Matteo Zingales

Back then, however, in those early days, Zingales thought he wanted to be a director. “I asked my parents who was in charge of the film,” Zingales says now, over Zoom, in a room filled with instruments and keyboards. “And they said, ‘the director.’ But then as I grew up, I realised what was really moving me was the music.”

Obsessed with the films of Steven Spielberg and their accompanying John Williams scores, Zingales picked up piano lessons. Later, as a teenager, he’d go on trips to Sydney’s Darling Harbour to see the Cuban festivals that took place there, and then come home and sequester himself off in his room, writing melodies inspired by the trips on his sequencer. “I would just play Cuban music. And my mum was like, ‘How did you pick that up so fast?’”

Self-directed from that point on, Zingales has shaped his life around making “music for picture.”  That meant meeting a lot of fellow creatives. After university, Zingales rubbed shoulders with talented musicians and composers – one of whom got him a job at the music company Supersonic, where he wrote his own music. Zingales impressed those at Supersonic enough that now, years on, he has set up his own company with them.

Other accolades have come along the way. Zingales won top gongs at AACTA, nabbed two Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards, and composed scores for the heralded films 99 Homes, The Hunter, and HBO’s Fahrenheit 451.

But as Zingales’ career has flourished, he has always stayed true to his early influences – particularly the minimalist composers that he connected with as an adolescent. Key amongst those is Arvo Part, the Estonian musician who can create entire worlds out of the slow, spaced out progression of fingers across piano keys. “I loved 20th century composers through uni – they opened a lot of doors,” he says. “I realised, ‘Oh, you can write in this deep [way].’

“What Arvo Part evokes in music is so important to me – he has this amazing ability to have two simple notes, a few phrases, and you can still feel the whole piece. It’s such an emotional, minimal way of writing. Which works amazingly in film and documentaries.”

Indeed, Zingales’ music has that same ability to carry entire sonic worlds in just a few extended notes. His score for A Fire Inside is so impactful precisely because it is so effortless; so restrained. The film, which looks at those who were affected by the 2019-2020 bushfire season, never overplays its hand, instead honing in on the quiet resilience of those who battled the flames. And so Zingales’ score never overplays its hand either. It moves slowly, subtly, and then, before you know it, it’s overwhelmed you.

This, Zingales explains, is something that he has learned over time – that old rule that less is more. “When I was watching films when I was younger, I watched films where the music was really amazing, but the film was not great. And sometimes the film was really great, and the music was not matching the film. But it’s interesting – the way I’ve come to see it is, the more amazing the film, the more amazing the performances, the less you have to do with the score.”

Zingales is often talked about as one of the most innovative composing talents in the country – in 2008, he was chosen by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of the top talents breaking ground in the field. From where he sits, that kind of change is coming from all sides in the industry. Music for films is diversifying – and that can only mean good things.

“An eclectic group of people have come into composing – not just people with a composing background. People like Jonny Greenwood. He has a classical background in terms of training – but there’s this change where people from all genres, all styles are coming to film scoring.”

He smiles. “I think that’s really exciting.”