘Quick Beats’.

Today, our first interviewee is the Grammy-nominated, BAFTA award-winning composer Austin Wintory whose work includes the soundtracks to indie darlings like thatgamecompany’s flOw and Journey, Giant Squid’s Abzu, the Banner Saga series, and much larger projects such as Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, to name a few.

So, let’s find out some tidbits about Austin, including his musical heroes, his thoughts on the best decade for music, and what he listens to while driving…

Nintendo Life: What was the first song or album you remember buying?

Austin Wintory: Surely Star Wars. We had a vinyl that I was destroying, so I’m fairly certain I figured out a way to buy cassettes of it to replace.

What was the last music you listened to?

Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon”.

What was the very first video game you wrote music for, and how do you feel listening back now?

flOw was my first commercial release. I hear someone who was quite clueless at the time! And very lucky.

Which piece of yours are you most proud of?

Compositionally, I try to make sure and never release something I don’t feel proud of. But it continues to bring me great emotional shocks and joy that Journey (in particular “Apotheosis”, the finale of the score) seems to continue resonating with people nearly a decade later.