Sandro Morales-Santoro Transcript
Episode link: Podcast and Video
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
When I'm starting to write, I'm not so worried about like, oh, what kind of music am I going to write? What do I want to write and what am I going to ... No, it's about first and foremost, how can I help tell the story? And what's the vision of the director? Do they want me to tell the audience what to feel? I hope not. Most of the time, I'm hoping that's not what they want. I'm hoping they want the music to evoke more than that. What that is I don't know, play against emotions, tell what one of the characters is thinking or tell the story of the subtext of the scene. Hopefully when you're working on something that's well written, what's being told is not what the characters feel, right? There's more said between the lines.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman. Today's guest is the award-winning Venezuelan composer, Sandro Morales- Santoro, who composes for film, TV and new media and is based in LA. In this episode, you'll hear lots of music and our in-depth conversation during which Sandro tells the inspiring story of how he learned to read and write music while attending law school in Venezuela, then was accepted into the Berklee College of Music and was awarded their achievement scholarship, then how he moved to LA and created community both professionally and personally. Sandro is on the executive committee for the Composers Diversity Collective, and we talked about biases in the industry and increasing exposure for composers from diverse backgrounds. Sandro is the third film and TV composer I've featured on this podcast. Please take a look at my complete catalog of episodes on my website, leahroseman.com, to check out episodes you may have missed. Like all my episodes, this is available wherever you listen to podcasts and is a video on my YouTube channel and the transcript is also linked.
Finally, before we get into this episode, I just wanted to say that because I'm an independent podcaster, I need my listeners' help. The link to support this podcast, and my YouTube channel is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much. Hi, Sandro. Thanks so much for joining me here today.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Hi, Leah. Thank you so much for the invitation. Excited to talk to you.
Leah Roseman:
So you are from Maracay, Venezuela originally. I think your story, how you got into music so seriously is really unique and interesting. So if you could just tell us about your original aspirations and where that took you.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
For sure, yeah. I started out playing music when I was about seven years old. Started with a Casio keyboard, but my mom says that since I was a toddler, she would give me pans and pots and I would spend the day just banging at them. Playing music has always been a major thing in my life. At 11, I started studying drums, drum set. For me it was more about playing music and my dream was to play in a band and tour the world and that kind of thing. I played in many different types of bands, from Venezuelan folk to Nirvana or Pearl Jam, grunge, that kind of thing. Then Latin, Afro-Caribbean music. So very, very eclectic while I was there in Venezuela. Luckily, we have a mashup of all of those cultures and styles over there because of the influence from the US.
I guess at one point, as I was getting closer to graduating high school for my family, for my mom, my dad, and my brother, they're lawyers. My family on my mother's side, which is super close to me, my grandparents are like parents and my cousins are like brothers, and my uncles are like other parents. When I lived in Venezuela, we would see each other every week and we would spend a lot of time together. It was kind of like raising kids in a community and everyone had a say, and for everyone it was like, "Oh, Sandro wants to do music? That's not possible. That's not a reality for someone from Venezuela."
It's difficult for anyone in the world. Even if you're born in LA, dreaming of making a living with music is like a utopia. It's an impossible dream, but for someone in Maracay that's silly, it's like a joke. So my family has supported, as they were all otherwise, and with me studying music, all of that as a hobby or as a form of cultural enrichment, thinking of dedicating my life to it was just not possible. It was really hard for them to grasp.
And I get it. When you don't know of a single person who makes a living with music, why you? Why is it going to be different with you? So luckily my mother is very, I don't know, she's very close to me and my brother, and even though she couldn't see it happening, she still wanted to support me. So she told me, go to college here in Venezuela, study something, graduate, and then I promise I'll do everything I can to help you realize your dream. And I did that. I went to law school, which made sense. My parents are lawyers. I had the books. I already had the conversations and all of that around me. So I went to law school, studied for five years, which is what happens in Venezuela, you can go straight - at 16 years old I started law school and went through all of it. Parts of it I liked and it enriched my understanding of the world and how things work and all of that. And it's great, but when I graduated, I know that the hopes in my family was like, okay, he's going to graduate and then he's going to realize by then how the world works and he's going to be like, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to be a lawyer." But the reality is, on one hand, I was still dreaming of being a musician. I was still studying, I was still playing in bands.
By the time I turned 18, I didn't know how to read music or write it. And I would record myself playing and try to write songs and things like that, pieces of music. But then I started taking private lessons with Angel Balan, who is right now a father to me. We still work together. He had a role to play in one of my latest scores, the Shadow of the Sun, which was shot in Venezuela. He had a role to play in the score. We can talk about that later. But yeah, it's someone who's had a super positive presence in my life, and I called him when I was 18 to say, "I'm studying law and I still have this dream of studying music, but I know that in order to make it to a good music college, I need more. I feel like I have sort of an innate talent and I can play different instruments and I have a good ear. I feel I can transcribe stuff and play it back, but I need this tool that I don't have."
And then I knew that with that I was going to be able to learn how to orchestrate and do all these other things that I was dreamt of knowing how to do. And he's like, "Okay, so where do you want to study? Where do you want to go to college?" And I said, "I don't know the Royal College of Music or the Royal Academy or Berklee or Julliard or something." And he's like, "Okay, I'm not going to take your money and just tell you that you're going to go to one of those colleges. That's not going to happen. So if you don't know how to write music or if you don't know anything about sheet music, you're not going to go to those places. I can teach you as much as I can in whatever time you have and then go from there. But I don't want to promise you things that are very difficult."
There's a theme here of feeling like the people around me felt that my odds were impossible. And luckily I was never deterred by those ideas. Not that I've never been an optimistic, I've never been someone who's like, "Oh yeah, everything's going to turn out great, and somehow the planets are going to align or something." No, I've always been sort of realist, but at the same time I was like, "I'm studying law. This doesn't make me happy. I'm not going to be happy in an office as a lawyer, so I have nothing to lose. I'm just going to try. I'm just going to try. I'm going to do, during these five years that I'm going to be studying law, I'm going to do my best to be as prepared as possible so that by the time I graduate, I have even a slight chance."
And that's what happened. I graduated and by then, I had been studying with Angel for a while, and by then he felt, "Yeah, you should apply to these colleges and you should try. You've put the work and you've learned, so you should definitely try to do that." And my parents, my mom was the one person who was like, "Yes, I'll do what I can." It's tough. By then, the economic situation in Venezuela was very difficult. My family used to be well off. They had not huge companies or anything like that, but they had a couple companies and everyone could make a living out of that. By then, it was much more difficult. The dollar, the value of our currency was so low, it was a mess. But still, I applied to Berkelee, applied for a scholarship. I didn't get anything at first.
Luckily by the second semester I was getting the achievement scholarship, and that helped a lot. But yeah, I sold everything I had. My mom helped with what she could, and I gave the degree to my dad and my grandparents. Yeah, I'm sure you're proud. Whatever. You have another lawyer in the family, now I'm going to go do what I want to do and live my life. And luckily, I was able to go to Berklee. I tested out of as much stuff as I could because I was prepared musically. And also I had another degree so I could test out of some non-music classes. And that helped afford it also, because again, because of the economic situation in Venezuela, I needed to test out of as many classes as I could, do everything as fast as I could because we were going to run out of money. So yeah, it was an interesting situation, but it also prepared me for the reality of what this career is.
Leah Roseman:
So if we could just go back to those lessons with Angel Balan, I'm curious, because here you were, you couldn't write a note of music and in terms of his course of study and how he supercharged your learning.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Well, he started from the basics of just taking scores and sitting at the piano and just basic reading 101, and just not so much performance wise, but just being able to understand everything and being able to also do some solfège, but at the same time, he wanted to keep me engaged and knowing where that was going. So he would teach me stuff and then "try to write a melody with what I taught you." And he also taught me how to use Sibelius to write music. So that was also a great thing for me. I'm not great at handwriting at all, or writing music by hand either. So the software, it was perfect for me. I could notate a melody and then play it back because it would take me so long to write something and then play it in the piano at that time.
It was step by step. Somehow, he managed to do it quickly. And I also was super, super motivated. I was taking, again, law classes, which were interesting, and it had something for me, but I just wanted to create music. So I was so motivated that I dedicated more time to those classes and those assignments that Angel would give me than to my law school assignment. But step by step, it was also trying to get me to write a melody, then let's talk about rhythm and let's create a rhythm. And also because he knew where I wanted to get, he would tell me, "Okay, so now take the contrabasses and try to do some rhythm to accompany it. And then, okay, then try to add a counter melody. This is the kind of rules that you have to take care, be mindful of. But you can also, once you know them, you can break them," and blah, blah.
Then I would make mistakes and he would correct me. Yeah, it was great. It was a process of I think four years or so that I was taking classes with him. And by the time those four years ended and I felt like I was ready to go to Berklee, I wasn't writing great music. I was writing music. I could write for orchestra. Another beautiful thing that he did for me is that he was teaching at the Conservatory in Valencia, and it's a city like an hour away from Maracay. And he was also an assistant conductor there. So he would take me to concerts, orchestral concerts, all the time for free. And then he would tell me, "Okay, so after a year of studying, try to write something for a trio. Let's do cello, bass, and piano."
And then I would write and we would work on it for a few months, and then he would ask people from the orchestra to play it. We would rent a rehearsal room and record it with whatever, a mic and a laptop. And then I would have that, and he would tell me to listen to it, give him notes on what I would do differently and that kind of thing. We did that with choir. We did that with a slightly bigger ensemble of strings. We did that a bunch of times, like stringing arrangements for a pop song. We did a bunch of things like that. And yeah, it was great. He gave me this access to musicians that was really hard for me to have otherwise in Venezuela.
Leah Roseman:
And you got into Berklee as a drummer at first.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes. A part of me was afraid that I wasn't ready and that I wasn't going to make it in. I wasn't going to get a spot. And I felt like drum set was an instrument that I had studied the most. And so yeah, I decided to audition. When I first auditioned to be admitted at Berklee, I did it as a drummer. And then by the time I was in Angel was telling me, "Why are you going to waste time as a drummer? You don't want to be a performer. You want to be a composer. So use those piano lessons, private lessons, and everything that you're going to get at Berklee as a drummer? Use it as a piano player so that that's going to help you as a composer." And that's what I did. I was already admitted at Berklee, but I had to re-audition as a pianist to make sure they would accept me. And that luckily happened, and I think it was a great, great decision, a great call.
Leah Roseman:
Good for you. Yeah. I often like to talk about mentorship with my guests because it's so important in music, isn't it? He was such an amazing mentor to you.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
He was.
Leah Roseman:
So if we could talk about Shadow of the Sun, I listened to music clips you'd sent me, really beautiful and interesting range of style and stuff. So we're going to be able to share some of those clips. And it's a very special movie that's going to be coming out soon, right?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah, it was actually, it was premiered at LALIFF on June 6th. And yeah, beautiful Chinese theater, packed theater that day. It was a great, great premiere.
Leah Roseman:
This clip is called Slices of Bread from the film Shadow of the Sun, Music by Sandro Morales Santoro.
(music).
Great. So if you want to speak to the project and then how your mentor was involved as well, that would be really interesting.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Of course. So the project was written in the directed by Miguel Angel Ferrer, who's a Venezuelan director who lives here in LA. He's been a friend of mine for many, many years. We had never worked together. The composer that he usually works with is another dear friend of mine and sort of mentor as well, called Juan Carlos Rodriguez. He went to Berklee with me, and he's a little bit older than me, had already a career in writing for TV by the time we met. So he guided me in the world of writing music for TV and also was a positive influence in college.
So Juan, by the time ... Okay, let me go back to the film at first. So Miguel Angel Ferrer, he wrote the film and he shot it in Venezuela in a town called Acarigua, which is very far from the capitol. And it's a little bit about the story of two brothers, one in his 40s, one in his early 20s. The one in his early 20s is deaf. And it's about how the older brother has gone through so much in Venezuela with all of the economic difficulties and crime and everything, and living in a small town where all of that is much worse than in the cities, and how he's sort of lost all hope for having a good life for achieving his dreams and all of that.
And on the other hand, his brother with all of the difficulties that he faces with not being able to hear, and he's so positive, he has dreams that he wants to achieve, and those dreams are intertwined with music. He wants to write music, he wants to write lyrics for songs. And his brother used to be a singer. So it's a story about how they work together to create a song for a songwriting competition.
It's a beautiful film. It was shot in Venezuela over the course of a month, and after the film was done, Miguel reached out to Juan, his usual composer. Juan ended up getting involved in the film as an executive producer and took care of supervising the post-production. But he was busy doing that. And he had another project, and he was also stylistically, he was like, "I have the guy for you. You have to hire Sandro."
Luckily he felt that way. And I've done a lot of work with getting elements from Venezuelan traditional styles and instruments, and Afro-Venezuelan music, Afro-Venezuelan drums, the Venezuelan Cuatro, which is a slightly bigger ukulele. Also getting other South American instruments like the charango and the ronroco in the way that I was going to say, Roque Baños is another big influence on my, but Gustavo Santaolalla, in the way that Gustavo Santaolalla tries to use those instruments in a way that doesn't necessarily feel of a specific location.
Leah Roseman:
You could just back up. Those instruments you mentioned, I'm not familiar with them. If you could describe them?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah, for sure. And I can show them to you.
Leah Roseman:
Fantastic.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
A couple of them at least. So this is a Venezuelan cuatro,(music) and it's used mainly for, not so much for soloing or melodies, but mainly for (music) ... It's mainly rhythmic. I'm not a great player, but I can definitely write with it and also record for my film and TV music. The people who are virtuosic on this are just absolutely incredible. You should definitely look it up. This is from Venezuela.
And then from the Andes, mainly Bolivia, you have the charango, and this is a type of charango called ronroco. And this is what, for instance, Gustavo Santaolalla plays on the main theme for The Last of Us. And it's also like (music)... It's super out of tune, sorry. But it has that rhythmic element, but you can also use it for melodies.
Leah Roseman:
Could you pick it up and then if we could just describe it briefly for the podcast listeners? So it's like a big ukulele with-
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah. Yeah, it has five groups of two strings each, so double strings that tune the same except for the middle one. That's in octaves, that's like the interesting string that you want to try to play every time. And it's an instrument from the Andes and mainly Bolivia, but it's like the instrument that Santaolalla uses on everything he does. And yeah, it has a very, I don't know, I feel like nostalgic science kind of seniority when using melodies, that's just really beautiful. In something like The Last of Us he uses it for a story that develops in America, so it doesn't necessarily take you to a specific location. So yeah, I've been using those instruments and trying to get not only the instruments, but elements from the music of Venezuela and South America into my music somehow. And that's something that, in a way, I took from or was inspired by Santaolalla, but also by another composer that's a friend of mine, called Roque Banos, where he takes elements from Spanish music, because he's from Spain, from flamenco and bulerias, and makes it work with the orchestra in a way that doesn't feel that it's from that location. And I've seen him use it on horror films, where, if you're not very familiar with that music, you're never going to realize that he's using those rhythmic elements. So it's super interesting, and that has inspired me to try to implement some of that vibe into my music.
So in the case of The Shadow of the Sun, there are more literal elements of Venezuelan music. We have the beginning of the film, the intro of the film is Afro-Venezuelan drums throughout. And there's another, I think a track called... The original names are in Spanish. That's why I might not be precise in the English names, but I think I named it Being Late to Work or Getting Late to Work. It's like a whole sequence of our main character, Leo, being late to work. And it is just like Afro-Venezuelan drums throughout. That I recorded here in LA with a Venezuelan drummer called Jonathan Gaviria. He's another dear friend of mine who's also a specialist in the Afro-Venezuelan drums of each little town in Venezuela. So this is the guy who you know want to be authentic and you get him, because he knows everything. I mean, he knows a lot about all kinds of South American music, but in Venezuela, in Afro-Venezuelan drums specifically, he's the guy, and he has the actual drums.
So it was a beautiful experience to be able to bring those literal elements of our music to a score, which I had never had the chance to. So yeah, the score for The Shadow of the Sun, some elements of it are more pop or even rock-oriented, because the main characters, they're not looking to write a folk Venezuelan song, they're trying to write a pop/rock song.
Leah Roseman:
This audio clip is called A Decent Job. It's from the film The Shadow of the Sun. The music is by Sandro Morales-Santoro. (music)
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
So that's why. And the main character, Leo, has a sort of rock and roll personality, the way he dresses, and he drives a Harley type motorcycle, a chopper, so, yeah, the director wanted me to make sure I had those pop/rock elements in the score. So the main theme is more of a more traditional harmony piano piece with strings, but then we have those more, like in other pieces, like the one I mentioned, with Afro-Venezuelan percussion, and that have more Venezuelan elements.
And then there's a piece, a very important piece, that's called, I believe I named it Going to Caracas. That's among the pieces that I sent you. That one I had my mentor, Angel Balan hire a team of musicians in Venezuela, like a professional cuatro player, a professional bass player for folk music, a percussionist over there. And they were able to take a piece that I had written for that sequence and make it into more of a Venezuelan traditional piece. So once I got that from them, I added strings, and I added vocals, and I added a bunch of stuff here. But yeah, Angel had the task of arranging my music into and producing the session with the musicians over there to make it sound more of a traditional Venezuelan piece.
Leah Roseman:
This clip is called Late for Work from The Shadow of the Sun. The music is by Sandro Morales-Santoro. (music)
Yeah. So this might be a good time to talk about your project that you did with your wife, Vela, and the meaning for you as a Venezuelan American in the community.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes, of course. So this is a project that we started in 2018, Vela. We had this dream of... My wife is an actress, and she's been involved with the TV and film industry for as long as I have, worked on many short films and some TV shows and features. And we were always like... I have this unrealized dream of being a filmmaker, I guess. Or I had it, I did it with Vela. I've always said, "If wasn't a composer, I'd love to be a filmmaker." And in a way, I feel composers are an essential part of the filmmaking team. We can make or break a film with the music. We're helping in the storytelling process if we're doing our job right.
So yeah, I always felt like I could write, but, yeah, in my free time I would read script writing books and try to learn as much as I could. And then, just out of a coincidence, a friend of a friend happened to be a director that I didn't know about. She was working, directing shorts in Venezuela. I watched a short of hers and I was blown away. It's a short that made it to Cannes. And we reached out. Claudia and I, we were like, "Okay, this is the opportunity we were looking for. Let's reach out to her. Let's see if she wants to work with us." And she did, luckily.
Dayana Gauthier and I, we wrote a script together out of an idea that Claudia and I had of a woman who, very young, a woman who is from Venezuela from one of these small towns, one called Palo de Olor, which is a way, way smaller town than Acarigua, where The Shadow of the Sun is located. And we wanted to tell the story of this woman who, very young, leaves her family, because of the economic situation, and she leaves this town and moved to the US, and how the US would change her. And how, if she comes back, like 10 years later, to this really small town, who is she now?
Because we as immigrants, it's something that we face. There's a beautiful song in Spanish by Franco de Vita, a Venezuelan songwriter, who touches, and it's called Immigrant. And it's about this very subject, of the fact that you are no longer from Venezuela, because you go back and then you are sort of American. It's like your culture is different, you have all of these new ideas and this new way of thinking, of seeing life. For them, it's kind of foreign. But here in the US, I'm Venezuelan. The food I eat, the way I speak, even my culture is not purely a culture that you would find here in America. It's not pure. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just different. People perceive me as an immigrant. So it's like you're an immigrant in both places. You're no longer seen as someone from a place. So we wanted to explore that idea and that theme with a short.
So Vela, Vela is the name of the main character. She goes back to Venezuela, to her small town, looking for her father. And she got married here. She changed to a different religion. She has completely different types of clothes. And it's that you would have that contrast between flashbacks with how she dressed and the kind of things that she did, and now the person that that's coming back looking for her family, who's a completely different person in many ways, and the same in so many other ways.
So yeah, it was also a beautiful experience for me to try to... The idea with this was like trying to use the cuatro, the Venezuelan cuatro that I showed you, as the main instrument, and trying to have some rhythms of Venezuelan merengue, which is a 5/8 rhythm, that's from our traditional music, and a little bit of joropo also, like in 6/8, with cuatro, those rhythmic elements, but having strings and having an emotional dramatic score that is more traditional, I feel. So it's more traditional cinematic, is what I'm trying to say. So yeah, it's like that, my first try in trying to mash those two worlds of the traditional Venezuelan music, but making it cinematic and making it like if you take out the film and you listen to it alone, there's a part of you that's not sure if this is in a foreign country or not.
So yeah, that was the idea. And luckily, the film did really well in festivals and it had a great reception. And it's been, ever since, a dream of ours to just write another one and just maybe shoot it here in LA.
Leah Roseman:
Sandro has given me permission to use the trailer to the film Vela. So for the podcast listeners, the music you're about to hear is music that Sandro wrote for the film. And if you're watching the video, you get to see the beautiful trailer as well. (music)
So were you able to travel to Venezuela for the shooting? I mean, your wife was starring in it.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah, my wife starred in it. We went to Venezuela. It was a very, very interesting experience of how things are done over there. We also had very little budget, so we... Venezuela was going through a, again, economic hardship, but at least we were able to bring this project and bring work to a lot of incredible creatives. We were able to hire this amazing... Or more than hire, partner with this amazing director, Dayana Gauthier, and co-writer. And then she brought her team, an incredible DP, and Gabriela Cruz, amazing producer Mireya Pinuela, an incredible team. It's small, guerilla style. The crew was like eight people and cast of two, a local man who played Vela's father and Claudia.
And we shot at his house. He lives... So there's this very, very small town called Palo de Olor, like I said. You get out of the road into a dirt road for like 30 minutes, and in the middle of a cacti desert, it's his house that he built himself, without running water or electricity or anything like that, no cell phone reception, none of it. And yeah, he was super happy to have us and to act in the film, he had never acted, and to just lend us his house for it to be part of the short.
So yeah, it was incredible. I mean, the experience of shooting in Venezuela was like... I couldn't have imagined what it was going to be like. People opened the doors to their houses to us and just were super happy to have us there. Even this man, we shot half of the short film in his house. He acted in it. And when we were done with it, I'm like, "Okay, so we're going to pay you. This is what we agreed." And he's like, "You're going to pay me? I wasn't expecting anyone to pay me." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" So yeah, it was an amazing experience. And then getting to get that edited, that film shot in my country, and then being able to score it, it was a dream come true.
And it was also an opportunity for me. At that time, when I started scoring it, in 2019, I had never had a chance to write that kind of music. I felt like it was also like a transformation of the way I perceived myself as a composer. I've been in LA for 13 years, and there's been times where I felt like when people see my name, Sandro Morales, they have an idea of what my music would sound like or what kind of music I can do and what kind of music I can't do.
And it's embarrassing to say, but even at a moment, a couple years into being here in LA, in 2011, I even considered, should I change my last name? I Mean, would that change the perception of how people, what they ex... The prejudices or whatever they have of what my music would sound like? Because I had experiences where I would send a demo or I would... Not even a demo, but a reel. I would apply to work on a film or a project, and I would send my reel. And I knew other people who would also send their reels. And I have something in my reel that tells me if people open it or not, and a lot of times they wouldn't open it. And then I would find out who ended up doing the project. And maybe sometimes it was someone who was more experienced, and that made sense, but sometimes it was someone who had no experience, and I would be like, "But why didn't they even listen to me?"
So all of that would get me thinking. And I've done a lot of work as part of the executive committee of the Composers Diversity Collective. And one of my main motivations is that, just trying to break that stigma of like we all study... We all have our story. There are composers with all ethnic backgrounds who have been studying classical music formally since they were three years old, and there's been a lot of people from all backgrounds, who are like me, who started more playing in bands and studying on their own and then have some formal education. And I feel at this point, I've written all kinds of orchestral music, and that's where I feel more comfortable in, but then I have all of this background of traditional music and pop and rock that also influences what I write and the kind of music that I can and want to write. So I feel it's a little unfair to get those labels, for people to assume of the kind of music that I can do or not.
And still to this day, even with all of the diversity efforts that are being made by studios and production companies and all of that, I see how myself and other talented and even way more experienced composers than me who have, just to name one, like Latinx or South American or a Latin American background, they still get boxed. It's like they get offered to do the Latino or Latinx stories. They only get hired to do certain types of music. They only get considered for those. If the studio's hiring a Latinx director, then, oh, yeah, let's try to get a Latinx composer. Otherwise, we're not part of the conversation or it's very difficult to be there.
So before Vela, I was trying to avoid bringing my background into my music. And at that moment, I was like, "This is an opportunity to say, 'Okay, I'm done with that. This is part of my voice. This is part of what makes me unique.'" And again, I took as inspiration Roque Banos, Gustavo Santaolalla, and many other composers who are able to influence their music with their background without always making it ethnic specific. And I felt like, yeah, that was the way to go for me, and I never looked back I guess. I created the score for Vela and felt free to put as much or as little as I wanted of my culture and my background. And after that, it's like, "That's my voice."
And yeah, I mean, I'm sure you heard in the music that I sent you and that your listeners can check out too, there will be stuff that feels very foreign here in the US, that feels location specific, and there's a lot of stuff that doesn't. But I hope people can hear some kind of musical thread that... It's hard for me to identify, but a lot of composer friends tell me, "Yeah, I can hear you in this. In these musical decisions, in these chord progression twists, in these melodies, in this, tensions that you're adding, that that's sort of what your voice is."
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it's heartbreaking about the name change, but I can understand where you're coming from. And as a Jew, looking back a few generations, like Gershwin, Copeland, Wieniawski, they all changed their names.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Sure.
Right, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And I don't have those original names on the tip of my tongue, but... Yeah, I was going to ask you about the Composers Diversity Collective.
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need my listeners' help. Please consider buying me a coffee. The link to my Ko-fi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much.
Yeah, so were you involved with the founding of the Composers Diversity Collective or did you get involved with them after they had formed?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
So yes, I'm a founding member. The idea of the conception of the Composers Diversity Collective comes from Michael Abels. He's the composer for, well, at this point, many, many projects, very well known projects like Jordan Peele's movies, Nope, and Get Out, and Us. And then another composer by the name of Daniel Hart, they came up with this idea and reached out to a bunch of composers of color to meet for this first inaugural meeting. And then after that first meeting, I just went to Michael and said, "Hey, this is something that I'm very passionate about. Anything I can do to be of help, to volunteer, to anything, just let me know."
That first meeting, I think like 80 people showed up, something like that. Then the second meeting, where it was like, okay, let's get together and form and do something more formal, that was like 12 people. And luckily, Michael included me in that group. And then eventually it was just nine of us that ended up just creating it.
After a year and a half or so of having informal meetings at composers' houses that people would host, we worked hard to have more of a structure and create an executive committee. We elected Michael Abels as our president and we worked hard to become a nonprofit here in California, then fundraising. And it's a whole endeavor, making it work. We are all busy composers who are writing for our projects and taking meetings and doing stuff, but then trying to dedicate as much time as we can to keep this thing moving. Yeah. I mean, I've been lucky for the past three or four years to be involved as part of the executive committee, and I plan to keep going for a few more years, at least.
Leah Roseman:
So, Sandro, are all the composers involved in the film and movie industry, or are there composers who write for the classical world, let's say?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
So, yeah. Our main goal right now is to help film, TV and media composers, in general. Yes, some of our composers, like Michael Abels himself, happens to write in the classical world a lot and have premieres and all of that. But mainly, we work with... I mean, I welcome everyone. Of course, we welcome everyone to be members. It just so happens that the opportunities that we tend to get and the work that we're doing is aimed more at studios, getting to know us, getting opportunities for the studio music executives to get to know us, to be more comfortable with us, to know that we can write all kinds of music to listen, to our music, and hopefully do away with, again, some of the stigma that might be, any prejudice, any of those things and also just being a resource, like if they're thinking... Because a lot of times, the excuse has been like, oh, we want to hire diverse composers work. But where are they?
So, okay, we are a resource. We have a website, composersdiversitycollective.org, and all of our members are part of our directory. That's public. You can see pictures. You can links to websites, credits, even listen to music on our website, if you want, for all of those composers. Yeah. So, there's no excuse anymore. You know where we are. We have composers in all stages of their career, from people who are super accomplished, like Michael Abels or Amanda Jones or Kris Bowers, to people who are starting out and are studying in Berklee or Julliard. So, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Amanda Jones, she wrote the music for somebody somewhere, right?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
I love that show. And I looked her up because I love the music so much in it. So, I was curious to see who-
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
She's a great friend of mine. A few years ago, worked with her or for her on a few projects and we got to collaborate. It was amazing. Yeah. She's just a dear friend of mine and she's also one of the nine members of the executive committee of the Composers Diversity Collective. Yeah, super talented composer.
Leah Roseman:
If we could just go back to having a different role and making a movie with Vela.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Of course.
Leah Roseman:
Because your wife is an actress, and it's interesting to me, like you'd get to know different parts of the Hollywood scene than just the composition.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
I think for me as a composer and something that if composers are listening, which I'm sure they are, or they will eventually, we have to educate ourselves about filmmaking. It's such an important part of this thing, because I've seen even super successful composers talking about, oh, the temp track, and they're in love with the temp track and the filmmakers, and I have to do this and that. This is the music that I want to do, but they're... That's what you signed up for. That's part of the job. We are here in service of another art. It's not about the music. It's about the film. It's about the film, the art of filmmaking. I know it's complicated. It's difficult for a lot of people to understand that and to compromise their music and their style and what the kind of music that they want to or like to write.
But again, most of the time, we're super late in this process. And that's something that I learned with Vela. We spent months writing the script, then trying to find the money. It wasn't a huge budget, but Claudia and I put some of it, half of the budget, and then reach out to friends, people who might be interested in investing. And that took some time. And then, the planning in Venezuela with the budget we had, then getting there. We had a schedule. The day that we were supposed to get to Carora, which is the bigger town next to Palo de Olor, that day, the government decided to change our currency, pretty much take three zeros out of our currency without previous... I mean, there was a rumor that it was going to happen, but it wasn't like, oh, this day, this thing is going to happen. No, it just happened that day.
The catering company that we hired closed, because they were like, we can't deal with this and serve you food. We can't. So, we had to delay the shoot for two days, rearrange everything with the hotel, and we were bringing the crew from two different... well, three different cities. We were coming from Maracay, and they were coming from the south, and another one from the southwest of the country. We had to reschedule all of that. So, it was a crazy process. The shoot was only three days. Editing took forever, notes and changes and sound, and some stuff was done in Venezuela. Some stuff was done here in LA. AVR, sound effects, music we recorded with orchestra in Macedonia, in Skopje, Macedonia. It's this whole process, and rewinding to right before recording and writing the music, up to that point, everything that's happened.
As a producer of the film and writer, if I'm hiring a composer and that person wants to dictate where the drama is going to go because this is the kind of music that they want to write, or the kind of emotion that they want to convey, I would be like, I'm sorry, but it's not about what you... I appreciate what you have in mind, but that's not what the story we want to tell or the way we want to tell this story. So, it was great to be in that position to appreciate that and to... I put myself in the hands of the director. I told her, listen, I know I'm a producer and all of that, and we wrote it together, but you have to take the hat of the leader in this, and I'm just a composer in this part. So, give me the notes that you want to give me. Let me know if I'm wrong with anything.
And it was that way. She gave me notes as if I was involved in the rest of the film. And luckily, we were on the same page. I had gone through writing the story and shooting it and all of that. We had so many conversations of what the music should be and how we wanted to tell the story. So, it was the easiest score I ever wrote because I was so ready for it. But also, as a whole, the experience, besides the fact that it made me, like I said, embrace my background a lot more as a Venezuelan musician, it also taught me so much about the process of filmmaking, about my role as a composer in the big picture of creating the picture, and also just thinking more as a storyteller, because of all of the books that I had to read, and all of the books that I've read since, because I want to write a feature.
So, it's just helped me become a better composer. And honestly, it's a before and after of just writing. I feel better music in terms of how it supports the storytelling of every project that I've worked since. And it's opened a lot of doors and it's just made my life easier. I found that since then, I just get fewer notes. I mean, there's a lot about it that you can't control, of course, and no one's perfect. And it's not that there are no notes there. There are notes and there are rewrites and everything. But if I compare before and after Vela, I just get fewer notes because I'm more into the story. And when I'm starting to write, I'm not so worried about, oh, what kind of music am I going to write? What do I want to write? And what I'm going to... No, it's about first and foremost, how can I help tell the story and what's the vision of the director.
Do they want me to tell the audience what to feel? I mean, I hope not. Most of the time, I'm hoping that's not what they want. I'm hoping they want the music to evoke more than that. What that is, I don't know. Play against emotions or tell what one of the characters is thinking or tell the story of the subtext of the scene. Hopefully, when you're working on something that's well written, what's being told is not what the characters feel, right? There's more said between the lines than what is actually said. So, am I playing to that or am I just creating tension? And how do I create tension tastefully? So, it opened the door to all of these other ideas that to me are way more interesting than just making good music and placing it there.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. That's a really interesting. So, Sandro, maybe we could just change focuses a little bit. Now, you mentioned you'd recorded in Macedonia. It's very expensive to hire orchestras. So often, composers just don't have the budget for that. And one of the cool solutions is using modular synthesizers.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Correct. Yes.
Leah Roseman:
So, this is new to me, and I know you're going to show us a little bit, and then maybe you can record something we can edit in.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Leah Roseman:
Just playing with it.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
No. I'll record something and shoot some video of it, and then you can add it, edit it in. Yeah, let me see how I can take this camera and show you a little bit of my setup here. Let me try to-
Leah Roseman:
Cool.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
... get a little bit of this. It's hard to get some distance in this thing. So, there's this part of it, and then there's that part of it. It's a lot more stuff. I have more synthesizers on this side that more like self-contained analog synthesizers. And the story for me behind this stuff is that, when I first got to LA, by the time I got here, I was excited to write music for orchestral music. I went through Berklee, jumping on every chance I had to record live musicians.
I started contemporary writing and production. It's more of a producing and songwriting, commercial music, that sort of thing. But luckily, they do prepare you for writing for big band and some orchestral writing and things like that, and then film scoring, which writing cinematic music and had a lot of chances to record orchestral musicians. But then I also decided to create a project called Sounds from Venezuela, where I would put together a band of musicians as big as I could. I think I had four concerts. And the last concert was, I think I had 60 musicians between strings, French horns, basically like a small chamber orchestra, flutes, oboes, clarinets. And then I had a rhythmic section, sort of a jazz rhythm section with drums, Venezuelan percussion, some vocals. I mean, I had a whole band. And so, I was writing for that project pieces in traditional Venezuelan styles with this ensemble and making it sound orchestral, but then having some elements of jazz and improvisation in it.
And that was also an amazing school for me of writing two instruments that I had never written for, and just listening to it and figuring out how they sound and what are the best ranges and all that. Yeah. By the time I got to LA, it was like I want to write for orchestra, but no one who had the budget to do that would hire me, of course, right out of college. There's always the thing about writing orchestra in the box with sample instruments, which you have to do sometimes, of course, and especially on TV, a lot of projects don't have the budget to record live. So, you do that and you do the best you can. But for me, getting into synthesizers was a way to just have stuff that it is what it is. A synthesizer, you're not trying to emulate another instrument like an acoustic instrument.
This is like you're really taking the electricity and oscillating it and just filtering it and doing things, and you're processing it in a way that you create a sound that is new every time, and it's created and manipulated in real time by yourself. So, that was getting into analog synthesizers. My first one, you can see right there, a Moog Little Phatty, that synth over there that I got I think in 2010 or something, and started putting into everything I did in short film scores and things like that. Eventually, I got into modular synthesizers. And the thing about modular synthesizers is you have... It's like a custom analog synthesizer. Okay? So, every part of a synthesizers, you have the oscillators that create the sound, you change the frequency, and that's the pitch. And then, you get things like envelopes, so that if you want to make the sound sustained or you want to make it short, how much of a decay, how much sustained, how much of an attack, a slow attack or fast attack and all of those things.
And you have a filter that takes out either the high frequencies or the low frequencies, and many different types of filters. And then, modulators in order to change automatically all of those settings. So, that's like a basic synthesizer. In a modular synthesizer, each one of those parts you buy separately and you buy the ones that you want with the flavor that you want. So, in an analog synthesizer, if you have an Oberheim that has a specific kind of sound that's very '80s, and if you buy a Moog, the filter sounds a certain way. So, with modular, first you get the taste, the sounds that you want, and you can have a filter that sounds like an Oberheim, and one that sounds like a Prophet and one that sounds like a Moog. But then way beyond that, they've developed all of these modules that work in ways that are just incredible, the effects that you can't have in a computer. It's hard to find on a guitar pedal. It's just part of this.
And the other thing is, because you have patch cables, you can patch any module to any other module. So, that's where experimentation goes nuts. It's like you can do so many things. A lot of times it's like I know what I'm doing and I have to, because in order to implement this into my TV music, I have to be quick. But when I do have the time to experiment, sometimes I'll just randomly start patching cables, and it's like, whoa, how did I do that? And that part of it, being able to create sounds that you wouldn't be able to create otherwise, that's the part that really attracted me to it. And also, musically, there are modules that you utilize random sequencing or circadian rhythms or, I don't know, different kinds of randomizing, organized, I would say, randomization that you can use in musical ways that are super interesting.
Yeah, it's just an incredible creative tool that makes you come up with sounds and musical elements that you wouldn't otherwise, I feel. So, here's my Eurorack setup. This is something I've been building for the past few years with the specific modules that I need that make sense for the kind of music that I like to write with this. I'm going to play a few sounds. There's this and then there's this little melody that I also created using this setup. And I'm just going to play around with some modules so that you can see how I can affect the sound. This is the filter, and I'm going to add a little bit of a modulator reverb. It comes in and out.
The next one is a granular effect. Here's some delay and a spring reverb. And I'm going to play around with this one that makes it all into a pat, a little dissonant. Yeah, it has a lot of applications for me in the film scoring world. With this, I'm just modulating the filter. It has like a more aggressive tone to it. Adding a little bit of piano off screen so that your listeners can appreciate how you can use this kind of thing on a piece of music. I'm also going to add off screen a beat and a bass to help illustrate a little bit of how a sound like this can be used to create a piece of music.
Yeah, this is something that I put together very quickly. It's a very basic and simple example. At least you can have an idea of the kind of processing that you can achieve through a Eurorack synthesizer. I mean, for film scoring purposes, the kind of music that I write, there's a lot that I can do in terms of creating random melodies, creating rhythm arpeggiation, synthesized percussion, pats, texture, scary tense, soundscapes, things like that, that are evolving and interesting. So, I hope that's helpful and gets other composers and musicians excited about playing around with Eurorack synthesizers.
Leah Roseman:
Very, very cool. A few episodes ago, I released an episode with Adam Blau, who's also a film and TV composer. So, he had submitted a track that's a part of that episode, if people haven't heard that. They'll be of the same thing, like modular synthesizer with him, improvising and just... Yeah, he said he does that in his spare time to just come up with ideas and sounds the same way, but we didn't get to see it. So, this is cool. You showed us a taste of what it actually looks like.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Of course. Of course.
Leah Roseman:
So, if we could just go back to Shadow of the Sun, Sandro, I was thinking the deaf character. Does that hit you hard as a musician to think of losing your hearing?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure it's scary to anyone from musicians. Music is one of the most important things in our lives, and thinking of living without music is one of the things that is so terrifying for me. And it was one of the things that Director Miguel tapped me with, was just like giving a voice to the relationship of these two brothers. Yeah, it was also a terrifying idea before I started writing. It's such a responsibility, I felt. But at the end, it's all about we're all human beings, and I have a brother that I love very much, and we are similar in many ways, and we're so different in many other ways, so trying to... the same way I learned about that with my wife, who, again, is an actress about how actors can't pretend that this stuff is happening to them. They have to live it.
Everything that they show on screen or on a stage, they have to live it. I mean, it's the only way that's believable. And for me, I've tried to implement that into my music where when I'm spotting and when I'm first... especially if it's stuff that is emotional, I might start writing on the piano and just try to get some chords and melodies together. And when I'm going through that part of it, I'm trying to really place myself in the situation that I'm seeing on screen, in the scene. And part of it is, the method acting is, there are two main ways. I'm probably going to say something that's completely wrong. I hope actors don't aim me for it, but whatever. But my understanding is that you can either really place yourself in the situation by really convincing yourself that you're that character and that you're going through that, or also drawing from your experience.
And I find that in my situation, way easier. Actors are there. They have the costume. They have other actors to play off of, to interact with, and they have the stage or the staging, the production, all of it to place themselves in that situation. For me, it's more about like, okay, what can I draw from my life that will help me put myself there and understand more what these characters are going through, and they are feeling so that I can try to have some of that emotion into my music, if that's what the scene and the vision of the director ask for. Yeah. I mean, being able to at least draw from my relationship with my brother, who we've lived apart since 2009 that I went to Berkeley and from living in the same house every single day of our lives. In 2009, August 2009, I moved to Berkeley, and then we haven't lived in the same country since. Yeah. I feel like drawing from that relationship, even though it's a very different relationship to the one from the characters, still made me connect emotionally very much. And then the fact that they are trying to against all odds and with all of these difficulties, and with no one believing in them, trying to write a song and trying to go to this songwriting/ singing competition in Caracas, which from where they're from, you know Caigua, Caracas feels like these, this huge unattainable place where dreams go to die for people like them.
So yeah, I felt so connected with all of those emotions and situations. My story is different, but in a way can be... There's an analogy there to what they go through in that film. It was incredible for me to watch the film and then to give music to it and try to be part of the storytelling process, was an incredible feeling.
Leah Roseman:
You mentioned when you grew up, you were very close with your extended family. You're soon going to be a dad. It's going to be-
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Do you have, not a family, but a community of Venezuelans or other Latin American people that makes you feel kind of like you have a community to lean on as a new parent?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yes. I mean, luckily my wife's family, Claudia's family, just moved to LA from Venezuela, which is great. Plus, her mom's a doctor. Her sister is a kindergarten teacher, so they're perfect for... I mean, would've been perfect anyways, but you know what I mean, it's super helpful to have a doctor at home. Claudia and I have been married for many years and living here in LA without having any family here, so having them is... It's at such a perfect time. It's just incredible.
It was sort of a coincidence because they were planning on leaving and they were thinking of different places. Then Claudia got pregnant. We're having a kid and they're like, "Oh, we definitely want to go live with you guys in LA." Here in LA, luckily Claudia and I have been able to create a community of friends, a great, great network of like-minded individuals who are looking for community. Some of them are in the music industry. Some of them are actors. Some of them are filmmakers. And a lot of them are not artists at all, or at least they don't make their living out of that.
One of our communities is made of Venezuelan actors, and producers, and writers, and composers, and a lot of our friends are not Venezuelan, but from different backgrounds. Then there's my Composer Diversity Collective, a family that we've become so close. We hosted a mixer here at our house a couple of weeks ago, and I know 50 people showed up from the Composer Diversity Collective. It was incredible. So luckily, the fact that LA is so diverse and it's a city that lends itself to all kinds of backgrounds... I feel when people tell me like, "Oh, I don't like LA", that's fair, but LA is what you make of it, I think.
There's all kinds of people. There's all kinds of food. Every neighborhood is different. If I'm in Sherman Oaks, if Sherman Oaks is not for you, there's so many different neighborhoods with such different vibes. People who have lived in the West Side their whole life think that the rest of LA is unlivable and they can't pictures themselves living in the east or in the valley. And then people who live in the east feel the same way about other people. I mean, it's crazy. Isn't that a microcosm of what humanity is? But yeah, I mean, it's such a diversity, and again, it's just what you make of it. There's stuff for everyone, for every taste, I feel.
Leah Roseman:
Certainly coming out of this pandemic, I think the feeling of community and like you said, having 50 people over at such a wonderful celebration.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
That's right. Yeah. No, that was an incredible, that gathering. Going back, because I think I usually do, I went around a bunch of subjects and didn't completely answer your question. Having a community I think is essential when being a parent. Not a parent yet, but as we prepare to become parents in less than two months, yes, we've... From the baby shower and people coming and celebrating Claudia, and everyone offering help, and "Let us know whatever you need," and giving advice, all of those who are parents, all of the amazing advice making us feel like we're not alone in this. It's been so amazing.
The only way to tie it back to our conversation of career and being a composer here in LA, you need to have a community and network both as a professional, because it's the only way that you're going to connect with other professionals who are looking for someone like you, and the way that people are going to recommend you, and they're going to suggest that you meet this filmmaker or you meet this other composer or whatever. Then just mainly, and more importantly, as a human being. Again, LA, same way I'm praising it, I'm going to say it's so huge. There's so many people, and that can be so isolating.
For a lot of people, it can be overwhelming trying to meet other human beings here, try to make a community. All of that can be so scary. I've never been single in LA. I came here married to Claudia, but I've heard horror stories of how difficult it is to meet someone and to have a steady relationship.
Leah Roseman:
Did you meet her in Boston or back in Venezuela?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
No, in Venezuela.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
In Venezuela. Yeah, we met in Venezuela a few months before I moved to Boston.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, wow. Okay. Speaking of travel, Restaurants at the End of the World, I watched all the episodes that are available now, the first four.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Awesome. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I really loved it. In terms of that genre of travel and cooking show, it's really a gem. I'm happy to help plug it a little bit, and we can share some of the music you wrote for it.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Appreciate it.
Leah Roseman:
With another composer as well, but the tracks your sharing will be yours or together?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Together. We wrote everything together. David Benjamin Steinberg, a person that I love so much, and gave me my first job here in LA, and we've been working together for so long. Restaurants at the End of the World, the showrunner and director of all episodes, Jeremy Simmons, is a collaborator of David of over two decades. I was just super happy to... It's the second project that David brings me to work as a co-composer with Jeremy. The first one was Explant, a documentary that came out in 2021. But yeah, it was a dream come true to work with David again, and with Jeremy, and then writing for a show like this. I mean, Kristen Kish is such a gem, amazing chef, and so charismatic, such energy. It was amazing.
Leah Roseman:
This next clip, Climbing the Hills is the music of David Benjamin Steinberg and Sandro Morales-Santoro from Restaurants at the End of the World, which you can watch on National Geographic Disney Plus. (music)
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting watching a show about food, because of course you get hungry and then just imagining the tastes. That dessert she develops in Maine, I won't give it away, but it was so whimsical and fun, and you just really want to be able to eat the food.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Yeah, no, totally. Totally. Yeah. It's such an amazing show. For me watching, it was super entertaining. Every time I would get a new episode, I would just sit and watch it as an audience member first and enjoy it. Then also, Jeremy has a great taste for music, and he had temp music that was already working beautifully for it. He used to be an editor, so he really knows how to intertwine songs and music to picture. I love the show even if I wasn't involved in it, but then being able to be involved and being able... It is another show where I was able to play Charango and Ronroco and bring elements of Venezuelan music.
And David, part of his up bringing was in Panama, so he also had a lot of knowledge about traditional or old school Panamanian music. We brought an accordion player. We had, again, Jonathan Davidia playing drums. We had his wife, Anna Paola Rincones, who is a incredible flute player from El Sistema played with Gustavo Dudamel when they were growing up over there in Venezuela. She's here in LA now. She played flute, piccolo, alto flute, bass flute recorder. It was an amazing experience to get to write music from those specific locations for all four episodes, but then also just trying to interpret Kristen's personality through our own voice, the personality of each chef from each of the cities, the restaurants that she visits. Yeah, it was an incredible experience.
Leah Roseman:
This little clip is called Two Hours Until Dinner, and it's the music of David Benjamin Steinberg and Sandro Morales-Santoro from Restaurants at the End of the World, which you can watch on National Geographic Disney Plus.(music)
If I could give you the award to visit any of those restaurants today, which one would you choose?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Wow. It is hard to pick. All four of them look incredible. I would be torn between, I think number one, the one in Norway. There was the glaciers, and it's like an old USSR radio station or something. That's incredible. The way they go to... Well, I'm going to give stuff away, but to an iceberg to get ice for the cocktails is just so incredible. But yeah, all of them. I mean, the one that's in Brazil-
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, the tropical fjord, it looked amazing from the boat.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
Incredible, incredible. I've had, not that specific experience, but in Venezuela there's a national park called Morrocoy, which is, it's like keys. I don't know how to explain it, but it's like this area, sort of closed off area that's big with different keys that you get to in boats. While you're in one of those keys... Restaurant boats come to shore with seafood that they just fished, and you tell them, "This is what I want," and if you want a specific type of fish that you can find locally that they don't have, they'll go fish it for you and bring it cooked and ready an hour or two later. I've had similar kind of experience, but I mean that the one in Restaurants at the End of the World in Brazil is just amazing. I would love to go there.
Leah Roseman:
This clip, Welcome to Panama, is the music of David Benjamin Steinberg and Sandro Morales-Santoro from Restaurants at the End of the World, which you can watch on National Geographic Disney Plus. (music)
To wrap up, I was just thinking when you were 15 maybe, or a little younger, you had this dream of being a rockstar and touring the world, and now that you're older, you're going to be a dad, do you have a perspective on what that life would've looked like? Had those dreams been realized as opposed to the direction you went in?
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
I haven't really thought too much about it, to be honest. When I started thinking about doing music for film and also video games, which I haven't done much of, I fell so in love with this part of it that that other dream sort of went away very quietly, naturally. But I wonder what that would look like. I would hope that I would've done music that would somehow involve where I come from, some sort of element of folk Venezuelan music. To this day, there are artists that I admire like Gustavo Santaolalla who not only writes, I mentioned so many times in this interview, and I must say he was the composer that I saw when he won back-to-back Oscars for Brokeback Mountain and Babel, that where I was like someone from South America like myself can make it and can write music for film and say, "Wow, okay, maybe I'm not so crazy. Maybe I can actually achieve this."
Maybe that's why he's such an influence. He's someone who's a songwriter and a producer of pop and rock, and he has his own band and he writes tango music. I would hope a project like that, or Olafur Arnalds, Emile Mosseri, I love his music as well, who's also someone who comes from a band and from creating. Even though he's a film composer for amazing scores like Minari, he still writes music and releases music as an artist that at this point in my life, if I had a career as a musician, that's what I would hope for. But I'm sure it would be something completely different. I don't know. I think it would've been I would've stayed playing rock or something like that. I don't know. But yeah, it would be a very different life.
I'm thankful that everything that happened happened the way that it did, because it just prepared me to come here and to have the maturity to do the things the way I've been doing them, and hopefully it's going to help me achieve everything that I hope for. It got me here, and I'm super happy that I get to write music for film and TV, that I get to do this every day, just having friends and living here in LA, happy life. There's not much more than I can ask for.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for sharing your perspectives and your music today. It's going to be a wonderful episode to release.
Sandro Morales-Santoro:
I appreciate it. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following this series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this season three with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories and music. Have a great week.
I'm an independent podcaster, and I really do need my listeners' help. Please consider buying me a coffee. The link to my Ko-fi page is in the description. Every dollar helps me cover the costs of this huge project. Thanks so much.
