Star Wars Rebels Reveals Theme Music, Introduces Composer At WonderCon Panel

Posted by Eric on

The Disney animated series Star Wars Rebels blasted into Anaheim, California today for an hour-long panel at WonderCon 2014. Executive producer Dave Filoni, actress Vanessa Marshall (Hera Syndulla), and art director Kilian Plunkett took the stage to discuss the look and feel of the series and its place in the broader Star Wars universe.



The big news from the panel was that Kevin Kiner, who previously composed for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, will be back composing music for Rebels. After taking the stage following the announcement, Kiner said he was using more of John Williams' musical themes in this series than he did in The Clone Wars.



"I'm really privileged to be part of the greatest myth of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries," Kiner said of his involvement with Star Wars.



In an interview with the Los Angeles Times that was posted immediately after the panel, Kiner said that he was using an orchestra of 30 musicians to compose for Rebels, which the Times noted is "larger than many all-electronic scores on TV today." Times reporter Patrick Kevin Day also wrote that Rebels' music will become "very experimental" toward the end of the first season, for "a very real story reason."



Here's a Lucasfilm featurette where Kiner talks about working on Rebels:





During the panel, the audience was treated to a rendition of thetheme music. You can listen to it below. Our correspondent in the room, Justin Bolger, said that the theme "immediately evokes the classic trilogy, with hints of the new stories to come."An exclusive clip of Hera piloting theduring a space battle with Imperial TIE fighters also debuted during the panel. Lucasfilm has posted it on their officialYouTube channel, and you can check it out below:Above you can see some of the concept art that debuted at the panel (with thanks to Mike Roe for the last one). Lucasfilm has posted more of the concept art in their panel report on The OfficialBlog.