Fernando Velázquez (born 22 November 1976) is a Spanish concert, film and TV composer. Among his best known works are the film soundtracks for Juan Antonio Bayona’s films: The Orphanage, The Impossible and A Monster Calls, for which he won the Goya Film Award for Best Original Composition in 2017.
Life and career
He studied cello at a number of different musical conservatories, including, from 1990 to 1993, Andrés Isasi in Getxo, Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga in Bilbao (1993–1997) and the Conservatory of Music Jesús Guridi in Vitoria, where he won the Excellence Award at the end of his studies. He then travelled to Paris to continue his education. He studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Madrid from 2003 to 2007, and also holds a degree in Contemporary History from the University of Deusto (1994–1998).
From these studies came a number of opportunities for collaboration including a two year stint as a cellist for the Classical Orchestra of Santa Cecilia (1995–1997), Edinburgh University's Music Society Symphonic Orchestra in 1998, and at the Basque Country's Young Orchestra between 1999 and 2004.
In 1999, Velázquez started his career as a film composer, working with directors such as Koldo Serra for his short film Amor de Madre as well as El Trabajo, by Igor Legarreta and Emilio Pérez Pérez. He continued composing for other short films such as Torre (Óskar Santos, 2000); Hauspo Soinua (Inaz Fernández, 2000); Retruc (Francesc Talavera, 2001); Loops (Tucker Dávila, 2001); Amor, dinero y salud, por este orden (Marc Vigil, 2001); El hombre esponja (J. A. Bayona, 2002); El tren de la bruja (Koldo Serra, 2004); A las 7:35 de la mañana (Nacho Vigalondo, 2004); Temporada baja, (Sergio G. Sánchez, 2003); El soñador (Óskar Santos, 2004); El gran Zambini (Igor Legarreta y Emilio Pérez, 2005) and Dime que yo (Mateo Gil, 2008), which won the Goya Film Award for Best Short Film.
Among his compositions for feature films, which now number more than 50, it is possible to find films such as Agujeros en el cielo (Pedro Santos, 2004); The Birthday (Eugenio Mira, 2004), El síndrome de Svensson (Kepa Sojo, 2006); The Backwoods (Koldo Serra, 2006); Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, 2007); The Orphanage (J.A. Bayona, 2007), the latter film which earned Velázquez a nomination for Best Original Score at the Goya Film Awards of 2008. Additional titles include The Zone (Rodrigo Plá, 2007), Shiver (Isidro Ortiz, 2008); Sexy Killer (Miguel Martí, 2008); Spanish Movie (Javier Ruiz Caldera, 2009); For the Good of Others (Oskar Santos, 2010); Lope (Andrucha Waddington, 2010); Julia's Eyes (Guillem Morales, 2010); Devil (John Dowdle, 2010); 5 metros cuadrados (Max Lemke, 2011); BabyCall (Pål Sletaune, 2011); The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012), which saw him earn his second nomination for Best Original Film Score in the Goya Film Awards of 2013. Mama (Andrés Muschietti, 2013); The Last Days (David Pastor and Álex Pastor, 2013); Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang (Oskar Santos, 2013); The Adventurer: The Curse of the Midas Box (Jonathan Newman, 2013); Spanish Affair (Emilio Martínez-Lázaro, 2014); Hercules (Brett Ratner, 2014); Crimson Peak (Guillermo del Toro, 2015); Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Burr Steers, 2016); Gernika (Koldo Serra, 2016); Zip & Zap and the Captain's Island (Oskar Santos, 2016). A Monster Calls (J.A. Bayona, 2017) winner of the Goya Film Award for Best Original Score in 2017. The Invisible Guest (Oriol Paulo, 2016); Ozzy (Alberto Rodríguez y Nacho La Casa, 2016); The Invisible Guardian (Fernando González Molina, 2017); Deep (Julio Soto Gurpide, 2017); Submergence (Wim Wenders, 2017); Marrowbone ( Sergio G. Sánchez, 2017); Thi Mai, rumbo a Vietnam (Patricia Ferreira, 2017); Que baje Dios y lo vea (Curro Velázquez, 2017); Las leyes de la termodinámica (Mateo Gil, 2017); Los futbolísimos (Miguel Ángel Lamata, 2017), Superlópez (Javier Ruiz Caldera, 2018), Durante la tormenta (2018), Sergio (2020), Poderoso Victoria (2022) o Los renglones torcidos de Dios (2022).
