San Francisco, CA - October 30, 2008 – Award winning composer Inon Zur (Prince of Persia The Two Thrones®, Prince of Persia Warrior Within®) and celebrated musician Stuart Chatwood (Prince of Persia®: The Sands of Time, Prince of Persia Warrior Within®, Prince of Persia The Two Thrones®) have created a compelling and epic original score for Ubisoft's new Prince of Persia video game. Developed by Ubisoft's Montreal studio, the game opens an entirely new chapter in the Prince of Persia universe in addition to introducing a fresh illustrative art style, evolved combat system, and open world structure. Prince of Persia is scheduled to release December 2, 2008.
The new Prince of Persia score features eastern ethnic instrumentation blended with a cinematic orchestral approach, combined with a different musical treatment for each of the game's four lands. Lead composer Inon Zur contributes dramatic and majestic orchestral music performed by the Northwest Sinfonia and recorded with Arabic flutes and duduk. Zur's compositions, which include the Main Theme, capture the complex emotional evolution of the characters as well as immersing players during gameplay and in select locations.
"Inon's music underlines sumptuously the dramatic and the cinematic qualities of the story,” said Simon Landry, Music Supervisor for Prince of Persia. "Bringing together, in a video game perspective, tragedy, humor, violent confrontations, romance and moral dilemmas is a huge challenge but the new Prince of Persia soundtrack makes it happen, reaching new artistic heights and emotional depth.”
Stuart Chatwood, a member of the renowned Canadian rock band The Tea Party, brings his distinct rhythmic style and unique palette of world music instruments that draws upon the cultural sounds of Persia. In addition to augmenting world music library sounds and mixing his own recordings of multiple instruments from his travels worldwide, including Santoors, Sarods, Sitar, Zournas, and Tamboura, Chatwood performs ethnic instruments such as the Oud, Zourna and snake charmer flutes. The intricately layered music mechanism playing musical variations by both composers enhances the gameplay in such a way that is totally adaptive and embraces the gamer's performance, as if the composers were scoring in real-time, following the player's action.
"The musical challenge for the Prince of Persia soundtrack was to further push the interactivity, the diversity and the emotional complexity,” adds Landry. "The colossal achievement of Inon and Stuart's work is to have composed such a powerful and impressive interactive musical odyssey. The complementary approach of these two skilled composers pushes musical boundaries and creates a fascinating and authentic world.”
All information contained in this news post comes directly from a press release sent out by Ubisoft.
