As of the end of June, over a million gamers have heard SFCM faculty and alumni on the soundtrack to one of the most anticipated AAA games of the year.

Death Stranding 2, the PS5 game from legendary game designer Hideo Kojima, features TAC faculty Daria Novoliantceva, Amelie-Anna Hinman (Assistant Director of the Roots, Jazz, and American Music department), and TAC alum Joi Marchetti handling orchestration and vocals, respectively.

"I was very, very excited about this project not only because it's a huge game, but also because video games have always been so important to me," Hinman says. "When I was a little girl, I would sneak into the computer room at night without my parents knowing and play video games with the sound off, so they wouldn't catch me. And Diablo II had this outrageously amazing soundtrack, so what I would do is listen to the soundtrack during the day so I could sort of play it in my head when I was playing the game on mute at night."

Amelie-Anna Hinman records for the 'Death Stranding 2' soundtrack.

The opportunity came together "all thanks to SFCM, quite frankly," Hinman, who graduated from SFCM in 2021, says. "We did one soundtrack for a VR game called Concrete Genie years ago when I was still a student and Daria was conducting, and she made such a great impression that when the composer Ludvig Forssell pitched a very different approach to the a soundtrack to Hideo Kojima, he thought of her." After an initial "proof of concept" session in July 2023, the team was brought back for two sessions in October.

Daria Novoliantceva works on the soundtrack for 'Death Stranding 2.'

Novoliantceva, meanwhile, was brought on board by Peter Scaturro, Director of Music at Sony Interactive Entertainment and a frequent presence at SFCM via the TAC Department's annual Sony Project, in which students receive a detailed prompt for a video game soundtrack and compose and submit demos to faculty and Sony. Later, the works are recorded by other students at sessions attended by Sony personnel like Scaturro and 2020 SFCM alum Seira McCarthy, who previously worked for Sony before joining Kojima Productions as Music Director in 2024.

"My background is in choir conducting; I sang for a professional choir for nine years in Russia," Novoliantceva says. But because there were ultimately only six voices singing on the soundtrack, Novoliantceva had to organize melodic ideas and harmonies between voices, achieved with multiple layers of overdubs. She was assisted by a team of SFCM alumni: Joi Marchetti, Natasha Frank, Shinae Lee, and Molly Monahan. "I knew what kind of voices I wanted for this, and they had to be really versatile: Quick to sightread the tune and adapt to this style of singing, which is very airy and doesn't use vibrato."

"Our first day was a full eight hours of recording," Hinman recalls. "We were just knackered at the end, but so happy. It was also a really collaborative process: There was never any shame or embarrassment to try things with each other and to fail and to make mistakes."

Novoliantceva, who graduated from SFCM with a Professional Studies Certificate in TAC in 2017, says, "Ninety-nine percent of what I know I learned at SFCM. I was in a somewhat unique situation where I already had a very classical, deep education of writing for choir, orchestrating, and conducting from Russia. But then at SFCM, the whole studio workflow—roles, work ethic, terminology—that all came from here."

As for advice for students who look to her career as a model, Novoliantceva says, "There is no small job, when you're just starting. If your job is to bring water and coffee, that's all right, but show up and give it 100 percent. Because people will see that and remember you, and that's how you build the trust to advance to bigger projects. So much of this is on-the-job training, but you can't teach motivation."  

"Say yes to opportunities even if you're not quite sure they're in your wheelhouse or that they're going to lead someplace," Hinman offers. "Always try to think about what could I learn here or what could I experience that I haven't yet. Think about the two out of three rule: Every gig has people, music, and money, and if two out of those three are cool, you should do the thing."

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