A Montreal composer spent years scouring dark corners of the Amazon and remote Mexican villages to create a new video game’s soundtrack.
Brian D’Oliveira composed every melody in “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” an upcoming game featuring the character Lara Croft racing to save the world from the Mayan apocalypse.
To do so, he spent three years travelling through Latin America collecting rare instruments, including at least one believed to be haunted. He now has 900 and counting.
“I found the instruments, the makers (of) these instruments, the people that played the music that are still living, that have this connection to the past,” D’Oliveira says.
The goal, he adds, is for gamers “to be able to close their eyes and feel their environment, feel the intent of the story and the characters.”
Bringing the sounds of Latin America’s communities to millions of new people was a dream assignment for D’Oliveira, who grew up in Venezuela playing the Peruvian flute.
“Since I was a kid I was tripping out on all of these cultures and imagining what the music would have been like,” he says.
With a report from CTV’s Vanessa Lee in Montreal
