Tuesday 11 February, 2020

The Basque National Orchestra records the soundtrack of ‘Patria’ conducted by Fernando Velázquez

The series created by Aitor Gabilondo, based on the bestselling novel written by Fernando Aramburu and published in Spain by Tusquets Editores, will premiere on HBO Spain in May.

The Basque National Orchestra has been given the responsibility of recording the original score, created by the composer Fernando Velázquez (from Getxo), for the series ‘Patria’, which will be released in May. The series is based on the bestselling novel by Fernando Aramburu.

The Basque National Orchestra has extensive experience in the field of recording soundtracks for films. Always under the direction of Fernando Velázquez, it has recorded a number of extremely successful soundtracks, outstanding among which is A Monster Calls, directed by J.A. Bayona, thanks to which Velázquez won the Goya for the best original music. In 2017 the orchestra recorded the music written by Fernando Velázquez for Submergence, a feature film by Wim Wenders, and this prolific collaboration of the orchestra and the composer also includes the live premiere of the soundtrack of The Impossible (J.A. Bayona) in 2012, coinciding with its presentation in the Official Section of the San Sebastian International Film Festival.

Fernando Velázquez (@FVelazquezMusic) firma la partitura original de #PatriaHBO. Estreno en mayo 2020. pic.twitter.com/6w5bSlZkPv
— HBO España (@HBO_ES) February 11, 2020

About Fernando Velázquez

The renowned multi-award winning composer and conductor Fernando Velázquez is the leading exponent in a new generation of composers of music for film and television in Spain and the USA. His extensive career, which began in 1999, encompasses more than 50 feature films and national and international series, in addition to an important catalogue of concert works, incidental theatre music and commissions from all kinds of artists.

He studied music at the conservatories of Getxo, Bilbao and Vitoria, where he won the extraordinary prize at the end of his studies, following this with further classes in Paris. He studied composition at the Madrid Royal Conservatory and has a degree in Contemporary History from the University of Deusto. As a cellist, he has collaborated with the Santa Cecilia Chamber Orchestra, the Edinburgh University Music Society Symphonic Orchestra, the Young Orchestra of the Basque Country, the Basque National Orchestra and the Madrid Symphony Orchestra.

He has worked for renowned Spanish and international directors such as J.A.Bayona, Patricia Ferreira, Mateo Gil, Emilio Martínez Lázaro, Guillermo del Toro, Nacho Vigalondo and Wim Wenders. His unmistakable style, following in the tradition of post-romantic symphonism and the great Hollywood composers, is characterised by a grand sense of melody, an exhaustive knowledge of the orchestra and a dynamic control of the tempos that make each soundtrack a work of art in itself.

His relationship with J.A.Bayona, for whom he created soundtracks for The Orphanage (2007), The Impossible (2012) and A Monster Calls (2017), has been very significant within his career, and he has won numerous awards for these soundtracks. Outside Spain, he has been responsible for Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, 2007), BabyCall (Pål Sletaune, 2011), Mama (Andrés Muschietti, 2013), Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015) and Pride + Prejudice + Zombies (Burr Steers, 2016).

Orchestras he has conducted include the Basque National Orchestra, the symphony orchestras of Bilbao, Extremadura, Galicia, the Community of Madrid, Malaga, Navarre, the Principality of Asturias and Seville, the Spanish Radio and Television Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic, the London Metropolitan and the Czech National Orchestra.