Composer for Drama, Thriller & Documentary
Giuseppe Vasapolli is a composer for drama, thriller and documentary whose music grows from a single practice: sonification — finding sound inside the physical and psychological world of each story rather than imposing music upon it. Working with orchestral depth, organic instrumentation and subtle electronics, his scores are built for emotional precision rather than spectacle, shaped entirely around narrative and character.
Personally selected by Thomas Newman for a year-long mentorship during his studies at USC's Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program, Giuseppe spent a decade based in Los Angeles — from 2012 to 2022 — working continuously across American film and television before returning to Europe. He wrote the main theme for The Oscars Academy Awards Red Carpet Live 2014 on ABC, and his work has reached international audiences through long-running series for NBC, Fox, National Geographic, History Channel and Disney, among them The Wall — the global format produced by LeBron James, broadcast across more than thirty countries since 2017 — alongside Ancient Aliens, The Curse of Oak Island, and The UnXplained.
His lead composer credits include Il Baracchino (Prime Video), Italy's first Amazon original animated series nominated for the Annie Awards, and the six-part prime-time docudrama series Scugnizzi Per Sempre for Rai 2. His feature film work includes So Tutto Di Te and Un Mondo Sotto Social, both distributed by Medusa Film following nationwide theatrical releases in Italy, and a sustained collaboration with director and cinematographer Daniele Ciprì — longtime cinematographer to Marco Bellocchio — whose short film La Fornace, scored by Giuseppe, was selected for Giornate degli Autori at the 79th Venice Film Festival. His documentary work includes Influx, a UK-produced feature documentary released theatrically in London and previously available on Netflix worldwide.
He is currently scoring Le Ombre dell'Anima, a gothic psychological thriller directed by Paolo Licata and starring Violante Placido, with the full orchestral score recorded by the Budapest Scoring Orchestra — and Historia d'Amor con Hombre Bailando, a period drama set in 1950s Chile and Sicily directed by Cosimo Gomez, for which he composed a score built entirely on guitars, charango, ukulele and organic drones.
He holds a PhD in film music from the University of Edinburgh. Since 2023 he has been faculty at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena — where the film scoring intensive was formerly led by Ennio Morricone, Luis Bacalov and Nicola Piovani — teaching sound design, sampling and film composition alongside a faculty of Los Angeles and UK-based composers.
Featured work
