BIO
OTAVIO SANTOS
Standing out from the new generation of Brazilian film composers, Otavio Santos has been increasingly gaining new territory in the field and winning over the respect of both national and international directors. His most recent projects includes the feature film Divine Love and Neon Bull, both directed by award-winning director Gabriel Mascaro. Divine Love premiered at Sundance Film Festival and was included in the list of “The Best of Sundance” by Hollywood Report Magazine, being also acclaimed at Berlinale a few weeks later. Neon Bull won more than fifteen awards worldwide, including the 72nd Venice International Film Festival, 15th Marrakesh International Film Festival and four awards at Festival do Rio 2015, being classified by the website Screendaily as a “ravishingly shot and creatively scored feature”, and “replete with a lovely score by Otavio Santos” (Cinema Scope Magazine). For this work Otavio was nominated for the Ibero-American Fenix Awards under the category Best Original Score.
Interested in film music since the early age of 15, Otavio decided to break into the industry and moved to Los Angeles in 2009 in order to attend to the Film Scoring Program at UCLA, one of the top film scoring programs in the world (presenting John Williams and Michael Giacchino as alumni). During the program, Otavio was honored to receive the BMI/Jerry Goldsmith Scholarship as a public acknowledgement of his outstanding musical abilities.
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After concluding Cum Laude, Otavio was promptly invited to join the team of Canadian Emmy Award-winning composer Trevor Morris (The Tudors, Borgias, Vikings), where he could experience the workflow of what is currently one of the world’s busiest film music studios.
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Since his return to Brazil, Otavio has been establishing partnerships with directors and producers and composing for shorts, feature films and documentaries of national scope, like Grael Brothers and The Swimmer, both for ESPN.
Away from the screens, Otavio has teamed up with the Brazilian singer Ivete Sangalo to compose the soundtrack for the Brazilian Rhythmic Gymnastics Team for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, allowing him to make history in the Brazilian sport scene, being the first composer ever to have two songs specially commissioned and performed in the same edition of the Olympic Games. Composer and arranger of the National RG Team since 2011, Otavio has recently provided an arrangement of the traditional song “Tico-Tico no Fubá”, which accompanied the Brazilian team as they won the Gold Medal during the 2015 Toronto Pan Am.
At the moment, Otavio continues to invest in his international career while preparing to score his second American feature film, just after recently concluding his PhD in Music at UNICAMP, one of Brazil’s most prestigious Music programs.
Ibero-American
Fenix Awards