Bernardo Rojas, current student at the Master in Applied Composition for Film and Stage of the Liceu Conservatory is the winner of the Gil Soundtrack Award 2020, deemed as the most important award in the world for young composers, with the work Corazón de Tierra. The winning composition, in Rojas’ words, “aims to connect all people with their roots, nature and essence.” Bernardo studied composition at the Pontifical Javeriana University of Bogotá, Colombia, an institution with which the Liceu Conservatory Foundation has an institutional collaboration agreement, as part of its collaboration program with Latin America since 2002.
The Gil Soundtrack Award is a biannual international prize with a financial endowment of €50,000, promoted by Viñas Família Gil to promote young talent. This year, in its third edition, contestants were required to create the soundtrack music for the short film Somos Tierra, directed by Agustina Macri, which places the action in a vineyards land and that is based on a real story. Despite being the most difficult year for the contest, its commitment to culture in the face of adversity has managed to connect with young music creators and has break participation records: 250 works presented, in full global confinement, by musicians between 18 and 35 years, from 49 countries.
The international jury of the competition has been chaired by the renowned Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, who has a long creative career, and who won the Oscar to the Best Soundtrack (2020) for her music for Joker. Also on the jury were Constantino Martínez-Orts (director of the Film Symphony Orchestra), Lucio Godoy (composer), Roque Baños (composer) and Juan Gil Vera (promoter of the Gil Soundtrack Award). The jury highlights the winning work, stating that “the score is at the service of the narrative, helps to tell the story, and its structure is full of small nuances, which make it fit the film like a glove” and they also praise it “for its tasteful modulations”.
According to the words of Juan Gil Vera, representative of the Gil Family in the jury and one of the main promoters of the award, “with this award, we want to and raise awareness about the importance of culture, education, perseverance and a job well done, and nonconformism in the face of adversity, in these difficult and strange days that we are living here in Spain and around the world. ”
From the Liceu Conservatory Foundation we want to congratulate our student Bernardo Rojas and those enterprises that, like Viñas Familia Gil, continue to bet on young musicians offering them a way of promotion for their creativity.
You can watch the short film Somos Tierra with the composition Corazón de Tierra here:
Here you can see an exclusive interview with Bernardo Rojas:
Master’s Program in Applied Composition to Audiovisual Media video: