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Most musicians dream of playing to a stadium; Sydney composer and producer Jono Ma is preparing to play to half a billion people globally.
Tasked with composing the soundtrack to Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks, the Sonar Music co-founder isn’t interested in a slow burn.
Jono Ma is composing the soundtrack to accompany the New Year’s Eve fireworks spectacular. Credit: Louie Douvis
His strategy for the world’s biggest stage? Start with a “glorious blast” of acid house and don’t let up until the last midnight sky burst.
“I wanted to start big and explosive,” he says. “There’s no time for slow builds on New Year’s Eve. I went for the highest impact from the start.”
Crafting the 12-minute soundtrack to the fireworks show took Ma through 17 drafts. His final cut is built for maximum impact from the very first second: from Mississippi gospel to heavy rave and full orchestral swells, the musician is bridge-hopping through genres to create a sonic explosion every bit equal to the pyrotechnics.
“I chose to focus on reaching the right energy level using the musical language that I best understand, which is essentially dance music,” he says. “There’s a universality to any musical language, so I think as long as there’s an earnest intent and the right energy, it should translate to everyone in the moment.”
Jono Ma aims to start big and to keep up the tempo until the last.Credit: Louie Douvis
City of Sydney awards the composer’s job to a new Australian musician each year. Last year’s fireworks display was synchronised to a score by Luna Pan, an award-winning screen, advertising and game composer.
It’s the biggest audience a composer is likely ever to have. The soundtrack forms the basis for the design of the midnight fireworks show and is broadcast by television and radio partners to one million people around the harbour foreshore and around 425 million globally.
Ma has plenty of experience building sound palettes as composer of the original score for Animal Kingdom and from DJing with Tame Impala and Four Tet. He is a co-founder of Sonar Music, which specialises in television and film soundtracks, along with David McCormack (who voices Bluey’s Bandit and is frontman for indie band Custard), Matteo Zingales, Antony Partos and Andrew Lancaster.
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“Before I started working on the music, I was tapping into this childhood memory of watching the fireworks on the harbour foreshore with my brother,” Ma says. He thinks he was about seven at the time.
“We had a little ghetto blaster – a portable radio – and we were scanning through the different channels as the fireworks were lighting up the bridge. I wanted to somewhat recreate these bold, dynamic shifts in the music, dramatic tempo shifts, and unexpected palette flips between genres. I think this helps to keep the music flowing, and also gives all the other creative teams – [Fortunato] Foti [pyrotechnics] and Ziggy [Ziegler, lighting] and Vandal [pylon projections] – lots of moments to hit with impact.”
The 12-minute soundtrack is loosely titled Higher Together, named after a line sung by Annie and the Caldwells, a soul group from Mississippi whose soaring vocals are featured on the soundtrack.
“At the time, the line just felt like words that helped that feeling of elation,” says Ma. “As the year has gone on, the line has taken on new meaning; it feels more potent in us staying together through dark times and transcending them to higher places.”
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