The chimes they are a-changin’
Juno nod for video game music composer
TORONTO• When orchestral percussionist Kristofer Maddigan began his yearslong journey composing the soundtrack for a video game his friends were creating, he mostly kept the passion project to himself.
As a genre, video game music doesn’t get a lot of respect.
“I work with a lot of people who aren’t gamers and I think if you’re not in that world a lot of people think it’s kind of a silly pastime,” says the 38- year- old Regina native, who is now based in Toronto as the principal percussionist with the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra.
“Not every game is a work of art, but especially now with the indie game revolution, there’s a lot of really interesting games being made and a lot of really incredible music being made for those games.
“But I didn’t really talk about it a lot because there’s a lot of people who maybe don’t understand the world so much and think it’s maybe kinda goofy.”
But his work on the indie game Cuphead — which was named one of the top titles of 2017 by the likes of Entertainment Weekly and game website Polygon — won over the Juno Award judging committee who chose the contenders for this year’s best instrumental album prize.
The game’ s backing music, which was also released as an almost threehour- long album, features a mix of jazz, big band and ragtime tunes recorded by live musicians, including a 13- piece big band and a 10-piece ragtime ensemble.
While many video games use looping bits of music to play endlessly in the background, Mad dig an and Cuphead creators Chad and Jared Moldenhauer decided they wanted fully formed songs for the soundtrack that were true to the sound of the 1930s. The game’s visual look is also inspired by cartoons and animation of that era.
Maddigan hopes the Juno recognition will convince others that there’s much more to video game music than the low- fi Super Mario Bros. melodies so many gamers think of first when it comes to soundtracks. He also hopes some Cuphead gamers end up wanting to explore jazz and big band music.