Sam Hughes speaks to fantastic composer, Neal Acree. They chat about his career so far, his experience in writing for Blizzard as well as discussing his influences and advice.
Neal Acree is an award winning film, television and video game composer and conductor whose work includes the massively popular game franchises World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, Diablo III, shows like Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Witchblade and over 30 feature films. A versatile composer with roots in classical, rock and electronic music, Acree’s music has been recorded and performed by orchestras and choirs around the world, including the hit concert tour Video Games Live.
A fan of movies and their music from a very early age, Neal’s first records were soundtracks by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and others. Though originally planning a career in art, his early experiments in instrumental electronic music began to take over his life. After studying classical, ethnic and electronic music (including a semester in England), Neal began to see that film scoring was the ideal outlet for his love of movies and music. Soon after, his childhood love for video games that began with an Atari 2600 would find a new outlet in writing music for games when he scored the opening cinematic to Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade in 2006. Games would offer a whole new world to play in musically and gave Neal the opportunity to work with large orchestras and choirs featuring some of the finest musicians in the world.
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The Sound Architect
