The moment the clock strikes midnight, and the fireworks rain down, is one of many emotions: release, awe, and maybe most of all euphoria.
It’s that euphoria that the composer of this year’s 12-minute firework soundtrack, Jono Ma, has locked into the fabric of the song and the iconic moment of ringing in the New Year in the Harbour City.
The midnight fireworks show is curated around the soundtrack and will be broadcast to an estimated 425 million globally and over one million people around the Sydney foreshore via television and radio partners.
Ma’s city studio looks over the very bridge that will become the centrepiece of tonight’s display, and told news.com.au it became a recurrent point in the track’s creation.
“When I was commissioned to do this job, the bridge became my muse for the year because I was literally able to just look at it while I was working on the music,” he said.
“It became this kind of symbolism in the whole concept of a bridge, it’s about connection – you’re connecting one side of the city to the other.
“New Year’s Eve is all about togetherness, and the vocals in the song are about that togetherness and unity, and the bridge became a symbol for that. Bringing two entities that are separated by an obstacle back together; that was cool to lean into.”
Despite producing the song, the Sonar Music Co-founder is as excited and unprepared as anyone to see the midnight display.
“I’ve seen visualisations of the lighting design on its own, and then I’ve seen visualisations of the projections on their own. I’ve seen very basic visualisations of certain moments of the fireworks.
“But I absolutely have not seen anything where all those different faculties are combined into the one show,” he said.
“A little QuickTime window on my laptop is not going to do the nine tons of pyrotechnics on the Harbour Bridge justice.”
Ma himself will be ringing in the New Year at the Opera House forecourt with his brother and niece, as well as the other creatives who worked on the display.
“We were down there last night for the AV brightness test, and I think that’s when it all really sank in. They were testing the projections on the pylons, and there’s my name in big, bold letters on the Harbour Bridge. It feels surreal, to be honest, but [I’m] really proud and really pumped.”
The track inspired the fireworks organisers to do two Harbour Bridge waterfalls for the first time, also bridging the musical genres by moving from electric dance into soul and finishing on a heavy, almost drum and bass dubstep note.
“When I was working on the first drafts, I kind of just thought ‘I’m just going to do my thing, I’m just going to go for it’ and that [ending] is really that.
“I thought [it] was going to get paired back. I thought they were going to be like, ‘all right, Jono, relax, chill out, let’s keep it family friendly,’ but they didn’t.
“Everyone loved it, especially the other creatives, because it’s still energy. It’s all momentum and energy, and I think the other creatives really love the fact that they could then express themselves in this sort of cathartic release at the end.”
It’s a big New Year’s all around with Ma’s latest project doing the music for the new TV series ‘Run’ launching on New Year’s Day as well.
Ma started working on the New Year’s track at the beginning of the year and submitted an early version with structure and tempo about midway through in order for the visual and fireworks teams to start building the display around it.
Ma recently returned to his native city of Sydney after an extended period of time living and working abroad, where he had the opportunity to work with some of the biggest names in music.
“Kieran (Four Tet) and Sam (Floating Points) are really good friends of mine. I played the Sydney Myer Music Bowl with them, doing a live ambient set.
“And then Underworld, I was [at their show] last night. I know Karl Hyde from Underworld quite well because when I moved to the UK and Jagwar Ma was getting played on BBC 6, he heard. So he messaged me out of the blue.
“So I get a message from the Underworld Instagram account, and he’s like, ‘hey, it’s Karl here, I heard your music on BBC 6, and I had to pull over because it just sounded so familiar to me, and I felt I needed to know the person behind this. Would you like to come up to our studio in Essex and work on some music together?”
“So I was like, hell yeah. Karl picked me up, we met at Liverpool Station, and we caught a train up to his place in Essex and worked on a couple of tracks.”
Ma said it was a “huge honour, life dream and serendipitous” to be able to work on the New Year’s track, he is currently working on producing The Avalanches next record.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au ’
