Composer
Website: instagram.com/panchomusic
Most recent: The Unbreakable Boy
A piano player since he was a Star Wars-loving 15-year-old, Pancho Burgos-Goizueta knew he wanted to be a professional musician, but being born in Madrid and far from Hollywood, he never knew film scoring was a possibility until he enrolled at Berklee. Today, he has written music for a genre-spanning body of work, most recently for the Jon Gunn-directed The Unbreakable Boy in which Burgos-Goizueta provides a musical backdrop to reflect this emotional family drama about resilience, hope, and joy. “I’m an open-minded guy. If the film is well-done, I like to think of myself as versatile and don’t mind the genre so much. It just makes me happy to make music that I care about,” he says. “When I first discovered film music, it was visceral at the time. I love the magic of it. I used to say I consider myself more of a filmmaker that writes music, because music is such an integral part of it.”
For The Unbreakable Boy, a true story about a young boy who faces life with Autism and Brittle Bones Disease, Burgos-Goizueta said he tried to approach the film’s score through the lens of its protagonist—“a really happy kid who sees the best in every day, even in the more serious moments.” Burgos-Goizueta, who has experience teaching piano to children with Autism, noted that his students tended to like repetitive notes, which he brought into his score with playful, childlike instruments like ukulele and glockenspiel that give the film a lighthearted ambience.
Apart from the usual advice—networking, seeking mentors—that all aspiring film composers should abide by, Burgos-Goizueta also imparts an important piece of wisdom he picked up in his career journey: “I graduated Berklee at 28, didn’t get my first assistant job until 30, and wrote my first film at 34. I wish someone had said: don’t wait. Just suck at it for a while. Ira Glass from This American Life has a segment on this idea. You just have to evolve and close that gap."
