Cristobal Tapia de Veer

Juan Cristobal Tapia de Veer, also known as Cristo, is a Chilean-born Canadian film and television score composer, arranger, producer and multi-instrumentalist based in Montreal, Canada. He is mostly known for his music to the British TV series Utopia, for which he won an RTS Craft & Design Award in the best original score category in 2013.

Early life

Cristo was born during the military coup d'état in Chile. First, his parents fled to Paris, France. While his father decided to stay there, his mother took him back to Chile. Life under Pinochet's dictatorship still proved impossible, so they found political refuge in Québec.^[1]

Career

He obtained a master's degree in classical music (specializing in percussion) from the Conservatoire de musique du Québec. In 2001 he signed to Warner Music with his pop-band One Ton, putting a hold on his classical career. The trio won the Canadian Dance Music Award (SOCAN) in 2003 with the electro-dance single "Supersex World".^[2] Cristo produced the album.^[3]

Movie and TV scoring

In 2011, his music for the Victorian four-part drama The Crimson Petal and the White (directed by Marc Munden, BBC2) was well received by critics. Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe, said: "The soundtrack ranges from gnawing electronic hums to choral ecstasy. It's all brilliantly, effectively, appropriately jarring, even if it sends the Masterpiece crowd to the medicine cabinet for Dramamine."^[4]

He went on to compose the music for the Channel 4 conspiracy thriller Utopia (created by Dennis Kelly), for which he won a Royal Television Society Craft & Design Award for "best original music" in November 2013.^[5] "Startlingly original scoring of hyper-reality, and unlike anything we’ve heard before. The winner’s work blurred the lines between sound design and score, creating a soundtrack that the jury said felt like it was being played inside your head."^[6] Up again for a RTS Award in 2014, the music for the second series won the Music & Sound Award in 2015 in the best Original TV score category.^[7]

His work on Utopia was also nominated for Televisual Magazine's Bulldog Award for best music.^[8]

In early 2014, he completed the music for the TV-show Série noire (by the writers of Les Invincibles), which airs on ICI-Radio-Canada Télé.^[9] The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television awarded him with 2 Prix Gémeaux for best Original Music and Best Musical Theme the same year.^[10] And also finished the works on BBC's Jamaica Inn, directed by Phillipa Lowthorpe (BAFTA award-winner for Call the Midwife).^[11]

His score can be heard on AMC's / Channel 4's co-production Humans, among its cast are William Hurt, Gemma Chan, Colin Morgan, Katherine Parkinson and Neil Maskell. Humans became Channel 4's biggest drama hit in 20 years (with a consolidated audience of 6.1 mio viewers for its opening episode). A second season has already been confirmed.^[12]

In 2016 he scored his first feature film, The Girl with All the Gifts.

References

External links

• Free Run Artists, official website
• Cristobal Tapia de Veer at the Internet Movie Database
• Cristobal Tapia de Veer on SoundCloud