Young Roman composer Marco Valerio Antonini is the winner of the first Viñas Familia Gil International Soundtrack Award.
SOUNDTRACK AWARD 2016
Last March, in addition to presenting the Juan Gil 100th Anniversary commemorative wine with which the Viña Familia Gil celebrated achieving one hundred vintages, the International Soundtrack Composition Award was also announced, created by the group with the desire to have this be only the first of many successive editions. The contest aims to promote the development of young talent and support them in the beginning of their professional careers as composers. It is an initiative unlike any other in the world and rewards the winner with 50,000 euros.
In this first edition, the participants had to propose a soundtrack for the short film 100 vendimias en familia directed by Javier Mellado, featuring actress Allende García and in which the members of the Gil family act as extras. The short film was shot in the group's various wineries and evokes the history of the Gil family. Today, one hundred years after its start in Jumilla (Murcia), the group has ten wineries and in a total of eight Denominations of Origin.
115 works were presented by composers from 20 countries, and among the twelve finalists were six Spaniards. The winner, 26-year-old Marco Valerio, won with a composition titled Land: A Story of Belonging.
The jury was made up of renowned professional composers and musicians such as Roque Baños, Bruce Broughton, Lucio Godoy and Constantino Martínez-Orts.
The entire jury highlighted the subtlety of Marco Valerio Antonini's work, the melodic quality of his main theme, the elegance in the musical treatment of the story, and the positive and familiar atmosphere he managed to create.
Marco Valerio Antonini, born in Rome in 1990, studied composition and orchestration at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. He furthered his studies at the prestigious Scoring For Motion Pictures and Television Program at the University of Southern California, and is currently composing soundtracks for short films, documentaries and video games.
The awards ceremony was held at the Fernán Gómez Theater in Madrid, in which the Film Symphony Orchestra performed the award-winning work simultaneously with the screening of the short film.