Composer Gustavo Santaolalla: My Dubai concert pays tribute to the moment that changed my life

The renowned Argentine musician will perform at Dubai Opera on Saturday

Gustavo Santaolalla, who is best known for his Oscar-winning film scores, is performing at Dubai Opera on Saturday. AP

On Saturday night at the Dubai Opera, two-times Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santoalalla, 73, makes his first performance in the UAE in celebration of the moment that changed everything.

In 1999, Santoalalla had just released his acclaimed album Ronroco, named after the small stringed instrument invented in the Andes Mountains, not far from his home country of Argentina.

“The album was picked up by college radio stations in the US, and then I played on a programme called Morning Becomes Eclectic. Then one day, I got a phone call from director Michael Mann, who told me that he wanted to meet me and that he wanted to use one of the pieces for The Insider,” Santaolalla tells The National.

That piece, titled Iguazu, has become a staple of film and television, also used in Mann’s own Collateral starring Tom Cruise, Alejandro Innaritu’s Babel, as well as Deadwood, 24 and Top Gear.

It also led him on a path towards becoming of the most renowned film and television composers of his time, scoring such acclaimed projects as Brokeback Mountain, The Motorcycle Diaries, Making a Murderer and The Last of Us, not to mention his award-winning four projects with close friend Innaritu.

None of that success would have been possible if, one day 13 years earlier, Santaolalla hadn’t wandered into a music shop and stumbled upon the stringed instrument, which had been invented in 1968 in Bolivia, for the first time. He was then a popular rock musician and guitar hero in Argentina, known for his energetic shows with his group Arco Iris.

“I remember the moment when I went into the store and saw the ronroco. I said, ‘What is this?’ I grabbed it and started playing it. And the connection that happened between that instrument and my soul was incredible,” Santoalalla says.

He started collecting recordings of music for himself, a personal and globally-influenced exploration of an instrument he would find time for in between his work as a rock musician and in-demand record producer.

But he kept those recordings for himself, only finding the courage to share them with someone else when he was hired to produce an album for Jaime Torres, the most legendary player of the charango, a smaller, similar instrument to the ronroco.

“I gave the recordings to Jaime, and told him, this is something some friends of mine did. I didn’t tell him it was me. Then three days later, he said, ‘You are the guy playing here. I know this is you,’” Santaolalla continues.

“I said to him apologetically, ‘Master, I don’t play with proper technique.’ He said, ‘Listen, there are no rules of how to play. You find the spirit you connected with – the spirit of the instrument.”

Torres convinced Santoalalla to compile the recordings, which became Ronroco, which he will perform in its entirety at Dubai Opera, along with selections from its follow-up Camino, released in 2014.

Sanaolalla’s music is known for its intense emotion, which is what has made his accompaniment particularly powerful when paired with heartbreaking stories. If there is any particular secret to that power, it is in Sanaolalla’s connection to the instrument, which he’s gone on to use in his acclaimed work with Inarritu, as well as The Last of Us games and continuing series.

“The connection I have with that instrument is really something special. It’s been with me for innumerable movies and series. It always finds a place. This concert is dedicated to the music that comes to me through that instrument,’” Sanaolalla says.

“I’ve been doing concerts devoted to the music of The Last of Us in London and in Poland, which have a very different mood – almost wild, at times. But these latest concerts, including the one I will be performing in Dubai Opera, have a different sort of emotion. It’s introspective. And it’s beautiful what happens with the audience and the music – I can’t wait for Dubai to experience that with us.”