Centennial College is a place where students can transform their passion into real careers, and one of those students is Andres Galindo Arteaga. Originally a classical guitarist from Colombia, Andres came to Canada looking to broaden his musical future. What he found at Centennial College’s Music Industry Arts and Performance program set him on a path to industry success in film and television composition.
Today, Andres is a busy professional composer with an impressive list of credits. Most recently, he won a CASMA Award for Best Original Score for a Television Movie for his work on Trapped in the Spotlight. When we connected with him, he was in the middle of a hectic day.
“I've been under a deadline for three feature films,” he says. “I've been catching a breath!” He had six minutes of music to compose that day, a sign that his career is thriving.
Here are the key lessons that shaped his journey, and how Centennial College helped him grow.
How a Classical Guitar Background Sparked a Career in Film Composition
Before he ever thought about composing for the screen, Andres was dedicated to performance.
“My background comes from classical guitar,” Andres says. “When I was in Colombia, I had a trajectory with folkloric music. My goal was primarily to become a classical guitarist or a performing guitar player.”
Andres’s life changed when he moved to Canada as a permanent resident, eager to explore new musical directions.
“I wanted to explore programs outside of Colombia, outside of my country,” he says. “What Centennial’s program did was give me the overall balance of the technical, but also creative, and also business. That sphere of things, and that toolkit was what really grabbed my attention.”
How Centennial’s Music Industry Arts and Performance Program Built His Professional Foundation
In Centennial College’s Music Industry Arts and Performance program, Andres discovered the tools and industry knowledge that would shape his future career and prepare him for work in real-world music production.
“The hands-on experience was everything that I am applying today, that I know today,” Andres says about the program. “That's technical, hands-on experience on working on a DAW, a digital audio workstation, or working with live musicians. A lot of technical mixing, mastering arrangements, and also the day-to-day business of what I do.”
“The foundation that I learned at Centennial was key,” he says about that business aspect. “How a contract can be outlined, what type of contract can be outlined, depending on what the client is looking for, everything is just customized to the gig.”
“Also knowing how to properly mic a player, mix my own music, deliver to the clients, while managing that business portion as well,” he adds. “Centennial really created that essential toolkit for me to go ahead and apply it in the real world.”
Why Creative Adaptability Matters in the Film and TV Music Industry
One of the most valuable lessons Andres took from the program was the ability to adapt creatively and professionally. Working alongside classmates from diverse cultural backgrounds widened his musical perspective and helped him grow as an artist.
“For instance,” Andres says, “one of my peers, my dear friend, Roa Lee, she's a Gayageum player, and she came to Centennial after she did her master's degree on her instrument. Her approach to music, it's very unique, it's very intricate, and it’s very specific.”
“I was asking a lot of questions to my peers that come from very diverse backgrounds,” he says. “Absorbing those ideas, and then adapting and implementing those into my own world gave me a lot of what I do today as a composer.” This openness would shape his signature sound.
“I am known right now in the industry, by producers and filmmakers, to have a very hybrid sound for myself,” he says. That ability to adapt has also prepared him for the wide range of projects he now takes on.
“I am exposed to a wide range of projects, ranging from thrillers to comedy films to documentaries,” he says. “This year, I've done five feature films, one comedy, two thriller films, a feature documentary film and a TV pilot. Those things have a different demands and different approaches musically, so I had to adapt to the task and the mandate from the clients.”
Career-Building Strategies for Aspiring Screen Composers
For Andres, building a career meant treating every opportunity as a chance to grow and make meaningful connections in the industry.
“I think I was very proactive in the industry,” Andres says about how he got to where he is, “which means, at Centennial, I ended up going to those film festivals or those events, and ended up connecting with more filmmakers, and then I kept building those relationships. I was getting referred by word of mouth.”
“At the same time, I was also applying for grants,” he says. “Grants were a huge component of giving me a lot of professional career development tools. And the other one was also accelerator programs.”
“Those three components are being proactive and networking, applying for grants, and being active participant of accelerator programs,” he adds. “Those programs, they exposed me to key decision makers in the industry.”
Another thing to know: Composing is only part of the job.
“Music is probably only 40 or 50 per cent of the job,” he explains. “The rest is networking, pitching, diplomacy, negotiation, evolving to the process. A lot of things need to happen before composing. It’s a lot of conversations and diplomacy, being a team, team player and a good listener.”
“It's not only creating music for the sake of creating,” he says, “but always being there as you're helping to support that vision from the producers or the filmmaker. You're pretty much creating a whole dish specifically for them, with ingredients that they want you to implement, and you experiment and come up with something that will make that dish even better.”
Inside Andres’ CASMA Award Win for Trapped in the Spotlight
For Andres, earning a CASMA Award for his work on Trapped in the Spotlight was a milestone that confirmed his growth as a composer and showed his place in the Canadian screen music scene.
“That was an amazing, amazing milestone in my career,” Andres says about his win. “I'm still pinching myself.” He credits much of the opportunity to strong industry connections.
“Steph Copeland, she was the music supervisor of this particular project,” he explains. “She is an incredible, incredible composer in the Canadian industry, and globally as well, she's a big deal. The way that I got introduced to her was through one of those accelerator programs. She listened my work, and she got back to me one day saying, Andres, I want to pitch your name for this upcoming movie that's happening. Would you be interested? And then I ended up saying yes.”
“She was supervising the music department, so she was helping me achieve the vision of what the producers were going for,” he continues. “I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her.”
Meanwhile, the film itself was a perfect match for his growing skill set.
“Trapped in the Spotlight follows the story of an obsessive music fan of an RnB duo that had a dramatic split 15 years ago,” he explains. “The thriller twist is that he abducts the two of them, getting them to complete their last unfinished album. That gig was at the right time in my professional timeline, in the sense that all the skills that I've acquired up to that moment, I applied. All my chops are baked into that gig.”
“I still can't believe that I got it,” he says about the CASMA award itself, “because I was in a line-up with incredible composers, with Rob Carly, composer of Murdoch Mysteries, Peter Chapman, composer of Working Moms. These other composers, they were A-game in their craft, and to receive this accomplishment and this this acknowledgement, for me, was truly memorable and special. It's a good reminder that the journey just keeps going, and hard work and discipline pays off.”
How Centennial College Helped Shape His Voice as a Composer
Through every stage of his career, Andres credits his progress to the foundation he received at Centennial and the career-focused training he experienced.
“Centennial was my foundation for becoming the professional composer that I am today,” Andres says. “I think all those experiences in classrooms and all those questions that I asked, I am pretty sure that 90 per cent of them, I have now applied in the real world, in real projects.”
“Centennial was also instrumental in developing my own voice,” he says. “A very important key element about my trajectory is that I wouldn't be the composer that I am if it wasn't for crafting and merging all those different styles that I was exposed to from Centennial. The musical voice is very important, you know, a lot of the calls that I get from producers is because I also have a particular sound, a particular approach in music.”
Looking forward, Andres hopes to continue growing his career.
“I have a lot of hopes, you know,” he says about the future. “I hope to land on a full-length series for one of the major TV networks. That will be an incredible milestone. My hopes are, in general, to keep my eyes open for new collaborations with amazing creatives, to keep proactive.”
Andres’ Advice for Future Film and TV Composers
For students hoping to follow a similar path, Andres offers simple but effective advice that aligns with success in music production and composing.
“As cliche as this sounds,” he says, “be open collaboration and creative proposals. Don't withhold from trying things. The thing about success is you have to go through failure, and you have to try things that might be out of your comfort zone.”
“I went into uncharted territories, and then I came back with rewards,” he says, “because film music and post-production work was not my goal from the start, but I ended up opening myself to new ideas and new collaborative possibilities, and that's why I am where I am right now.”
By Anthony Geremia