The soundtrack team behind a new Taiwanese mini-series called Green Door is mostly made up of alumni of the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions. The six-episode show hit Netflix in America and 190 other countries in March after premiering in Taiwan where the music received good reviews.
Green Door is a horror-thriller about a psychologist in Taiwan trying to figure out who or what is haunting the patients in his clinic.
The inter-program collaboration came about thanks to Music Technology alum Shao-Ting Sun. Two of Shao-Ting’s old friends from Taiwan, Lingo Hsieh and Jackol Kao, directed and produced Green Door and brought him on to be the sound supervisor and music producer on the series. For the past five years, Shao-Ting has been working with Music Technology adjunct professor Lesjek Wojcik at Carnegie Hall where Wojcik is the recording manager.
Shao-Ting enlisted the help of fellow alum Alexander Wong (Music Technology with a focus on Screen Scoring) to be the composer and music supervisor, and together they came up with a musical vision for Green Door. Shao-Ting also brought on Screen Scoring alumni Sean Kim and Ian Chen to help them keep up with the rigorous production schedule.
Once they were ready to record, Shao-Ting engaged viola performance alumna Cristina Huang, for whom he had previously begun producing an album while she was working towards her artist diploma, to hire musicians for the main theme of the show.
Huang invited several of her NYU Steinhardt alumni peers to record the soundtrack. She brought on violinist Josh Henderson, violinist and current String Studies faculty Meghan Todt, violinist/violist Josh Hunton, and cellist Bryan Hayslett; in the end about 60% of the players were alumni of the NYU Steinhardt music department. Shao-Ting then invited Music Technology professor Alan Silverman to master the recording.
“I think the all-Steinhardt production comes very naturally,” remarked Shao-Ting in an email interview in which he wrote that he makes an effort to work with alumni colleagues and noted that working with fellow NYU alumni ensures “reliability and efficiency.”
Besides being proud of being able to include so many fellow alumni, Shao-Ting and Wong are also excited about working with Taiwanese celebrity Jam Hsiao who is the main actor in Green Door. “Both me and Alex feel lucky enough to produce and compose his ending song,” he wrote.
Green Door is available to stream on Netflix. Read more about it in Express and in The Hollywood Reporter.