Zeltia Montes

Zeltia Montes is a Spanish Academy Award 'Goya' nominated composer for Best Original Song in 2016 and a two-time Jerry Goldsmith Award winner for Best Composer of the Year in 2008 and 2011. Zeltia composes music for film, TV and documentaries but is also passionate about songwriting, concert music, electronic music production and sound design experiments. Her music has also been recognized by the International Film Music Critics Association with a nomination for Breakout Composer of the Year 2012, by the Catalan Academy with a Gaudi Award nomination in 2014, by the Galician Academy with a Mestre Mateo Award in 2014 and 2 other nominations in 2008 and 2011, and by the Hollywood Music in Media Awards with 3 nominations in 2009 and in 2011. Her music has also won awards in many international festivals such as the New York City International Film Festival, Park City Film Music Festival, Garden State Film Festival, Moondance International Film Festival, Telly Awards, as well as numerous nominations to the Goldspirit Awards and "Mundo BSO Awards". Her film credits include the scores to the feature documentary Sad Hill Unearthed (2017, Tokyo International Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, BAFICI, Sitges Film Festival) starring Clint Eastwood, Ennio Morricone and Joe Dante, the 2016 Spanish Academy Award 'Goya' winning documentary Frágil Equilibrio (Delicate Balance) starring the Ex-President of Uruguay Jose Mujica, the feature films Traces of Sandalwood (2014, Audience Award winner at the Montreal International Film Festival and Goya Award nominated) directed by Maria Ripoll, A Esmorga (2014, Goya Award nominated), Vilamor (2012, Film Commission Award at San Sebastian International Film Festival) and Pradolongo (2008) all from Spanish director Ignacio Vilar, the 3D animation feature film The Nutcrackers (2010, Gaudi Award winner for Best Animated Feature and Goya Award nominated) directed by Alex Colls and the short film Henley (2012, Sundance Film Festival) directed by Craig Macneilll. For TV she has scored the documentary Still Dreaming for PBS, the main title music for the TV Series El Camino del Cid and Miguel Hernandez, both for Spanish National Television (TVE) and is currently scoring the documentary TV series "Atlánticas" directed by Guillermo García López and Pedro González Kühn. Zeltia grew up in Madrid and was encouraged by her parents to learn piano and take formal musical education from a very young age. Since age 4 she attended several of the Professional Conservatories in Madrid for a total of 17 years but what really kept her enthusiasm for music alive was singing pop/rock songs with her father and making up her own piano pieces that she would proudly play to her mother. She felt the formulaic training at the Conservatory had mostly obstructed her vivid imagination and had been focused on what she shouldn't do. Once she graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid she initiated a journey in order to search not only for what she could do but to recover her fearless approach to creating when she was a child and to find what is it that is uniquely her's. This quest took her to open her ears and her eyes to very different kinds of music, to painting and to films and found a strong pull to telling visual stories through music. She moved to Boston to study Film Scoring and Composition at Berklee College of Music where she graduates summa sum laude. Her Original Soundtrack CDs have been released by Quartet Records, Nacional Records and Caldera Records. Montes is a member of the Academy of Sciences and Cinematographic Arts of Spain and currently lives in Los Angeles.