Tom Hajdu, Hollywood music composer, moving to South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula
EXCLUSIVE: He’s worked with greats like Oliver Stone, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson, but this Hollywood creative wants to work and live on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
EXCLUSIVE
HE’s worked with greats like Oliver Stone, Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel and Laurie Anderson, but this Hollywood creative wants to work and live on the Fleurieu Peninsula.
Movie music composer and innovator Tom Hajdu, originally from Canada, has combed the world for somewhere to live and decided on South Australia.
Mr Hajdu, who moves to Adelaide later this month on the same Distinguished Talent Visa that brought Apple co-founder and multi-millionaire Steve Wozniak to Tasmania, will join the international jury for the October Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) alongside president Christian Jeune, from the Cannes Film Festival.
“It came up in conversation that Tom was moving to Adelaide, we started chatting and didn’t stop chatting and it’s still going,” AFF director Amanda Duthie said.
“Being on our jury is just a lovely way for him to enter the spectacular festival culture and heritage of Adelaide.”
Mr Hajdu founded music production company tomandandy and strategic innovation company Disrupter with his Princeton University friend Andy Milburn in the 1980s. They are best known for scoring films and TV commercials and built recording studios in LA and New York.
Mr Hajdu has already been in talks with the State Government and Arts Minister Jack Snelling has welcomed to SA “someone of Tom’s calibre”.
Ms Duthie said making him an AFF judge was just the beginning.
“We have some exciting plans so watch this space,” she said.
The opportunities in SA for creative leadership helped persuade him to come, he said.
“I have a number of initiatives that I will be working on which I am very excited about and I’m in discussions with the University of Adelaide among other parties. It will be a fun ride,” he said.
Mr Hajdu, 53, whose film credits include Arlington Road and The Rules of Attraction has two films coming up, Sinister 2, and a Brad Pitt-produced documentary about motor cycle racing.
In May last year he toured Australia giving talks on innovation and has since been back to the Fleurieu where he has his sights set on buying an inland farm, and a house in Adelaide.
He says he will build a studio here to continue composing and collaborating with artists who have included David Byrne and U2.
He said tomandandy’s music was aggressively digital so setting up a studio would not be difficult. The move to SA with his wife and dog was partly motivated by his love of clean food and wine and SA’s Mediterranean climate.
“I live in southern California and they are very similar except that the Fleurieu is like Santa Barbara was 100 years ago in terms of nature,” he said.
“The people are very similar to southern Californians except maybe with the politeness that southern California has lost.”