Age: 46
male
Michael James Owen Pallett is a Canadian composer, violinist, keyboardist, and vocalist, who performs solo as Owen Pallett or, before 2010, under the name Final Fantasy. As Final Fantasy, he won the 2006 Polaris Music Prize for the album He Poos Clouds. From the age of 3, Pallett studied classical violin, and composed his first piece at age 13. A notable early composition includes some of the music for the game Traffic Department 2192; he moved on to scoring films, to composing two operas while in university. Apart from the indie music scene, he has had commissions from the Barbican, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Ballet of Canada, Bang on a Can, Ecstatic Music Festival, the Vancouver CBC Orchestra, and Fine Young Classicals. On his Final Fantasy releases, Pallett has collaborated with Leon Taheny, who is credited as drummer and engineer. Following the release of Heartland, Pallett has toured with guitarist/percussionist Thomas Gill and more recently with his former collaborators in Les Mouches, Rob Gordon and Matt Smith. Pallett has been noted for his live performances, wherein he plays the violin into a loop pedal. Pallett uses Max/MSP and SooperLooper to do multi-phonic looping, which sends his violin signal to amplifiers across the stage. In January 2014, Pallett and William Butler were nominated for Best Original Score at the 86th Academy Awards for their work on Her.
Michael has always had a rough life, growing up with a negligent single father and picking up an addiction to drugs by the age of 15. Things have finally been looking up for Michael lately after he met the love of his life Jocelyn, who helped him to overcome his addiction. That is, until Michael learns that Jocelyn has been sleeping with his best friend KJ in secret. Michael abandons all hope and turns back to the one thing that always seemed to help, drugs. After an insane drug fueled bender, Michael finds himself overdosing in a 7-Eleven bathroom where he sits eagerly waiting for it all to end as he reflects on his entire life. As a boy, Michael’s father resented him because his mother died in childbirth. Michael’s father blamed him for her death, and soon enough, Michael began to blame himself too. The young Michael quickly turned to drugs as a coping mechanism, which led him down a long path of suffering. Cut back to the present; Michael, now sprawled across the bathroom floor, clutching his one month sobriety token in his hand, finally comes to terms with his mother’s death and admits that it was never his fault. Michael cracks a tearful smile as he closes his eyes one last time as he drifts off.
