Chad Cannon

The Film Scorer

As season 3 of The Film Scorer podcast slowly comes to a close (only a few episodes left), Chad Cannon (Ghost of Tsushima: Iki Island) joins the show! Chad and I primarily talk about his latest score, which is for the documentary miniseries Algiers, America, following a high school football team in New Orleans (the Edna Carr Cougars). The score mostly features Chad's modern classical compositions, as well as some New Orleans-centric elements that Chad crafted with a few local musicians. As such, Chad talks about the challenge of scoring around three hours of music, visiting New Orleans to get in touch with the city's musicality, and balancing various musical elements, styles, and genres.

Along the way, we also cover Chad's prolific work in the documentary scoring arena, carving out a bit of a specialization within the field (although he has done a number of fiction films, series, and videogames as well), and how and why the public reception to documentary music differs from that of music for other media. Finally, we briefly touch on Chad's work in arranging for legendary composer Joe Hisaishi, and Chad's upcoming project in which Hisaishi is providing the main theme.

You can find out more about Chad on his website. Algiers, America is currently on Hulu, and while Chad's score is not yet available, many of his other works are available digitally on all major platforms.