Austin Wintory was born on September 9, 1984. He is an American composer who creates music for films and video games. He is well known for writing the music for the video games Flow and Journey. Journey became the first video game soundtrack ever to be nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Early life

Austin Wintory was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1984. He began learning piano when he was ten years old, after his teacher introduced him to composer Jerry Goldsmith. Before he turned ten, Wintory did not play any musical instruments. He also listened to music very little. At sixteen years old, Wintory helped to write and conduct the Cherry Creek High School Orchestra during their performances of the "Spirit of the Cosmos" pieces. Two years later, at eighteen, Wintory conducted the Utah Symphony during its recording of "Cosmos." This project became one of his most well-known works, although he described it as "atrocious garbage." Since 2003, Wintory has composed more than 300 musical scores.

Career

Wintory met Jenova Chen while both were students at the University of Southern California (USC). After connecting with an interactive media student at USC and working on a small game project, Wintory’s name was shared with Chen, who asked him to create music for his thesis project, Flow, later released on PlayStation Network. Wintory, Chen, and Nick Clarke worked together as a team of three to develop the first version of Flow. Wintory noted that Chen had a unique ability to understand information deeply, looking past technical details to focus on the emotional meaning of ideas. At the time, Wintory was studying traditional orchestral music and found the music for Flow to be very different from anything he had written before. He described the pink section of the game, where players control a jellyfish-like creature, as the game’s humorous part, saying the music for this area was almost "circus-like" compared to the rest of the soundtrack.

At first, the developer of Monaco, Andy Schatz, wanted to use licensed music to match the game’s setting, believing the style of music needed was too unusual to hire a composer. However, Wintory convinced Schatz that he could create an original score that matched the game’s vision. Comparing 2D sprite-based games to the silent film era, Wintory agreed that the soundtrack for a game like Monaco should have a sincere yet thoughtful feeling of nostalgia, saying, "There’s no way to just objectively listen to that style of music without automatically being like 'This reminds me of a bygone era.'" Wintory was excited about the chance to create a score with a vintage style that included humor, stating, "When else am I ever going to be asked to write anything remotely like this?"

Wintory will compose the music and conduct a live orchestra for a touring event called BAFTA Games in Concert, which will begin in 2026 and feature music from winners of the British Academy Games Awards.