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Composer from Williams Lake wins national award for scoring made-for-TV-movie

Hard work and persistence pays off with a career in the music industry
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Cameron Catalano with the SOCAN award for Achievement in Made-for-TV-Movie Award he was presented with at a gala awards ceremony in Toronto on Oct. 17, 2022. (SOCAN photo)

Cameron Catalano dreamt of pursuing music as a career.

Catalano last spoke to the Tribune when the band he was playing with while living in Williams Lake, Metrognome, released an album in 2005.

Since then, he has relocated to the Lower Mainland, recently moving to New Westminster, he and his partner Teresa Prouting now have a six-month-old-son named Quinton and he has won a SOCAN award for a film score he wrote.

SOCAN is the organization in Canada which manages rights management and music licensing for Canadian composers and musicians.

At the gala awards ceremony in Toronto, he and his wife were at the event in person, where Tom Cochrane was there to receive his Cultural Impact Award from SOCAN for Life is a Highway and the award was presented by Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson. Drake and The Weekend also won awards, but sent representatives in their place.

Catalano and Prouting were seated at a table with Daryl Bennett and other renowned Canadian composers.

“It was quite an honour to be among such esteemed company,” remarked Catalano of the event, especially given how composers creating film scores are often working in relative isolation.

“It was nice to get out,” said the new father.

His composition work has also been nominated for LEO Awards which celebrate excellence in film and television in B.C.

He knew he had been nominated for the SOCAN award, but winning the Achievement in Made-for-TV-Movie Award was still a surprise. He won for his work writing the score for The Wrong Patient, which was a made-for-TV-movie produced by Reel One Entertainment.

The film was shown on HBO, Crave, Lifetime and other networks and showed in countries around the world. It was one of the most broadcast movies in 2019 and 2020.

There have been a lot of steps from releasing an album in Williams Lake to writing music for global television and film production, with a lot of persistence to get where he is today —which is working on scoring his fifth film of the year so far.

He started out as an audio describer to help make film and television more accessible to the visually impaired by describing what was happening on the screen.

Through this work he managed to gain contacts in the industry and sent in demo recordings of his compositions.

It was four years of continuing to send in demos before his work was deemed to be a high enough caliber to be accepted.

“It was a lot of persistence, and a lot of practice and a lot of determination,” acknowledged Catalano.

But there were other factors in his evolution and development, including many seasons accompanying a live improvised soap opera called Sin Peaks. Making up one and a half hours of live music on the fly for each performance helped him learn how to score.

He was also on the board of directors with Vancouver Pro Musica, which is a non profit organization which helps promote new works by B.C. composers. Through his work with the organization, he learned how each instrument works and spoke with different professional instrumentalists.

Now, Catalano is busy with both a young son and a busy career in the industry he always hoped to work in.

He recently completed scoring two romantic comedies which will be out sometime in the new year.

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ruth.lloyd@wltribune.com

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Ruth Lloyd

About the Author: Ruth Lloyd

After moving back to Williams Lake, where I was born and graduated from school, I joined the amazing team at the Williams Lake Tribune in 2021.
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