Austin Wintory

Austin Wintory’s career is driven by a passion for exploration and innovation in music. His fascination with composing began at the age of ten, inspired by Jerry Goldsmith’s scores for Patton and A Patch of Blue. In high school he composed for student orchestras, and he went on to study with Morten Lauridsen, Charles Fussell and Erica Muhl at NYU and USC. Never confined to a single medium, he has worked across concert music, film, video games and beyond.

In 2012, after three years of development, the PlayStation 3 game Journey was released and became Sony’s fastest-selling title, with its soundtrack debuting high on the Billboard charts, a first for a video game score. Journey made history as the first video game score ever nominated for a GRAMMY, and won a D.I.C.E. Award, two BAFTA awards and IGN’s “Overall Music of the Year”. Recorded with the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra and leading soloists, the score has since been performed in concert halls around the world.

His next major project, The Banner Saga, began as a Kickstarter campaign. Recorded with the Dallas Wind Symphony and featuring Malukah, Peter Hollens and Taylor Davis, the 2014 score earned his fourth and fifth BAFTA nominations and the first peer-voted ASCAP Composers’ Choice Award for Best Video Game Score of the Year. In 2015 he composed a chamber score for Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, recorded at Abbey Road Studios, which brought a sixth BAFTA nomination and another ASCAP Composers’ Choice Award. In 2016 he scored ABZÛ, the debut title of Giant Squid Studios, for orchestra, choir and harp ensemble, earning a further D.I.C.E. Award nomination.
His more recent game scores include The Pathless, Aliens: Fireteam Elite and Towerborne, and he contributed orchestral music to Hades II. In 2026 he won the GRAMMY for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games for Sword of the Sea, more than a decade after Journey’s historic nomination.

Beyond games, Austin has scored more than 60 films, including the Sundance favourites Captain Abu Raed and Grace. His concert work remains just as active, from “Journey LIVE” with Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble to the premieres of “This Gaming Life” with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and “Mythos”. He regularly conducts his music with orchestras around the world and co-hosts podcasts including Game Maker’s Notebook.

In September 2024 Wintory brought this experience to FAME’S Institute for the Video Game Music Orchestral Course. After Timothy Redmond had prepared the orchestra, Wintory took over the rehearsals and showed students how game scores are composed, orchestrated and performed, including their musical structures and interactive nature. He presented game music as a serious and growing field of orchestral work and a real career path in soundtrack performance, media composition and recording. The course culminated in the “Level One Concert”, a multimedia programme conducted by Wintory at a packed Kolarac Hall in Belgrade, featuring music from The Legend of Zelda, Fallout 4 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps alongside his own scores for Journey, ABZÛ, The Pathless and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The next day, students joined him for a discussion with game designers, producers and programmers at Mad Head Games in Belgrade.