Rob Simonsen’s score for Elio is an attempt to give a new sound to space

When Pixar’s “Elio” filmmakers approached Rob Simonsen about doing the score for their movie, they wanted someone who could ‘connect’ with the subject matter.

“The [movie and its score] is a meditation on signals; on how we reach out, and what it means when something reaches back,” said Simonsen in an interview. In our own interview with him recently, he added that he found a connection to “Elio” through his own childhood “staring into space” and watching movies about imagining what’s out there.

Simonsen tapped into those memories while he found Elio’s theme while just noodling at the piano thinking about connection and the meanings of them “that often are difficult to put into words,” he said. To showcase Elio’s own search for connection, the theme he wrote also starts with a leap from the first note to the major 7th on the piano.

While the piano is the foundational instrument of the theme and the rest of the score, Simonsen wasn’t afraid of incorporating big and different sounds like an 85-piece orchestra and even synthesizers to add layers to the soundscape that he defined as ‘outer space’.

“I think it really was about finding a sound [sic] that felt unfamiliar and warm at the same time,” Simonsen said.

It all really comes together with the cue in the score at the end of the movie called “The Return.” Simonsen pulled out together everything he had in his musical toolkit for those last few minutes of the film to make it memorable–like John William’s penultimate cue called “Adventures on Earth” cue from the movie, “E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial.”

From reprising Elio’s theme, other leitmotifs, using the full range of the orchestra and synths, and even having a famous soundbite from Carl Sagan acting as a sort of lyric, it definitely was Simonsen’s favorite cue to create and record. “I’m a huge Carl Sagan fan, and so it was a huge treat to accompany his words; to use it all to bookend the film and maybe give an answer to if we are alone in the universe was so moving,” Simonsen said.

Added director of “Elio” Domee Shi, “He brings such scope and scale to the movie. Once we’re flying through the universe, it just sounds bigger. The music is just sweeping. [sic]. It’ll blow your hair back.”

Pixar’s “Elio” is now playing in theaters and will stream exclusively on Disney+ in the coming months.

Our special thanks to Rob Simonsen for contributing to this story!

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