Soundtrack News: Quinceañero Original Motion Short Film Soundtrack Out Now

PHX Music has digitally released the Original Motion Short Film Soundtrack to Justin Floyd’s vision come to life, in the musical Quinceañero. The music is composed by Max Aruj and Steffen Thum, with lyrics by Antonio Sol, and songs performed by cast of the film. The album comprised of eight richly melodic Latin songs, including the film’s focus track “Ve El Momento” (“See the Moment”). The film recently premiered at Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF), as part of its Latinx Inclusion Series, in partnership with Netflix.

Max Aruj is a composer born and raised in Los Angeles. His latest feature release is Crawl, produced by Sam Raimi, and directed by Alexandre Aja. Aruj joined the Assassin’s Creed universe for the recently released Wrath of the Druids. Other upcoming releases this year include Eytan Rockaway’s Lansky, starring Harvey Keitel, and Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Ice Road, starring Liam Neeson. Aruj co-produced Gryffin’s Deluxe orchestral album (2020). He composed additional music on Mission: Impossible – Fallout for Lorne Balfe, and on The Crown, for Hans Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams. This past year he wrote additional music on HBO’s His Dark Materials.

Steffen Thum is a composer for film, TV, games, commercials and mixed media, based in Berlin. He wrote the scores for feature films Crawl (Paramount) and iBoy (Netflix), as well as TV series This Is Football (Amazon) and Story of God (National Geographic), among others. Steffen’s music can be heard in over 60 international productions, including Mission Impossible: Fallout, Bad Boys for Life, Ad Astra, The Lego Batman Movie, The Crown, and His Dark Materials.

In the 20-minute whimsical musical, Gabriel is on the verge of his 15th birthday and dreams of having his own quinceañera, a tradition reserved for girls. When his father – steeped in tradition – sets himself against the quinceañero, the timid boy will have to rally his family to make his dream come true.

Composer Max Aruj had the following to say:

“Having director Justin Floyd entrust us to bring his vision to life in a new style was both exciting and horrifying. But having an amazing team in Steffen and Antonio, made the process a blast. Additionally, writing a song like ‘Ve El Momento’ was a first – I never thought I’d get to do that, but here we are!”

Steffen Thum added:

“Writing a musical is a particular kind of challenge, going beyond just scoring to picture, as we’ve done before, so it was a bit of a daunting task. It was Justin’s vision and strong ambition that pulled us in, while Antonio’s expertise was crucial in getting the lyrics right. It all grew from there, and our actors and dancers brought the songs to life beautifully.”

Track List: