Composer and Seattle native Mateo Messina has scored the soundtracks for more than 50 films and 100 television episodes and won a Grammy award for scoring the 2007 hit film Juno, yet he might be one of the city’s least-known musical celebrities.
In fact, to Northwest audiences, Messina is probably better known for another type of creative project: his benefit concerts to support Seattle Children’s Hospital. For the past 21 years, Messina has organized a music-based fundraising event at Benaroya Hall. Each year there’s a different theme but the purpose remains the same: to help raise funds for the Children’s Hospital. Over the years, he has helped raise more than $2 million.
The most recent fundraiser, The Feast, which was held Nov. 2, 2018, combined music, food and film. The NW Symphony Orchestra performed live during the screening of five short documentary films that highlighted super-chef Tom Douglas, winemaker Lisa Baer, Siri and Jason Salvo of Local Roots Farm, Autumn Martin of Hot Cakes Bakery, and Maik Tow, a longtime server at El Goucho, a Belltown steakhouse. The idea was to explore why people come together around food and what it means to prepare a meal and break bread with friends and family.
Messina got the idea for the benefit concerts more than 20 years ago when he found out that a co-worker’s young daughter had tragically died of a brain tumor. The colleague mentioned that his daughter had received excellent care during the last year of her life at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He also told Messina that the hospital had a piano.
That got the musician’s attention and he started going to the hospital to play piano for the children. Eventually, he became so inspired by both the young patients and the medical team there, that he decided to donate the profits from his next symphony to Seattle Children’s. The idea snowballed.
More than 20 years ago, after playing the piano to cheer up hospital-bound children, Messina started to create concerts to benefit Seattle Children’s Hospital. More than $2 million has been raised to date. (IMDb)
Born in 1972, Messina was attracted to music from an early age. He started playing piano at age 3; by 7, he was writing songs. He premiered his first symphony when he was 24 and has composed nearly two dozen since then. Although he was clearly musically gifted, he never learned to read or write music. Instead, he plays by ear. Today, he works with an assistant who writes out the notations for the musicians he works with, most of whom are based in Seattle.
After college, Messina performed in bands and also played piano in restaurants and nightclubs until a college friend asked him to score a short film. The process resonated with him and he knew that he wanted to focus more on music for the movie industry. Today, he lives in Los Angeles part-time but continues to maintain a vibrant presence in Seattle.
Messina has worked with most of the major film companies in southern California, including Lionsgate, Paramount, Warner Brothers, MGM, 20th Century Fox and more. He’s written the sound track for Up in the Air with George Clooney, August: Osage County with Meryl Streep, andThe Angriest Man in Brooklyn which starred Robin Williams in his final role.
Writing the soundtrack for Juno helped Messina discover why it is so important for a composer to stay in tune with the characters. As he told a reporter for Perspective Forum, “When I started writing on Juno, I was searching for sounds that represented Juno MacGuff. She was someone who looked the same as the rest of us, but she was full of unique qualities. She talked differently, she was an old soul…The music feels very raw, accessible, slightly off, slightly non-musical, but most of all intimate.”
Messina relishes the distinctive qualities of each film or television show on which he has worked. “Each has its own style, its own discipline, shape, tone and characters,” he said. “You collaborate and move a mountain with a group of inspired people. It’s a challenge, and it is a blast.”
His music has been called off-beat and even quirky, and it’s those qualities that inspire the theatrics for his benefit concerts. One year, the famous Pike Place Market fishmongers were on the stage throwing salmon. Another year, acrobats performed on teeter-totters. Another time, 50 dancers were planted in the audience and all at once, they popped up on cue and danced their way down the aisle. Alice in Chains performed one year and the Northwest Girlchoir another.
Two years ago, the benefit concert featured an original song performed by a long-time patient at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Cassidy, only 15 years old at the time, found that playing the ukulele and singing helped her get through the 39 surgeries she had already endured. Together, she and Messina composed a song for her to premiere at the concert.
Messina talked about the process he followed with Cassidy. “I started by asking her questions,” he said, “things like: how do you make it through? We turned our conversation into a song. I wanted her to get her feelings out. I believe everyone has a story, and everyone’s story is important. It allowed her to express herself in a unique and beautiful way, and in a way that can be quite cathartic.”
For Messina, helping others is just as fulfilling as winning a Grammy award. “Volunteering has filled my heart in a way nothing else can,” he told Perspective Forum. “When we do something, even the simplest thing…it fills one with a feeling of good will, love for our fellow man, purpose. I have kids now, so I understand what it’s like to give without receiving but the reality is we all receive so much. Don’t be afraid to give.”
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