Composing for TV Series

SoundTrack_Cologne 20: Composing for TV - Series

SoundTrack_Cologne is honored to announce the featured panelists of this year’s Composing for TV Series Day, taking place on Friday, July 5th, 2024 in Cologne.

Four panels at the conference will be dedicated to exploring how composers take on scoring projects for TV series considering the specific challenges of this format and dive into some of their most recent projects. The panels will have the participation of Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, two-time EMMY-winner, and Kim Neuendorf (The White Lotus); Marcel Vaid and Adrian Frutiger (Davos 1917); Julie Roué (The World Doesn't Exist); Jessica de Rooij (Sisi · Hameln) and Hansjörg Kohli (Soko Hamburg).

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Composing for TV Series
Friday 05. July 2024 · COMEDIA Theater, Probebühne

10:30 - 11:30
Cristóbal Tapia de Veer & Kim Neundorf
The White Lotus
Workshop · Discussion

12:00 - 13:00
Marcel Vaid & Adrian Frutiger
Davos 1917
Workshop · Discussion

14:30 - 15:30
Julie Roué
The World Doesn't Exist (Le monde n'existe pas) - winner of the Best Original Music at Séries Mania
Workshop · Discussion

16:00 - 17:00
Jessica de Rooij (Sisi · Hameln) & Hansjörg Kohli (Soko Hamburg)
Working in Teams
Fireside talk

Cristóbal Tapia de Veer

Cristóbal Tapia de Veer, aka Cristo, is a 3-time EMMY and BAFTA-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist who is widely known for his works on critically acclaimed cult series such as Utopia, Black Mirror, The White Lotus, and 2022's #1 box-office hit Smile.

In 2011, Cristo scored his first mini-TV series, The Crimson Petal and the White, directed by Marc Munden. Two years later, Tapia teamed up again to work with Munden on Utopia, for which he won several awards (both seasons).

After this successful start in the TV Series, he composed the music for ICI-Radio-Canada's TV drama Série Noire, for which he won twice at the PRIX GEMEAUX (Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television) in 2014 and received a third trophy for the second season in 2016. In 2017, he was awarded a Golden Fipa 2017 (Festival de Film de Biarritz) and a BAFTA for C4's mini-series National Treasure.

Since then, Cristo has showcased his versatility and talent in renowned projects. In 2022, he was honored with two EMMYs for The White Lotus (Best Television Score and Best Main Title Theme) and took home a 3rd EMMY (for Best Television Score, Drama Series) for the 2nd season 2024.

Kim Neundorf

Kim Neundorf is a German-born musician and music manager living in Montreal, Canada.

Growing up in Berlin, young Kim took classical piano lessons and studied jazz harmony. Later on she combined her passion for music with the organization of events, starting as intern at Berlin's famous venue Tempodrom.

While still playing music on the side, she became a licensed event manager and transitioned from tour booking, production, and festival organization at world music specialist Transatlantico Tours & Services Agency, to music publishing, licensing, studio recording, and album record production in Montreal, where she now runs her own agency, Free Run Artists Productions.

She has spent the previous 12 years at Free Run Artists working alongside the recognized composer Cristóbal Tapia. As Cristo’s long time collaborator and second pair of ears, Kim has assisted him in the studio on many projects including Série noire (CBC), Humans (AMC), Jamaica Inn (BBC), The Third Day (HBO/SKY), Hunters (PRIME), Smile (Paramount) and most recently, The White Lotus season 2 (HBO).

Marcel Vaid

Marcel Vaid (*1967) works as a musician (guitar) and composer for film and TV. He has worked in film music for over 90 feature films worldwide. Head of the electro-acoustic collective Superterz, he has completed numerous Tours in Japan and Europe.

He has been honored several times for his work. In 2018, Vaid won, for his original score in Chris the Swiss his fourth Swiss Film Prize Quartz, and was nominated for the German Film Music Prize at the Dok.Fest in Munich.  He also won the Swiss Film Prize Quartz 2016 for When the Sun fell, 2009 for Zara, and 2011 for Goodnight Nobody.

Among the television series for which he has worked are Davos 1917, Tatort, Kaminer Inside and Der Traum vom Fliegen.

Vaid’s film music has been recorded by big symphony orchestras such as the Meran Symphony Orchestra, the 21st Century Orchestra Lucerne (with conductor Ludwig Wicky) or the Budapest Art Orchestra conducted by André Bellmont.

He works as a guest lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts. He is a member of the European Film Academy EFA, the Swiss Film Academy, and a board member of SONART, the Swiss music association.

Adrian Frutiger

After graduating as a decoration designer, Adrian Frutiger worked as a production designer for the film Night of the Jugglers (1996), directed by Michael Steiner. There, he also ventured into film music, creating the score for the same project. This first work in media won him the European Prize at the Film Music Biennale in Bonn in 1996.

Frutiger's musical prowess has been showcased in a diverse range of films, including Michael Steiner's My name is Eugen, Grounding: the Last Days of Swissair, Sennentuntschi, Wolkenbruch's Strange Journey into the Arms of a Chic Woman, and Early Birds (co-composed with Martin Villiger); Der Büezer's Hans Kaufmann; Mirjam von Arx's Virgin Tales, and many more. 

His latest works for TV include Davos 1917 and Wilder.

Julie Roué

Julie Roué started her career as a sound editor but moved later to music and film music, where she has built a solid ground after her first feature film Montparnasse-Bienvenuë, directed by Léonor Serraille (Caméra d'Or, Cannes Festival 2017). She now shares her composing time between feature films and TV series, using elements of baroque music, jazz, electro, world music and minimalism, with a strong influence of pop music.

In 2023, she presented two films at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes: The (Ex)perience of Love, by Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni, and No Love Lost, by Erwan Le Duc. In 2024, she won the Best Music Award at Series Mania for the soundtrack of The World Doesn't Exist. At the end of this year, we will hear her music on Zorro, a TV series starring Jean Dujardin.

Besides her film scores, Julie Roué writes and sings electropop songs (an EP to come soon) and is one half of Carte Contact, the band who wrote the electroclash hit Like a Dog. She also performs with the duet A V I O N in Malombra, Why do Heroines die in the End?, a hybrid show mixing cinema, theater, electro and pop music.

Jessica de Rooij

As the daughter of a jazz bandleader and a singer, Jessica de Rooij was born into music. Right after learning to walk, she started to play the piano and composed her first songs with nine years.

Her first cinema visits awakened her fascination for the music behind the pictures, so she decided to study Music & Technology at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. After her master's degree, she moved to Los Angeles to ghostwrite for well-known composers.

For the last decade, she worked primarily in Berlin and expanded her work as a composer for cinema and television to do music supervising.

Besides more than 40 scores for feature films, de Rooij recently composed the score for the TV series SISI and the Netflix hit Blood & Gold.

Hansjörg Kohli

Hansjörg Kohli is a film composer living and working in Munich. He grew up in Switzerland, studied film scoring and jazz piano at Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA and the University of Performing Arts in Munich.

He started out as an orchestrator for a variety of film projects. Later on, he became head of the film music department at the German National Television studio ZDF in Mainz. For several years now his focus has shifted back to composing for film and media.

Among his more recent works are the scores to In Wahrheit - Zwischen Recht und Gerechtigkeit (ARTE/ZDF), Der Spalter (Filmfest München/ZDF), Die Küstenpiloten (ARD/Degeto), Jenseits der Spree (ZDF), Väter- Allein zu Haus (ARD/WDR), Kirgistan - Hochgebirgsland voller Schätzr (ARTE).