Roque Baños López is a Spanish music composer. Baños graduated from Boston's Berklee College of Music in 1995 and has since scored both Spanish and English-language films. He has received numerous awards for his compositional work, including the Spanish Goya Award for Best Original Score in both 2008 and 2009.[1]
Early life and education
Born in Jumilla, Baños has been involved in music his whole life, his father being a saxophonist, and he himself completed a basic saxophone degree at the Upper Music Conservatory of Murcia. In 1986, Baños moved to Madrid where he attended the Real Conservatorio Superior and continued his musical studies, obtaining professional degrees in the saxophone, piano, harmony, counterpoint, composition, instrumentation and conducting. In 1993 he received a grant from the Ministry of Culture to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and it was as a student at Berklee that he would develop his aspirations to compose film scores and jazz.[1]
Professional career
Although Baños initially developed his skills as a concert musician, he soon decided to focus on composition. His approach to film music is due to his education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA. There, he studied music composition with David Spear and orchestral direction with Gregory Fridge, specializing in composition for film scores and jazz, winning several awards, among them the Robert Share Award for showing the highest dramatic level in the area of film score. He graduated with summa cum laude in the branches of film score and jazz composition.
Back in Spain, after a brief period in the short film scene, he began to compose for the big screen thanks to actor Gabino Diego. Since then he has composed many works along with fellow Spanish composer Alberto Iglesias.
He scored an English-language major studio film for the first time with the 2013 horror film Evil Dead.
Musical influences
His music is notable for a great jazz influence, as showed in the majority of his works and especially in El robo más grande jamás contado (The Biggest Robbery Never Told).