KQEK.com -- Interview with film composer / Immediate Music founder Yoav Goren

For over 20 years, Immediate Music has provided various media outlets with music specifically designed for commercial use – more specifically, trailer soundtracks – and if the company’s name or chief composer, Yoav Goren, don’t ring a bell, the music is instantly recognizable.

Goren’s company, staffed with several composers, is known for a particularly epic sound – big orchestra and large choirs – and many of the cues are designed to provoke audiences using a mix of romanticism, rock, and liturgical harmonies.

They’re tailor-made for films with sweeping character sagas, plights of the disenfranchised, and historical tales where a pivotal battle decides the outcome of a people / a nation / or one really athletic hero capable of single-handedly bashing down an army of barbarians with just a sword and a love for a hot princess.

On CD, Immediate’s epic sound catalogue was previously available to companies via a 3-volume Themes for Orchestra and Choir. The collection included orchestral and mixed chorus tracks, downward & upward spiraling cues, and a few main themes spun into varying levels of orchestral epic-ness so music editors could tailor the cues for their hero vs. barbarians trailer into a taut audio-video montage of dramatic peaks & valleys with a giant cacophonic punchline.

What’s quickly evident is Goren’s ability to grasp the core elements favoured by publicity departments. Some cuts are inspired by specific original soundtrack cues once appropriated by music editors for trailers (think “Bishop’s Countdown” from James Horner’s Aliens), yet the Immediate house sound is distinct, which explains why it’s influenced our perception of what constitutes an epic movie soundtrack: it’s core is classical Hollywood, but the scope reflects audiences’ contemporary expectations of what sonic elements ought to be inherent to an emotionally wrenching saga.

The interest in Immediate’s music inevitably resulted in a trio of CDs, branded Trailerhead, and for the release of the final volume – Trailerhead: Triumph– I’ve uploaded a lengthy podcast where Goren discusses his entry into trailer music, and his unique sound.

 

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