Composer Omar Fadel has produced yet another magnificent score, this time for the live play anthology web series Exandria Unlimited: Calamity. The multi-instrumentalist is well known for a diverse range of musical projects, spanning film, tv, video games and documentaries.
Fadel’s scores can be heard on such acclaimed films as the Peabody award winning The Judge and the Emmy award winning film Belly of the Beast. He’s also scored the first ever Arabic language, American studio feature film The United, produced by Disney.
Omar Fadel learns from The Police’s Stewart Copeland
Fadel’s first work came in Los Angeles, where he relocated after university and has been based ever since. Shortly after settling there, he struck up a musical relationship with his long time mentor Stewart Copeland. Fadel cites the Police drummer and film composer as a great influence on his work. The two shared a Middle-Eastern connection and a flair for mixing the styles of Eastern culture with Western contemporary music.
His first work on a film score came with the award-winning film The Taqwacores, which premiered to a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival. The film is an adaptation of a novel which chronicles a fictitious US Islamic punk-rock scene. In a curious case of life imitating art, the novel inspired a movement of Islamic punk bands, whose music features extensively in the film.
Fadel then went on to score the critically acclaimed documentary Just Like Us (2011) and award-winning documentary In Search of Oil and Sand (2012). That year he worked on the score for the film The Dictator with composer Erran Baron Cohen. He also scored the Academy Award nominated film Day One (2015).
Fadel produces scores for television shows, such as Mike Judge’s ABC sitcom The Goode Family. He frequently does programming for live TV shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Daily Show, X Factor and many more. In 2013, Fadel worked on one of the gaming industry’s largest franchises Assassin’s Creed: IV: Black Flag. In the same year, The Sundance Institute awarded him a Fellowship at the Film Music Composer’s Lab.
Omar Fadel is a true multi-instrumentalist
Fadel remembers tinkering on his brother’s keyboard at the age of four, before his grandmother began to teach him piano at five years old. He would then go on to learn the piano, guitar and drums formally at school. A true multi-instrumentalist, Fadel’s scores feature a wide range of instruments, which include the cello and various forms of percussion. In a podcast interview, Fadel remarks that there were between 20 and 30 instruments within his reach at that moment in time.
Born in Houston, Texas, Fadel grew up in Dubai, Egypt and Oman due to his father’s work in the oil industry. Fadel returned to the US to attend the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied film, music production and composition. He now works out of his state-of-the art studio, Fly the Coop Studios in Los Angeles.
Omar Fadel scores Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
Fadel’s latest project scores the live play anthology web series Exandria Unlimited. A spin-off of web series Critical Role, the cast plays Dungeons & Dragons, set in the floating city of Avalir. Hugely popular, the first episode aired in May and already boasts nearly 2.5 million views on Youtube.
Live play, or actual play, involves actors playing table-top role play games for an audience. Incorporating a wide range of skills, it can involve storytelling from the gamemaster, in-character dramatic interactions and out-of-character commentary and discussion from the cast.
Fadel had previously worked on the Critical Role soundtrack, which charted at #4 on the Apple Music soundtrack charts.
Follow Omar Fadel on Instagram for his latest news and check out his website to hear his music.
