Matt Morton -Composer (APOLLO 11, The Last Steps, Dinosaur 13)

(TSAP S03E02)


Sam chats with composer, Matt Morton about his career so far and
working on the incredible documentary APOLLO 11 that uses
archival footage to look at the Apollo 11 mission to land on the
moon led by commander Neil Armstrong and pilots Buzz Aldrin and
Michael Collins.

"When Matt Morton first learned he’d been given
the opportunity to score NEON's documentary Apollo
11, his first thoughts were, how can I put such a
momentous event in our nation’s history into music, and how can I
make my attempt unique? The score the composer created went on to
win him a 2019Critics’ Choice Documentary Award.
The documentary only uses archival footage from the 1969 mission
to the moon, so Morton deliberately decided to only use sounds
and instrumentation that existed during that era, but still set
out to make the music sound futuristic. The synthesizer was born
in the 1960s, which the composer utilized heavily, to create an
avant-garde sound.
“I looked at my music as being able to play the role of bridging
the gap between 2019 and 1969. Even though I’m using dated
instruments, I think it comes off as a bridge to modern people
because I’m using modern musical idioms to communicate with
them,” says Matt.

A distinct symbolic element that Morton included in a cue was a
chopped-up sonogram clip of his niece’s heartbeat, which he says
is a reminder to our currently divided nation that we possess the
ability to triumph, when we choose to unite.
Please let me know if you might be interested in speaking with
Matt Morton about his unique approach to scoring the historic
Apollo 11 mission.
Listen the soundtrack:
https://open.spotify.com/album/0Ck9i5FzBL19lNke88zDYw"

Special thanks to Callum Tennick for editing.


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