Giona Ostinelli and Sonya Belousova on One Piece, The Witcher, The Thing About Pam and Complementary Collaboration

July 16, 2024

Soundtracks, Scores and More Staff

“For us, recording is an integral part of writing. This way, we split who plays what instrument or who learns what instrument. I might have an idea. Giona’s like, ‘Why don’t we try it like this? What if we expand it that way?’ Or vice versa.”

BY JASON LAZARCHECK

 

Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli are obsessed with instruments. They’re always on the lookout for more. They seek out obscure instruments from faraway lands. They’ve also been known to raid the local Guitar Center.

Their music studio has an entire room full of string instruments, woodwinds, and drums. Guitars, zithers, and a ukulele. Celtic flutes and castanets. Harps and hurdy-gurdies. Instruments large and small from various cultures and time periods. The composing duo could open a musical curios shop or have their own esoteric museum. 

They could also have their own reality show, considering how fun and infectious their dynamic is. But for now, Sonya and Giona are too busy working.

For us, recording is an integral part of writing. This way, we split who plays what instrument or who learns what instrument. I might have an idea. Giona’s like, “Why don’t we try it like this? What if we expand it that way?” Or vice versa.

One Piece, Netflix’s live-action adventure series, was one of 2023’s biggest hits. Prior to scoring that, Sonya and Giona composed music for The Witcher, The Thing About Pam, and The Romanoffs, among other projects. They are perfectly comfortable working in many different genres from fantasy epic to true crime. They are also Sony artists and recently released an album, A Mighty Heart Beating Like a Drum.

Sonya and Giona’s music is as varied as the instruments they use to make it. In particular, after the first season of The Witcher, a show set in a medieval fantasy world, Sonya and Giona had accumulated a huge collection of instruments for the musical landscape they created. And even though their studio space gets smaller and smaller with every instrument they acquire, Giona thinks it makes their work more fun.

Because, you know, no one wants to just sit in front of a computer. It’s boring. With the instruments, it’s something that you can touch. You can come up with cool ideas.

Often, Giona and Sonya are the ones playing the instruments on their recordings. She explains how the process works.

 

 

For us, recording is an integral part of writing. This way, we split who plays what instrument or who learns what instrument. I might have an idea. Giona’s like, “Why don’t we try it like this? What if we expand it that way?” Or vice versa.

While they love working with other musicians in the studio, the composers themselves are accomplished players, so they divvy up much of the performing between the two of them. And they frequently challenge each other to learn new instruments.

Giona has played the drums since he was five.

Anything drums or percussion-based, that’s on Giona. And somehow Giona developed a talent for woodwind instruments. Who knew? 

On The Witcher, they had scored a dance that had a very elaborate oboe part. When they received the oboe part from the soloist, they decided it would be even better as a duet with Celtic flutes.

So Sonya looks at me, and I’m like, “No.” She’s like, “C’mon!” I’m like, “No! I’m not a concert flutist!” It was one day of learning one bar at a time, me swearing, being, “I hate this.” It brought me back to elementary school when they teach you the recorder. 

Sonya is quick to clarify something about the sound of the Celtic flutes that Giona played:

They didn’t need to be perfect. They had to be very rough, very raw medieval flutes… Hey, that was a great track!

So he plays those instruments, and Sonya does anything related to keys. Because at five years old, she was a piano prodigy.

Obviously all the pianos, hurdy-gurdies, harp. For The Witcher, I learned to play the Celtic harp because we needed that Celtic harp sound, so we just got a harp. Then we got a double bass, and we have a technique called “double bass four hands.” So the way that works is, because who knew that the strings of a double bass are actually really really thick, and it takes a lot of muscle to hold those strings, so at the initial stages when we didn’t know how to play it, Giona was holding the strings and I was bowing…

Every piece of music, it’s the two of us. It’s not like, “Oh, you just did this one, I just did that one.” For us, it’s literally 24/7 together. Usually composers when they work together, when they collaborate, they discuss the creative idea, then they go in their separate rooms, and they write. For us, it’s literally doing it together, at all times. 

Giona is quick to clarify that “double bass four hands” didn’t last long:

Because she has perfect pitch, she’d be like, “Uh, it’s a bit sharp. Uh, it’s a bit flat.” And I was like, “OK, god, enough.” Yeah, she took over. 

Whatever way they’re playing the instruments, Sonya and Giona are always composing together. Four hands and two brains. Physically in the same room and right next to each other. Giona demonstrates how they compose side by side:

We’re here, in front of the computer together. “Oh, let’s try this. Let’s try this. Oh, let me try something on the dulcimer or the drums.” Sonya’s like, “Oh, let me try this on the piano.”

When it comes to composing work, Sonya describes how they don’t split it up at all:

Every piece of music, it’s the two of us. It’s not like, “Oh, you just did this one, I just did that one.” For us, it’s literally 24/7 together. Usually composers when they work together, when they collaborate, they discuss the creative idea, then they go in their separate rooms, and they write. For us, it’s literally doing it together, at all times. 

Giona likens their collaborative approach to being in a band because it’s like songwriting. Coming up with the creative ideas together, so that’s exactly how their process works.

Which is just so fun. Because sometimes I’m playing drums and you’re like, “Try this.” And I’m like, “It’s not possible.” “Yeah, but try.” 

Who cares if it’s not possible?

Sonya smiles as she asks this. She and Giona both push the boundaries of what’s possible. They each push each other to become better composers and musicians. For example, Giona added a major instrument to his repertoire in 2020.

During the pandemic, I picked up guitars. I started messing around with them, because why not? And now I am comfortable enough to incorporate guitars with my playing… So we’re here in the studio, and obviously I play something I feel comfortable with, and then Sonya’s like, “Oh, let’s try this. Oh, I have this idea.” We constantly push each other. 

You can’t argue with the results. Sonya and Giona have composed dynamic music together on a string of hit shows, as they collaborate in the same room every single day. But what if someone’s in a bad mood?

Sonya: OK, let me tell you this. You know what our company is called? Two Grumpy Bears Music. That should tell you everything. 

Two Grumpy Bears Music, Incorporated. Giona believes it’s totally normal for one of them to be in a bad mood sometimes:

Giona: Doing it together also helps to get out of the bad mood. Sometimes you’re tackling a scene and nothing seems to be working out. And then Sonya comes up with an idea, “Oh, let’s try this.” And I’m like, “Oh, this is great.” And then, “Woomph!”

Sonya: Because we inspire each other. We creatively feed off of each other’s ideas. 

Giona: For example, with the guitars, when I started, I was like, “I’m terrible.” And then Sonya’s like, “No, try this. Try that.” 

Sonya: Now to put it into perspective, that process doesn’t always happen very diplomatically. Because with Giona being Swiss-Italian, there’s a lot of fire going on at all times. So you have to keep a lot of chocolate in the fridge—

Giona: Which she steals. But yeah. 

Sonya: We never approached this as work, it’s always been fun for us. When people ask us about our hobbies, I don’t have a hobby. This is my hobby. It’s never been work. 

Giona: But I also think it’s [that] we both have, musically, big respect for each other’s capabilities. …What?

Sonya: Yes. Of course, of course!

 

When Giona mentions mutual respect, Sonya makes a face. After all, her capabilities on piano are virtuosic. Their big respect for each other does not diminish their playfulness.

They clearly have fun working together, and it’s a good thing they do, because of how hard they work and how much their composing dominates their lives. Sonya wasn’t exaggerating about not having a hobby. Giona says he really doesn’t either.

It’s fun when people ask us if we have a hobby, and it’s like, well, we grew up playing. That was a hobby that we were able to translate into our job. 

A few years ago, they moved from the middle of the city to cut down on their commute.

We work 24/7 so we just don’t have time to go somewhere to a studio, so we just needed a property where we could build a studio.

They chose a lush quiet place in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. If they’re going to work 24/7, at least they’re nestled in nature.

It’s very nice. It’s very peaceful… The previous owners, they had a chicken coop, and they’re like, “Do you guys want to keep the chickens?” We’re like, “We can’t even keep plants alive.” We like omelettes but… eh no.

I remember we had an upright piano in the house, and I was always playing. I was grabbing kitchen tools and hammering the walls, and my mom’s like, “Enough!” She took me to a conservatory, and she was hoping maybe violin? Saxophone? … I chose drums.

No time for hobbies. But their place is a 10-minute walk to some of LA’s best hiking trails, and they love hiking. They love being in the nature. Just don’t call it a hobby.

When we have time to quickly go and decompress and hike, that’s the best. And here we can do it, and it’s great… That’s why we love it out here. It’s so nice. So peaceful. So quiet.

This is the tranquil place where Sonya and Giona worked the darkly comic true crime miniseries, The Thing About Pam, starring Renée Zellweger, and it’s where they scored their biggest loudest hit series to date, Netflix’s One Piece. 

When they first began working together in 2013, Giona was a solo composer with a number of TV and film projects and Sonya was more focused on composition for solo piano performance. They “sort of knew each other,” because they were both in LA and both in the industry. At the time, Giona was scoring a film called Two-Bit Waltz, which David Mamet produced. And Sonya was busy working on a project of her own. 

Stan Lee was producing this YouTube series called Player Piano, and my job was to create virtuosic piano arrangements of popular film, TV, and video game themes. And then we would go and shoot these huge epic music videos… So anyhow, Giona calls me up one day and he’s like, “I have this film. It requires a very eclectic score. Parts of it is virtuosic piano. So, hey, do you want to try to do it together? Because it might be fun.” I’m like, “Sure! I guess, why not?” This does sound fun. Let’s try. 

They both envisioned this as a one-time thing, a collaboration limited to the one film, Two-Bit Waltz, but they had so much fun composing together, they’ve been doing it ever since. 

Sonya: First we were just gradually involved with each other’s projects, probably unofficially at the first stages, but then at a certain point, I think was The Mist, which was the Stephen King TV show, we thought we might as well do it together officially. From there on…

Giona: …It just kept going.

Sonya: Ba-dum!

They were having so much fun working together, that they just continued down that path. Sonya also points out that their musical backgrounds are so different, so they realized that they never compete with each other, but they complement each other very well. 

Both began learning to play music at the same age, when they were five. They were each devoted to music and both ultimately attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, but growing up, their music education and experiences were different.

For Giona, he thinks getting into music just happened naturally.

I remember we had an upright piano in the house, and I was always playing. I was grabbing kitchen tools and hammering the walls, and my mom’s like, “Enough!” She took me to a conservatory, and she was hoping maybe violin? Saxophone? … I chose drums.

He emotes his mother’s disappointed face. So Giona started with the drums, and then after a while with rhythm, he also wanted to “do the melody stuff,” so that’s when he also started to play piano. Along the way, he also had his first taste of the woodwinds.

My parents are very much into music. My mom grew up playing piano. My dad grew up playing accordion. So it was kind of a natural path for me. I started playing when I was five and went on to win every single international competition there was out there at that time, so I was pursuing a concert pianist career path.

Young Giona didn’t realize woodwinds would pay off decades later on The Witcher in the form of Celtic flutes.

Meanwhile, young Sonya was exclusively focused on the piano and emerged as a child prodigy. She argues that Giona had a more fun background.

See, Giona was one of the fun kids who grew up playing Super Mario. I was one of those kids who grew up playing piano.

In the Player Piano YouTube series, Sonya would arrange and play a Super Mario medley on a piano that looked like a Nintendo console, but as a kid, she was playing mostly classical.

My parents are very much into music. My mom grew up playing piano. My dad grew up playing accordion. So it was kind of a natural path for me. I started playing when I was five and went on to win every single international competition there was out there at that time, so I was pursuing a concert pianist career path.

Two keys to her success as a child prodigy were candy bars and stickers. Her parents made her practice sessions into a game with a surprise reward at the end. This way, it was all for fun.

What my parents did was super smart. There were those candy bars back then with a sticker that every kid had to have. So at the end of the practice, the fairy would bring me that candy bar with the stickers. And they would place it behind the sheet music. So when I was done with the practice, they would be like, “Oh, the fairy brought you the gift!” 

Sonya also appreciates the multidisciplinary approach to her education.  

It’s not just the instrument. You can be practicing an instrument but lacking the other information, like ear training or harmony, without understanding, and that doesn’t make sense.

Sonya went through a very well-rounded childhood education.

I think often music programs are very focused on a specific instrument, which is a wonderful thing, but at the same time, you’re lacking the other crucial disciplines such as ear training, solfège, music theory, music history, and more. I was privileged to have all of these included from the get-go and receive an incredibly in-depth music education with 4 music degrees. And most importantly, it was fun, at least the way it was presented to me back then. It was always fun…”

After Giona started playing piano, then he started playing in bands. Rock bands. Here he agrees with Sonya. He did have a more fun background. 

Meanwhile, despite the intensity of her classical training, teenage Sonya didn’t really go through a rebellious phase.

Maybe when I was thirteen I had that for a second, but just for a moment. I think competitions had something to do with that, because I always loved competing. When you are winning, that motivates you to do more. You won this one, so let’s go and win the next one. 

One critical part of both their backgrounds is a love of films and film scores. Giona has always been a huge fan of music for films.

I remember growing up and watching Back to the Future. It’s so cool! It’s so memorable. And Jurassic Park. Indiana Jones. I always loved that. 

Giona also always loved acting as a kid, and his parents had an old video camera, so he was also playing around with that.

I always enjoyed the idea of associating music with storytelling. 

Sonya was also always into films, into storytelling, and when she was eleven, she started composing. And again she went on to win every single international competition. She says this playfully. But truly she was never as into playing concert music as she was composing film music. When music and film, her two passions, naturally connected, “the wow moment” happened.

For me, it was all about watching films. I grew up watching everything. From Indiana Jones to The Three Musketeers. Michael Kamen, oh my goodness! So awesome. 

Sonya also grew up on The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. When Harry Potter came out, she was in school, and she remembers she was the first one in her class who read it and was obsessed before everybody else got obsessed.

For something like One Piece, it’s eight episodes, one hour long, every episode features one hour of music, and the music is at two hundred percent at all times. It’s a huge epic evolved score featuring a kaleidoscope of genres and songs, but that’s probably the easier part of our job. The most important part of the job is talking to people. Talking to the creators, talking to the studio.

For Giona, it’s the same set of movies in his personal filmography.

Indiana Jones. The Goonies. The Lord of the Rings. The Three Musketeers. Also Robin Hood, the one with Kevin Costner. I remember going to a movie theater and watching it. It’s so iconic, that movie. Especially with the song at the end.

He and Sonya grew up watching and loving the same movies, and she thinks those particular scores influenced the way they approach both score and songs.

 

 

Something like Robin Hood, for example. There’s the score, but there’s also the song, which is not a standalone song, but it’s fully integrated into the overall soundscape and within the overall musical language. Michael Kamen brilliantly infused the themes of the score into the song and vice versa. Maybe on a subconscious level, because we grew up watching films like Robin Hood or The Three Musketeers, that’s something that influenced us musically. Because that’s the exact idea we’re doing with songs like “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” from The Witcher or “My Sails are Set” from One Piece. These songs are fully integrated within our overall music world-building. And we find that concept to be incredibly rewarding when, for example, at the end of season one of One Piece Nami’s theme that we’ve been developing throughout the whole season in multiple shapes and forms climaxes into its most powerful and lyrical rendition as “My Sails Are Set” featuring mesmerizing vocals by AURORA. It takes my breath away each time.

The One Piece live-action adaptation was one of the biggest hits of 2023, both in terms of viewership and critically, and it broke many records at Netflix. The soundtrack has surpassed 300 million worldwide streams with “My Sails Are Set” feat. AURORA amassing over 15 million streams on Spotify alone. Sonya attributes this to how much heart was poured into the show and the collective effort of the entire creative team.

When it came out, we were all here tracking the statistics, the whole team. Everybody put in so much love into the project, so when it charted number one in a record number of countries, that was just like, “Whoa!” And then being one of the highest-reviewed Netflix shows on Rotten Tomatoes. We’re like, “OK, we’re doing well here.”

As composers, Sonya and Giona need to work well with the creative team and be able to communicate effectively. This is true for any project, but especially a big blockbuster series like One Piece, which is the highest level and highest caliber there is. On a very evolved show like that, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, and so much goes into it, including, first and foremost, a tremendous amount of communication.

When it comes to writing the actual music, Sonya says it’s probably the easiest part of their job, even though there is a ton of music to write.

For something like One Piece, it’s eight episodes, one hour long, every episode features one hour of music, and the music is at two hundred percent at all times. It’s a huge epic evolved score featuring a kaleidoscope of genres and songs, but that’s probably the easier part of our job. The most important part of the job is talking to people. Talking to the creators, talking to the studio.

In this case, Matt Owens and Steve Maeda are the showrunners on the project, and the producing studio is Tomorrow Studios along with Netflix. Sonya and Giona enter a creative discussion with Matt and Steve. What’s their vision for the project as showrunners? What’s Sonya and Giona’s vision as composers? Initial communication also involved talking to Netflix and Tomorrow Studios and understanding how they saw the series.

With One Piece, all their creative visions were aligned from the very start, in part because of a unique effort Sonya and Giona made at the outset. 

Sonya: We finished The Witcher and were looking for our next project, a sophisticated evolved music world-building project, and then we learned about One Piece, and we were so excited about it so we’re like, “Let’s shoot a video.” And we shot it. It was a three-minute video. We were fans of One Piece, so we knew the story. We literally outlined the whole concept behind what we would create for this music universe. 

Giona: We thought this was the best way to present our concept creatively. Because we can talk to the team hypothetically, but this allowed us to have meaningful and in-depth conversations right from the start.

By creating this video, Giona and Sonya skip the hypothetical stage. The team can actually hear the music and see it in a visual context, which not only helps them understand Giona and Sonya’s vision, but it initiates a next-level conversation. Now they can talk music and story.

This was a gamble, of course. The showrunners and studios might have very different ideas than Sonya and Giona presented in their video. 

Giona: It can go, “Oh, we loved this,” or it can be, “This is not what we’re thinking, but!” It will spark a conversation. That’s all you need.

This way, Giona and Sonya are contributing right away to the creative conversation. First, they listened to their own instincts, then rolled up their sleeves and took a leap to create some music, as well as produce a video. Making it was a confident and industrious move, potentially risky, but sharing it was also a healthy way to begin communicating with the team and be deeply generous as collaborators.

Sonya chronicles the creative components of the video:

We have five Straw Hats, five main characters. So we outlined every instrument which we would use for a particular character, and then how all of that would get combined within the main theme of our show, the theme of our captain, Luffy, because he functions as the glue of this crew. At the end of the video, we played the theme, which fast-forward one-and-a-half years later, is the main theme of our show. And every single concept or instrument outlined in this video is now part of the soundtrack.

It’s a fun story, and ultimately Sonya and Giona’s 3-minute video contributed to the creation of a very fun show. As composers, they successfully communicated their vision to the rest of the creative team, so that everyone was on the same page.

It’s such a great cauldron of brewing ideas. 

And their vision, of course, begins with the two of them, working together as artists. Sonya and Giona leverage their different backgrounds, experiment with their different instruments, and collaborate with each other to build the world and tell the stories through music.

Giona: We have many writer-friends, and that’s the thing we love about writers rooms, because it’s such a creative environment where you can just juggle ideas between each other, and it’s a safe environment…

Sonya: We have a mini-writers room.

Within their little two-person writers room, Sonya and Giona must take what inspires all the writers and producers and figure out how to achieve it musically. In some cases, however, the writers and producers don’t always have a creative vision for the music at the outset. And that’s normal. Sonya and Giona’s job is to inspire the team, hear and understand the creative values, and translate them into music. 

They prefer to get on board projects early because it allows them more creative freedom. They especially love big evolved projects that involve unique and complex worlds and mythology, like The Witcher on Netflix, which is based on a Polish book series that was also adapted into a hit video game.

Giona and Sonya clearly connect with action-adventure, whether it’s more historical fiction or folklore like Robin Hood or it’s a fantasy setting. They gravitate toward epic and fun stories, and with The Witcher, they were able to contribute to a rich fantasy world. After all, young Sonya was obsessed with Harry Potter. They both love The Lord of the Rings. And in addition to the other movies Giona loved growing up, he also proclaimed, “Willow is awesome.” He has always been into fantasy stories like that, and now, scoring those projects, he revels in how liberating that world-building can be.

It’s such a great cauldron of brewing ideas. 

Netflix’s One Piece is based on a Japanese manga comic, the best-selling manga series in history, that was also adapted into an anime show. 

If we are involved early, we can really experiment. We create thematic suites, which we love doing at the beginning of each project to narrow down our themes, and our instrumentation, to kind of create that master plan that we would apply for the whole project. So when you’re scoring, you already know your themes and instruments, and it’s like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.

On The Romanoffs, Sonya and Giona were brought in on the later side. The Amazon series, created by Matthew Weiner, is an anthology of eight stories about descendants of the Russian Royal family. Sonya and Giona were thrilled to work with Matthew Weiner and let the specific creative vision of the man behind Mad Men guide their efforts. Their main question was simple.

Giona: What does the story require? Because obviously the story is always king. What the story requires and how we can…

Sonya: …implement that in the most creative way. And in the case of Matt Weiner, he is so creative, and he’s so specific. He’s probably one of the most specific people that I’ve ever met.

Giona: But at the same time, he’s very open.

Sonya: He has an incredibly precise vision of what he wants to achieve, he’s so meticulous with his temp score, but at the same time, he gives you all the creative freedom you need, which is incredible. Working with him was amazing on The Romanoffs… He had the most particular idea of what he was looking for, but at the same time, within that concept, he gave us all the freedom to explore and experiment.

Giona: Yeah, it’s like he gives you paint. “Blue.” But there are so many different shades of blue, and you’re like, “Oh, I can do this, this, and this.” He’s so open to it.

Sonya: For him, it was never about being attached to a particular piece of music in a temp. It’s about the emotion that particular piece of music evokes. 

If Sonya and Giona can get on board a project early, they’re able to create the temp themselves. They are the temp. Regardless, it’s always a collaborative process with the creators, whether that’s Matthew Weiner or the team on One Piece or The Witcher.

 

 

Giona: It’s our job to understand each creator, what their style is. Kind of like a chameleon. 

Sonya: There’s a lot of psychology involved in this job as you have to be able to talk to the creatives and analyze what exactly they mean and what they’re hoping to achieve. 

Giona: I think a great example might be the first conversation we had on The Witcher. The first reference we got was Blade Runner. This was really fascinating … 

Suddenly we wake up one morning and we’re number one on Billboard with “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” Not just in the soundtrack charts but in the rock songs chart.

Sonya: …because even though they referenced Blade Runner with its predominantly synths score, what they actually meant was they wanted the music to function in the most unique and standout way as the music in Blade Runner. 

With The Witcher, Giona and Sonya got involved long before the Netflix fantasy series started filming, because there were songs and dances involved, so they had to compose all that material in advance in order for production to film it.

This pre-production work included the song “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher,” which would go on to be a mega-hit. It was one of the first pieces of music they wrote for the series, way before they started shooting.

Sonya: We wrote seven versions for it, because we were still trying to narrow down the style, and also wanted to present the creative team with various options of how the song could sound. Anything from very medieval and historically accurate to something more musical theater to contemporary to even a rap version… I had to record the demo. 

Giona: She gets a New Jersey accent when she tries to rap.

Sonya: I have no idea. When I rap, I get that Danny DeVito Jersey accent.

Giona: Like in the movie Hercules.

Sonya: That’s me rapping.

“Toss a Coin to Your Witcher” is a dynamic and playful song that reflects the human society and the mythology of the fantasy world as it showcases the relationship between the titular Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, and the bard, Jaskier, who sings it. In the storyline, the song impacts them both and transforms the bard.

Jaskier, as a character, until that moment, he was just a regular bard singing in taverns. He needed a hit song to become the Freddie Mercury of the continent. So we had to figure out a way to make this a true hit song, his anthem.

Sonya and Giona not only delivered a hit song within the world of the show. When the song was finally released on the show’s soundtrack…

Suddenly we wake up one morning and we’re number one on Billboard with “Toss a Coin to Your Witcher.” Not just in the soundtrack charts but in the rock songs chart.

“Toss a Coin” was #1 on Billboard Digital Rock Songs Sales and a #1 single on iTunes. The soundtrack album charted #4 on iTunes for Top Albums and in the top ten in every major territory in the world. “Toss A Coin” is currently nearing 100 million streams on Spotify alone, with the soundtrack album clocking at half a billion album streams. 

After The Witcher, Sonya and Giona scored the mystery series, Sacred Lies, then the true crime miniseries, The Thing About Pam. This drama, hailing from showrunner and their close collaborator Jenny Klein, also brought the composers on board early, and the music they wrote helped shape the title character.

Giona: With The Thing About Pam, I remember we wrote the music suites beforehand, and then they shared them with Renée Zellweger, and Renée requested for every cue to be sent her way as it was helping her to get into character. And that’s why sometimes when she walks, the music fits her walking so perfectly. Yeah! Because she knew the music so well, her steps were pretty much in sync with the music.

Sonya and Giona love collaborating with the creative teams, but they also relish working with musicians and soloists. Yes, Sonya and Giona play many instruments themselves, but when they work on a project like One Piece, they need to bring in incredible soloists and artists to perform on the score.

When we have these incredible artists and musicians coming over to the studio, it’s so much fun hanging out with them and creating magic together. It’s incredibly creative and inspiring. 

They always love when people come over to the studio to work. Even though Sonya and Giona don’t have hobbies and work 24/7, they do get to hang out with their many collaborators and friends who come over. The story is always important, but the creative collaboration is even more important to them. 

Giona: That’s the fun.

Sonya: We keep going back to fun. That’s true. On One Piece, the team was so much fun. Matt and Steve, our showrunners, they’re amazing. And they’re so up for a creative adventure, always.

One Piece is another big fantasy world. Like The Witcher, it’s based on a book series with a specific mythology and previous adaptations. Sonya identifies what’s fun about these kinds of imaginary universes from the composer’s perspective.

There are no restraints or boundaries, and you’re not tied to any specific geographical location as we’re building this music universe entirely from the ground up, which means we have all the freedom to make any sort of instrumentation choices or creative choices to allow us to really encapsulate this incredible universe. And hence all these different instruments. Because One Piece is a character-driven piece. There are different characters and all of them are unique and badass, whether it’s our Straw Hats or villains. So we needed to give each one of our characters diverse themes and instruments to follow along their journeys.

One Piece is so propulsive with as much action as a blockbuster movie, but it’s not just action for action’s sake. It’s all rooted in the characters and their story arcs, and Sonya and Giona strived to represent these beloved characters and their journeys musically.

Sonya: That’s why coming aboard early on helps with that because you can really figure out every particular instrument you’re using for each character…

Giona: …Or theme. 

 

 

Sonya: …Or both, right? And then plant those seeds, like pieces of a puzzle, so then over the course of the season, the whole puzzle comes together.

In episode 3, for example, the heroes meet a new character named Kaya. She’s a beautiful girl living in a beautiful mansion, but she’s lonely. The heroes wind up staying in Kaya’s mansion, and toward the end of the episode, there’s a long sequence, roughly seven minutes in length. 

Sonya: First, there’s a dialogue between Kaya and Nami. Kaya is portrayed with an oboe because we were looking for an elegant and sophisticated sound. Nami’s portrayed by a flute. As their dialogue is happening on screen, there’s a dialogue between oboe and flute happening musically. Then we cut to Usopp talking to Luffy. Usopp is represented by an ukulele. He’s a bit shy and cowardly, and his dream is to be the bravest pirate out there, but for now, he’s still shy, so he needed a very small instrument: an ukulele. But then along the course of the future seasons, as he grows more confident, his instrument is literally going to grow in size. We might get to a twelve-string guitar. That’s the progression for further on. But for now, we’re with ukulele. And then Luffy is represented by a hurdy-gurdy. So as Usopp and Luffy are talking to each other, their ukulele and hurdy-gurdy are talking to each other musically. Then we cut back to Nami and Kaya, so their flute and oboe come back. So basically as there is storytelling happening on-screen, there is the same exact storytelling happening musically…

Giona: That’s a great scene to use as an example, but pretty much every scene was approached with the same concept in mind, intertwining themes and instruments together and creating a dialogue.

Sonya: There’s nothing in this show musically that is accidental. Everything is always part of the master plan.

One Piece was an incredible experience, but it was an incredible amount of work. Sonya and Giona worked on all eight episodes, all at the same time, because Matt and Steve were also working on all of them at the same time. The composers received scenes as production was shooting the next ones.

Nothing was ever locked, and it was never even approached episodically. It was always approached as a giant blockbuster. Or eight giant blockbusters, however you look at it.

One Piece is an 8-hour streaming blockbuster with swashbuckling action and playful banter. Thematically, the story emphasizes teamwork and connection, and it’s also pure fun, and those are the reasons why Sonya and Giona do what they do.

The story is always important, but I think the people you get to collaborate with is even more important.

One Piece also harkens back to the movies that inspired them to become composers in the first place. 

Giona: When working on it, it reminded me of watching movies like The Goonies. Very adventurous.

Sonya: It has a heartwarming feeling, and I think the whole team approached making this show with that same feeling. With a lot of heart. Because I think there are enough dramas in our lives, and this is the type of show where you can have a good time with it.

In addition to the success of One Piece in 2023, Sonya and Giona released their first album together as Sony artists at the end of the year. It’s titled A Mighty Heart Beating Like a Drum, and they worked on the songs for a while.

Sonya: We have Serj Tankian from System of a Down, with whom I recorded a duet. Then there’s Tarja, formerly the lead singer of Nightwish. She’s absolutely fantastic, and we’re honored to have her on this record. There’s phenomenal Sophia James, who was on American Idol a few seasons back. Bad Wolves is one of the top alternative rock bands right now. And obviously Marcin, an acoustic guitar virtuoso, who we also brought in for One Piece.  

Once the eight songs were written and recorded, Sonya and Giona were excited to shoot a music video for “Back to You,” the first track on the album, which features Sophia James.

Sonya: We’re going to burn a piano. We’ll be shooting on location in the desert and getting this cool-looking piano. As the last chorus explodes, the piano’s going to explode too. 

Giona: And then after that, no piano company will ever want to endorse us again. “No! No!”

Sonya: I want them to get shots of me playing the piano while it’s burning. I don’t know if the insurance is going to permit that. But I really want to get those shots. 

Giona: Makes sense about the insurance.

Sonya: But I really want to get those shots. 

Sonya and Giona banter like characters in One Piece. Their dynamic as a duo is truly fun, and fun is what motivates them to make their music. They love to spread the fun around and share in fun collaboration with other creatives, from the singers and soloists featured on their album, to storytellers like Matthew Weiner and the One Piece team. Giona articulates his philosophy:

The story is always important, but I think the people you get to collaborate with is even more important.

He and Sonya always like to find projects that are not only highly creative but are also with a team of people who can all be creative together. In terms of what’s next for the composers, their goal is always finding creative partners they can connect with, more so than telling any specific story or working in any particular genre. 

Sonya would absolutely be up for whatever the next project that would require “unique complex world-building,” whether it’s a Marvel or DC film or the next Disney movie. And right now, they’re in the middle of a big studio action film. Busy!

I think when it comes to epic fantasy action-adventure, that’s something that has a very special place in our hearts… but beyond that, yes, a lot of it is about the people involved. 

Also, because their backgrounds are so versatile, she and Giona are comfortable in any genre out there. Along with their Sony album, One Piece is a great example of that versatility. Whatever their next project is, in whichever genre, it’s guaranteed to be another unusual and fun story. The “Two Grumpy Bears” make sure their creative process is playful and fun throughout, starting with them as a duo and expanding outward in collaboration with other artists and storytellers. Sonya and Giona approach their work with 24/7 dedication but they also make it joyful and amusing. Playtime. The ultimate hobby for themselves and fun for everybody involved. The music they write will always be fun, creative, and compelling, whichever instruments they choose to play.

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