Composer Gordy Haab wins award for Star Wars Kinect score

By Anthony John Agnello Published November 20, 2012

star wars composer — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Gordy Haab is a fearless video game composer. It takes nerves of steel to compose new music for the Star Wars universe. Just tinkling around with John Williams’ themes is enough to send the franchise’s fans into an apoplectic fit. Haab on the other hand has dabbled in George Lucas’ world multiple times now, working on BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars Kinect. His work in the latter netted him his latest reward.

The song “The Felucia Podraces” from Star Wars Kinect received the Best Song in a Video Game award at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards last week. The awards are for composers working in not just video games, but film, television, and music videos as well.

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Haab spoke with Digital Trends about the pressures and joys of working on a series like Star Wars. “They wanted [Star Wars Kinect} to live within the universe of the Star Wars sounds. That was sort of the confines from which we were working, but we had free rein to write our own original take on it, and certainly our own original themes,” said Haab, “But we weren’t required by any means to use the John Williams theme unless we wanted to. So we did have some creative license in that sense.”

He and his writing partner Kyle Newmaster were not responsible for the writing of “I’m Han Solo.”

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Anthony John Agnello

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Anthony John Agnello is a writer living in New York. He works as the Community Manager of Joystiq.com and his writing has…

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