Genres Orchestral Associated acts The Spitfires Occupation(s) Composer, musician Name Marc Baril | Instruments Electric guitar Role Composer Years active 1993–present | |
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Albums Crash - Tag Team Racing, Crash Of The Titans - Original Game Music Score Music director Blind Detective, Happy Face Killer, Seeds, Souffle Au Chocolat Nominations Hong Kong Film Award for Best Original Film Song Similar People Andy Lau, Sammi Cheng, Lin Xi Profiles | ||
Halloween Havoc - The Simpsons: Hit & Run Music Extended
Marc Baril is a Canadian video game composer and musician. He has composed music for over 20 titles. He is best known for his compositions for the Crash Bandicoot franchise, The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Simpsons: Road Rage, and Scarface: The World Is Yours.
Contents
- Halloween Havoc The Simpsons Hit Run Music Extended
- Early life
- Career
- Musical style and influences
- Video games
- Film
- References
Early life
Baril was born and raised in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. His first instrument was a second-hand electric guitar, bought with savings from his paper route. His first band, The Spitfires, practiced in a laundry room where the washer and dryer were part of their rhythm section. As a young adult, he traveled around the world for 5 years, and after a trip to Australia and South Asia that left him penniless, he landed in Vancouver in 1989 and followed a passion to study music. He was self-taught up until the time he obtained a diploma from the Vancouver Community College in Jazz guitar and Composition. He then pursued and received a bachelor's degree from the School of Music of the University of British Columbia in 1996.
Career
In 1993, Baril met a sound programmer from the then-small company Radical Entertainment during a jam session with a group of people and took up the sound programmer's offer to make music for a video game. Baril was contracted to compose the music for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game Speed Racer in My Most Dangerous Adventures. The results were so satisfactory that Baril was offered a full-time job, becoming the first audio content creator hired at Radical Entertainment.
In 2007 and 2008, Baril was commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. His music was performed by several local artists and ensembles and he recorded his music with full orchestras at 20th Century Fox's Newman stage in Los Angeles and at the Mosfilm Studios in Moscow. In July 2008, he was one of the twelve participants selected among hundreds of emerging composers worldwide to attend the exclusive and prestigious month-long ASCAP Television & Film Scoring Workshop with Richard Bellis held in Los Angeles. There, he had the opportunity to meet and chat with top Hollywood composers Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard and John Debney.
Baril became a freelance composer in 2009 after working under Radical Entertainment for 15 years.
Musical style and influences
Baril is known for writing catchy melodies as well as powerful and moving themes. Although he has written and produced many electronic scores for games, he is equally comfortable and proficient in writing for orchestra in a more cinematic style.