58 Facts About Gustavo Santaolalla

Gustavo Santaolalla is the receipient of numerous accolades for his works, including two Academy Awards for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, two Grammy Awards, and 17 Latin Grammy Awards.

Gustavo Santaolalla is known for his minimalist approach to composing and for his influence in the Latin rock music genre.

Gustavo Santaolalla rose to fame for creating the scores for Brokeback Mountain and Babel, for which he received two Academy Awards for Best Original Score in consecutive years.

Gustavo Santaolalla scored I Come with the Rain and Biutiful.

Gustavo Santaolalla further gained recognition for his work on The Last of Us game series, composing the 2013 game and its 2020 sequel.

Gustavo Santaolalla scored the short film Borrowed Time and co-composed the documentary Before the Flood.

Gustavo Santaolalla returned to reprise his themes and co-compose the score for the 2023 television adaptation of The Last of Us, and composed an original score for October 2024 showings of the 1931 Spanish-language Dracula film by the Los Angeles Opera.

Not learned in reading or writing musical notation, Gustavo Santaolalla prefers composing his scores mostly by himself.

Gustavo Santaolalla compares his philosophy of favouring minimalism in music to parkour, comparing the calculations of athletes before landing to his measured selection of musical notes before playing them.

Gustavo Alfredo Santaolalla was born in El Palomar, Argentina on 19 August 1951.

Gustavo Santaolalla's family has roots in Spain; his grandfather was Andalusian and his grandmother was Basque.

When Gustavo Santaolalla was five, he was given his first guitar by his grandmother for his birthday; he "immediately connected in a sort of a spiritual level with the music", and began musical tutelage with a hired teacher.

Gustavo Santaolalla's music career began in 1967 when he co-founded the group Arco Iris, a rock band that helped create rock nacional, a genre that blends Argentine folk music and Latin American rhythms.

Gustavo Santaolalla played guitar and sang in the band, which included wind instrument player Ara Tokatlian, bass player Guillermo Bordarampe, percussionist Horacio Gianello, and their vocalist Danais Winnycka, who became their spiritual guide.

Gustavo Santaolalla formed the group Wet Picnic, but had no commercial success with them.

Gustavo Santaolalla collaborated with co-producer Anibal Kerpel on albums for numerous artists, including Cafe Tacvba, Maldita Vecindad, Julieta Venegas, Molotov, and Juanes; Gustavo Santaolalla said he produced over 100 records at that point in time.

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu heard Ronroco, leading him to ask Gustavo Santaolalla to compose his films Amores perros and 21 Grams, creating a recurring collaboration between the two.

Gustavo Santaolalla wrote the score for Walter Salles's biographical film The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he won the Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music at the 58th British Academy Film Awards.

Gustavo Santaolalla wrote the score for Niki Caro's drama film North Country.

That year, Gustavo Santaolalla provided the instrumental music for the soundtrack to the Contemporary Western romance film Brokeback Mountain.

From Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla composed the song "A Love That Will Never Grow Old", which won the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed the score to the 2006 psychological drama film Babel, another collaboration with Inarritu.

Gustavo Santaolalla was the co-producer of Calle 13's song "Tango del Pecado", a song from their album Residente o Visitante.

On 12 June 2008, Gustavo Santaolalla was recognized as a BMI Icon during the 15th annual Latin Awards Ceremony.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed Tran Anh Hung's neo-noir thriller I Come with the Rain, and collaborated again with Inarritu on the music for the film Biutiful.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed the score of the 2013 video game The Last of Us.

When searching for a composer to work on the game's music, they realised Gustavo Santaolalla composed many of their compiled tracks; they asked Sony to reach out.

Gustavo Santaolalla had previously wanted to compose for video games and was approached by several other developers following his Academy Award wins, but he refused to work on projects without a focus on story and characters.

Gustavo Santaolalla sent Druckmann "batches of themes and music" for nearly three years; to challenge himself, he used a variety of unique instruments that were new to him, giving "an element of danger and innocence".

In November 2013, Gustavo Santaolalla toured in Mexico with Bajofondo in support of the album Presente, at the 11th Festival de las Almas in Valle de Bravo, at El Plaza Condesa, and 19th Festival de Calaveras in Aguascalientes.

At the 14th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, as part of Bajofondo Gustavo Santaolalla received the award for Best Instrumental Album for Presente, and the song "Pena en mi Corazon" won Best Alternative Song.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed the music to the musical Arrabal, written by John Weidman and directed by Sergio Trujillo, which opened at the Panasonic Theatre in February 2014.

Gustavo Santaolalla used the marimba, accordion, with mariachi horns in the score, which he saw as a change from his usual minimalist style.

Gustavo Santaolalla wrote songs with Paul Williams for the film; the two were already working on a musical adaptation of film director Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed the score to Wild Tales, his first score to an Argentine film.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed the score for the Western animated short film Borrowed Time.

In October 2015, Gustavo Santaolalla was inducted into the Latin Songwriters Hall of Fame by Paul Williams, who serves as the president of ASCAP.

Gustavo Santaolalla co-composed the soundtrack to the 2016 documentary film Before the Flood with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Mogwai.

Gustavo Santaolalla scored the French thriller film All That Divides Us.

Gustavo Santaolalla returned to compose the score for The Last of Us Part II, as he had done for the first game.

Gustavo Santaolalla continued using the ronroco, his signature instrument used in the first game's theme, as he felt it enhanced main character Ellie's qualities through feminine sounds, while he introduced a banjo for new character Abby's theme.

Gustavo Santaolalla composed PartIIs score around the banjo and an electric guitar, feeling the increased characters and complexities demanded more timbre.

Gustavo Santaolalla returned to co-compose the score for the television adaptation of The Last of Us, which premiered in 2023.

Gustavo Santaolalla felt the "relationship that [fans] have with the music of the game" made his return inevitable and noted the music was so integral to the narrative that its absence would be akin to excluding lead characters Joel or Ellie.

Gustavo Santaolalla said some of his pieces fit perfectly while others were trimmed and edited to fit the scenes.

Gustavo Santaolalla treated the series as "an expansion" of the game and kept them tied to each other, not seeking to revise or correct previous work as he found it authentic.

Gustavo Santaolalla had around 185 cues for the series, associated with specific on-screen actions, like a character opening a door or entering a car.

Gustavo Santaolalla worked on the score with David Fleming, who selected specific instruments that paired appropriately with Gustavo Santaolalla's work.

Also in 2023, Gustavo Santaolalla performed at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival in September and received the Latin Grammy Trustees Award in November.

Gustavo Santaolalla said that he maintained a feeling of "innocence" with the project, not feeling intimidated by the task in order to have fun, as the score would retain the "same melancholy touch that is ever present in everything I do".

When working with an orchestra, Gustavo Santaolalla still uses this method to notate, recording his compositions so an orchestrator can translate them to paper.

Gustavo Santaolalla said that composing and performing his scores primarily by himself brings "character", feeling that orchestral-based work lacks "personality".

Gustavo Santaolalla typically begins composing music early in the production process of a film, according to the screenplay, something he says affords him a greater creative role.

Gustavo Santaolalla says this means he composes based on his relationship with the story and characters, and from conversations with the principal creatives of the production, and he adapts his work from there.

PBS describes his scores as "melancholy and minimal", and Gustavo Santaolalla told the Los Angeles Times that melancholy was "ever present" in his work.

Gustavo Santaolalla compares his musical process to jumping in parkour, likening the calculations practiced before the athletes land to his measured selection of notes before he plays them.

Gustavo Santaolalla is the recipient of numerous accolades, winning two Academy Awards for Best Original Score, being nominated for two Emmy Awards, winning a Golden Globe with two more nominations, winning two Grammy Awards with three more nominations, and winning 17 Latin Grammy Awards with 28 more nominations.

Gustavo Santaolalla was recognized as a BMI Icon during the 15th annual Latin Awards Ceremony in 2008, and for his influence in Latin music he received the 2023 Latin Grammy Trustees Award.