MovieScore Media: "The Salvation of the World as We Know It" (Martin Todsharow)

A 17-year-old is diagnosed as bipolar and sent to a psychiatric center by his father after he tries to kill himself. He finds other youths there who have similar mental-health issues.

“Working together since over a decade we’re close together as any director and composer can be. Til Schweiger really developed his own musical world for his movies over the years. Full of well selected songs and emotional scores, mostly arranged in a song structure too, we’re going this way further and further and finding always new playgrounds to dig deep into the emotions. So as well in The Salvation of the World as We Know It. Minimalistic piano and delayed guitars are always a topic in our scores but this time we went into orchestral atmospheres also to catch the unexplained emotions of our protagonist.” – Martin Todsharow

Martin Todsharow earned his composition degree at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. He has been working as a film composer since 1997 and since 2004, he’s been a professor at the Konrad Wolf Film University of Babelsberg. In 2013 he won the Preis der Deutschen Filmkritik Best Music Award for Sources of Life (Quellen des Lebens). More recently Todsharow entered the international film scene with movies like the psychological horror Friend Request (2016), the Norwegian disaster thriller The Tunnel (2019) and the G.I. Joe origin movie Snake Eyes (2021), starring Henry Golding and directed by Robert Schwentke. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Kimana Tuskers" (Stephen Gallagher)

The race to save the last great elephant tuskers from a vanishing landscape.

“You immediately see the tenderness and deep respect director Jamie Joseph has for the elephants in the footage that she and her team captured. Our discussion around the score started with the emotions that she wanted to evoke in her story. The score had to guide us through an intimate insight of the elephant herd amongst the enormity of the Kenyan landscape and then underpin it all with a heaviness of the threat shadowing them.It felt like there was a steady grand majesty to the pictures. We wanted to colour the score with big inviting textures as well as leaving room for the wondrous up-closeness with these incredible beasts. The film looks beautiful. The music is an emotional tour guide. The message is stark but hopeful.” – Stephen Gallagher

Stephen Gallagher is an award-winning composer, music editor and sound designer. He holds an honours degree in Composition from Victoria University of Wellington where he studied under John Psathas, Jack Body and Ross Harris. His feature film credits include Supervising Music Editor for Amy Berg’s documentary West of Memphis and Music Editor for Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 and Supervising Music Editor for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. He also worked on Jackson’s The Hobbit series and was a finalist for Best Sound Editing in a Feature Film at the 2013 MPSE Golden Reel Awards for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Stephen was nominated for an APRA Silver Scroll Award in 2018 for his score to the feature film, Human Traces. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Adventures of a Mathematician" (Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz)

The warmhearted story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.

“Adventures of a Mathematician oscillates between the strict rationalist formality of the great scientific undertaking, in which our main character partakes, and the underlying existential horror which constantly torments him. This conflict has provided me with a canvas for designing the musical vocabulary of the film. The score constantly struggles to find and define its final form. It brings to life unfulfilled melodies and motives only to plunge into chaotic darkness. I used the contrast between breathing, warm instruments such as the piano or the clarinet and the coldness of analog synths. Ulam’s inner contradictions bring us closer to the unsolvable paradoxes of modernity and it was my wish to contain the whole spectrum of this fascinating personality in my composition." – Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz

Polish composer Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz studied composition at the Academy of Music in Krakow, writing his first score for an Agnieszka Holland film in 2002’s Julie Walking Home. Since then, he collaborated on most of the filmmaker’s projects, including Copying Beethoven, Spoor (which won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize) and Mr Jones, which received a Golden Bear nomination at Berlinale 2019. Antoni’s own awards include the 2008 European Film Music Trophy Young Talent Award for Winterreise, the German Television Music Award for My Mother, My Bride and I and an individual achievement award for his Filip Bajon’s The Butler and Adrian Panek’s Werewolf as part of the 43rd Polish Film Festival. MovieScore Media has released his scores for Charlatan, The Affairand Adventures of a Mathematician. Forthcoming is an EP of his music for the Oscar nominated Quo Vadis, Aida. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Everything of Value" (Alles van Waarde) (Matthijs Kieboom)

In the shadow of a church two men are assaulted at night. Random violence? A gay bashing? A filmmaker tries to uncover what really happened. Just how many issues remain undisclosed in this religious community?

“This film was very intense and beautiful to work on. The subject matter is a very current topic, about accepting people for who they are and accepting yourself for who you are. This in combination with the religious background of the character and the violent crime in the beginning of the film formed my score. I recomposed two hymns/psalms that were used in the film and took these melodies as the lead motives of my score. And because I wanted the music to be both intimate and aggressive where it should be, I used a string quintet as the main colour to play both the serene parts where you can hear the individual instrument and the aggression of the bows attacking the strings.” – Matthijs Kieboom

Dutch composer Matthijs Kieboom was born in 1985 in the city of Dordrecht. He started his musical education on the cello and the bass guitar before moving onto composition. His first feature film score was co-written for Fuchsia the Mini-Witch (2010). In 2011, Matthijs won the first place and the title of Transatlantyk Young Composer for 2011 at a competition created by Academy Award winning composer Jan A.P. Kaczmarek. He later won the Young Talent Award at the Krakow Film Music Festival and had his music played at the closing gala. In 2013, Matthijs collaborated with DJ Armin van Buuren on the BUMA-winning score for I Love Ibiza, the top selling Dutch movie of the year. Previous releases with MovieScore Media include the IFMCA-nominated documentary Wild, Bloody Marie and Pirates Down the Street. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/] 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Even Mice Belong in Heaven" (Krzysztof A. Janczak)

Original score from the 2021 animated adventure film directed by Jan Bubenícek and Denisa Grimmová Abrhámová, featuring the voices of Martha Issová, Jirí Lábus and Ondrej Vetchý, produced by Fresh Films, Les Films du Cygne, Animoon and CinemArt, released by Gebeka Films (France).

Two mortal enemies – a little Mouse and a Fox – meet in animal heaven after an accident. They lose their natural instincts and become best friends. Their wish to stay together after they return to earth comes true, but they are reborn into opposite roles.

“Even Mice Belong in Heaven is a definitely the richest and the most ambitious score I have ever composed. The wide spectrum of colors, sounds and musical ideas is a result of the amazing freedom that I was given by the film directors; Jan Bubeníček and Denisa Grimmová. I have decided to go with every, even the most crazy musical idea. That is why we ended up having a Hungarian czardas for the chase scenes, Strauss waltz for the Heaven baths, circus themes for the adventure parks sequence, epic Indiana Jones-like cues for the underground sequences and big choirs with opera soprano for the final  confrontation. All that is of course constructed according to meticulously planned harmony and melodic ideas, so even if you hear and feel references and styles that I have just mentioned you can hear that this is the music from Even Mice Belong in Heaven, and the whole score has its own specific style and flavour. That is something I am very glad that we have achieved in the end.” – Krzysztof A. Janczak

Krzysztof A. Janczak is the laureate of over a dozen international concert and film music competitions among others; Eyes & Ears of Europe in Munich, Red Dot in Berlin, New York Festivals in NY, European Talent and Universal Music Award in Cologne, and Transatlantyk Young Composer Award in Poznan. In 2012, he received a nomination to a special RMF Classic Award for young film music composer of a year. In 2017,he became a member of European Film Academy. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Held for Ransom" (Johan Söderqvist)

The story of Danish photographer Daniel Rye, who was captured by ISIS in Syria in 2013 and held hostage for 398 days.

The score places a lot of emphasis on character and tension with a dose of Oriental and Middle Eastern influences to reflect on the setting. The toolbox includes electronic textures and live instrument overlays to represent the war torn country of Syria, rising moments of tension for the minutes leading up to ‘The Execution’ and serene moments of a small ensemble for ‘Daniel’s Dream’. Even though the score has its fair share of tense cues fit for a hostage thriller, the more hopeful moments, including the lengthy end credits piece ‘Do You See the Moon, Daniel?, highlight some melodic beauty that’s harder to find within the genre.

Johan Söderqvist is one of the busiest and most successful Scandinavian composers. He has collaborated on a regular basis with Danish director Susanne Bier for whom he scored Brothers (2004) the Oscar-nominated After the Wedding (2006), the Oscar-winning In a Better World (2010) and the romantic comedy Love Is All You Need (2012) – the latter two albums were released by MovieScore Media. His other credits include the Oscar-nominated Kon-Tiki (2014), the British/American horror The Limehouse Golem (2016) and the cult classic vampire film Let the Right One In (2008), another MSM release. His most recent releases on MovieScore Media include the historical drama Amundsen (2019) and The King’s Choice (2016), Norway’s official submission to the 88th Academy Awards. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Quo Vadis, Aida"? (Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz)

Original score from the Academy Award-nominated 2020 war drama feature film directed by Jasmila Zbanic, starring Jasna Djuricic, Raymond Thiry and Johan Heldenbergh, produced byDeblokada Produkcija, and released by Neon (USA).

Aida is a translator for the UN in the small town of Srebrenica. When the Serbian army takes over the town, her family is among the thousands of citizens looking for shelter in the UN camp.

“When you are given no more than 10 minutes of time in a film to support with your music, you have to be aware of the significance of every note and every musical phrase. Especially when the story you support carries within itself such a heavy emotional burden. From the very beginning of my collaboration with Jasmila Zbanic, it was clear that our aim will be to build a narrative bridge, connecting events which are hard to comprehend in isolation. It is my strong belief that music should remain silent when the scale of human evilness is revealed. War and genocide are not heroic or epic events and ought not be made easier to digest through the employment of music. However, even in this story, there is a glimmer of cautious hope in life in its purest, most basic form. This is where I found my connection to the main character and an entry point for my music. Hence my choice of restrained, repetitive motives and reduced orchestration, with only one final emotional paroxysm.” – Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz

Polish composer Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz studied composition at the Academy of Music in Krakow, writing his first score for an Agnieszka Holland film in 2002’s Julie Walking Home. Since then, he collaborated on most of the filmmaker’s projects, including Copying Beethoven, Spoor (which won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize) and Mr Jones, which received a Golden Bear nomination at Berlinale 2019. Antoni’s own awards include the 2008 European Film Music Trophy Young Talent Award for Winterreise, the German Television Music Award for My Mother, My Bride and I, and an individual achievement award for his Filip Bajon’s The Butler and Adrian Panek’s Werewolf as part of the 43rd Polish Film Festival. His score for Agnieszka Holland’s five time Czech Lions film, Charlatan, The Affair (The Glass Room) and Adventures of a Mathematician have been released by MovieScore Media this year. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Nora" (Paula Olaz / Pascal Gaigne)

Original score from the 2021 drama feature film directed by Lara Izagirre, starring Ane Pikaza, Héctor Alterio and Ramón Barea, produced by La Fidèle Production, Gariza Films and Tandem Films, and released by Filmax (Spain).

Nora is in her 30s and has barely left her village. When her grandfather passes away, Nora decides to journey along the Basque coast to reunite his ashes’ with her grandma’s.

“The music reminds us of that inner part, the loneliness and stillness, the desire to start a new life without knowing where to go. This is intimate, innocent music, sometimes light and sometimes full of memories that through the accordion brings us closer to the experience of losing a loved one. Delicate in intentions and subtle, the music has touches of humour and self-discovery through Nora’s eyes. There are solo moments of delicate prepared piano and harp ‘à la française’, together with a warm string orchestra and mild flutes.“ – Paula Olaz

Born in 1958, Pascal Gaigne studied music composition at the University of Pau, in France, with Guy Maneveau, and at the National Conservatory of Toulouse. He has composed music for 80 movies, working with directors Víctor Erice (El sol del membrillo), Daniel Sánchez Arévalo (Azul oscuro casi negro; Gordos), Icíar Bollaín (Flores de otro mundo), and Salvador García (Mensaka; El otro barrio; Las voces de la noche; Castillos de cartón). His scores have won several prizes, including a Palma de Oro for El otro barrio at the Buenos Aires Film Festival, and the prize to the best soundtrack in Europe for Azul oscuro casi negro, from the Federación Europea de Asociaciones de Compositores de Cine.

Paula Olaz was born in Pamplona in 1989 and grew up with a clear interest in music. At the age of 19 she moved to Amsterdam, her first European life experience that brought her to different countries such as France, Germany and Switzerland. She studied a Master’s in Scoring for Film, TV and Video games at Berklee College of Music, and has been working as a GA in the Valencia Berklee Campus Tech Lab. She currently lives in San Sebastián working as a composer and teacher. [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "The Shadow in My Eye" (Marco Beltrami, Ceiri Torjussen and Buck Sanders)

Original score from the 2021 war drama feature film directed by Ole Bornedal, starring Danica Curcic, Alex Høgh Andersen and Susse Wold, produced by Miso Film.

On March 21st, 1945, the British Royal Air Force set out on a mission to bomb Gestapo’s headquarters in Copenhagen. The raid had fatal consequences as some of the bombers accidentally targeted a school and more than 120 people were killed, 86 of whom were children.

Opening with the heartfelt “Henry’s Piano”, the score distinguishes itself with a clever combination of contemporary tension scoring and a selection of symphonic, emotional cues. The inhuman war machine grinding the city of Copenhagen gets a suitably cold, largely industrial underscoring with “RAF Attack” and “The Bombing” as symphonic additions (such as pulsating strings) complement the noise created by the planes and the artillery. On the other hand, the civil victims are commemorated with cues ranging from the nostalgic (“The Classroom”) though the haunting and hopeless (“Bodies”) to the optimistic (“Final Run”).

Following his groundbreaking score for Scream, Marco Beltrami became the most reliable genre composer following the adventures of alien invaders (The Faculty), vampires (Blade II), ghosts (The Woman in Black) and zombies (World War Z). He is frequently trusted with scoring the most valuable Hollywood properties: he worked on the remakes of The Omen, The Thing and Carrie, but he also took over from Michael Kamen on the last two Die Hard movies. Beltrami’s regular filmmaking partners include Wes Craven (Scream 1-4, Dracula 2000), Guillermo del Toro (Mimic, Hellboy), James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, The Wolverine) and Tommy Lee Jones (The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Homesman). MovieScore Media has released his scores for the controversial Russian film Mathilde and his prior collaboration with Ole Bornedal, the mini-series 1864.

Ceiri Torjussen has been present on the Los Angeles film music scene since 2000 and has participated in scoring Hollywood blockbusters like Repo Men, Live Free or Die Hard and Underworld Evolution. His more recent scores include the bombastic action comedy Big Ass Spider! (2013) which was inspired by monster movie music of the 1950s, Patrick Magee’s Primal Rage (2018) and Mike Gan’s Burn (2019), starring Josh Hutherson. Ceiri’s score for the LGBTQ dance drama Test (2014) has been released by MovieScore Media.

Raised in South Carolina, Buck Sanders moved to Los Angeles in 1989 to pursue his career as a musician. He became Marco Beltrami’s assistant in 1997, collaborating in the creation of numerous soundtracks, including that of The Hurt Locker for which they received an Oscar nomination for the best soundtrack in 2010. Though working on basically all of Beltrami’s scores to some capacity, Sanders has received co-composing credits on such recent projects as the zombie romance Warm Bodies (2015) the action thriller No Escape (2015) and the historical drama Waiting For The Barbarians (2019). [https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/]

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Misha and the Wolves" music by Nick Foster

THE STORY: The dramatic tale of a woman whose holocaust memoir took the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher – who turned detective – revealed an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.

THE SCORE: “Misha and the Wolves is kind of a psychological thriller; a fairy tale where all is not as it seems. I wanted to create a sense of an incredible story being told through the filter of memory; of an epic journey with a hint of a fairy tale, but always with a hint of darkness, of a story with further layers to be revealed. It seemed right to feature traditional storytelling musical elements, but with the potential to twist and turn and subvert those elements as director Sam Hobkinson did with the story; orchestrator Ben Foster & I worked with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra to create rich warm strings that could turn glacial at a beat’s notice; and with clarinettist Ben Castle to make moody woodwind pads full of texture and physicality; all built on a bed of uneasy synth textures and tones.” – Nick Foster

THE COMPOSER: Nick Foster is a multiple BAFTA-winning composer, arranger and producer of music for television, commercials and film. Working both solo and in collaboration from Air Studios, London, Nick has made his name composing distinctive and emotive scores for television shows and feature films in the UK and US including Timewasters, Bounty Hunters, the Derren Brown specials (including the recent Netflix special, Sacrifice), The A List, Cuckoo, the Emmy-winning Hank Zipzer for the BBC, and the popular animated series, Thunderbirds Are Go, which Nick composes with brother Ben Foster, and for which they have been BAFTA, MAS and BAA-nominated.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Bac Nord" (The Stronghold) music by Guillaume Roussel

THE STORY: A police brigade working in the dangerous northern neighborhoods of Marseille, where the level of crime is higher than anywhere else in France.

THE SCORE: “Cédric’s movies are always so powerful, it’s an exciting challenge to find the right tone and the right dynamic. Bac Nord is so realistic that the music really needed to blend in except for a few very internal and psychological moments. The guitar was definitively the main instrument to impersonate the Mediterranean vibe that surrounds the characters so we took a lot of time working on sounds we recorded on guitars and manipulated to transform it into textures and make them sound like synth. So while a lot of the soundtrack is only guitar – you’ll never be able to tell it!” – Guillaume Roussel

THE COMPOSER: French composer Guillaume Roussel is becoming one of the most promising composers in France. He wrote music for his first French feature film in 2012 with Les seigneurs for director Olivier Dahan (after a previous collaboration on La vie en rose as an orchestrator); they collaborated two years later on Grace of Monaco starring Nicole Kidman and Tim Roth. His other important credits include McG’s Three Days to Kill as well as Cedric Jimenez’s La French and HHhH. Working as a composer in Hans Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions team, Guillaume‘s contributions can be heard in the scores for James L. Brooks’ How Do You Know?, Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides and the 2012 Academy Award Ceremony. His score for the Medieval adventure film Outcast has been released by MovieScore Media.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Help, I Shrunk My Friends" music by Anne-Kathrin Dern

THE STORY: To protect his magic objects Otto Leonhard has taught Felix the secret art of shrinking. When Felix’s friends almost mess up his date with Melanie, he shrinks them spontaneously to a tenth of their size.

THE SCORE: “Help I Shrunk My Friends is the last installment in the ‘Shrunken’ series. It was a joy to once again compose music for this world of magic and comedy. Despite the growing pandemic at the time, we managed to record the score in a rather unique way at a Belgian studio. We used ISO booths and a lot of post-production magic to get everything to sound right but in the end it was worth it for an exciting conclusion to this saga!” – Anne-Kathrin Dern

THE COMPOSER: Born in Eutin, Germany, Anne-Kathrin Dern graduated from the UCLA Film Scoring program. She started out working as a sample developer and percussion library programmer before getting her first mock-up commission on the Alan Menken/Christopher Lennertz medieval comedy Galavant. As a composer, her traditionally melodic writing can be enjoyed in a variety of children’s adventure films as well as in her collaborations with Klaus Badelt, most notably on the 3D animated ballerina movie Leap! (2016). MovieScore Media has previously released The Jade Pendant (2017), Lilly’s Bewitched Christmas (2017), The Legend of the War Horse (2018) and of course the previous entry in the series, Help, I Shrunk My Parents (2018).

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "The Innocents" (De uskyldige) music by Pessi Levanto

THE STORY: During the bright Nordic summer, a group of children reveal their dark and mysterious powers when the adults aren’t looking. In this original and gripping supernatural thriller, playtime takes a dangerous turn.

THE SCORE: “The Innocents asks the question whether children can be evil – as in are they born with morals or do we develop a sense of right and wrong as we grow? The score begins with the idea of simple sounds but they are then aged and corrupted illustrating how the purity of childhood is tainted over time. The score utilises strings and various gongs which have been manipulated by running them through tape machines and other vintage equipment producing a whimsical, nostalgic and slightly melancholic sound to remind us that the world of children is something we no longer have access to as grown-ups.” – Pessi Levanto

THE COMPOSER: Pessi Levanto has scored around twenty full-length feature films, thirty short films and documentaries plus miscellaneous spots and commercials. He has released seven records of his own and played in and done arrangements for dozens of others. His credits include the romantic comedy Body Fat Index of Love (2012) and the family adventure Rölli and the Golden Key (2013) and the war movie Oma maa (2018). Besides his film work, Pessi is a sought-after arranger. His project Classical Trancelations with the Helsinki Philharmonics, had sold-out shows of orchestral versions of club music classics. MovieScore Media has recently released The Film Music of Pessi Levanto, a portfolio edition of eight film scores.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MOVIESCORE MEDIA LAUNCHES DOCUMENTARY SUB-LABEL ‘REALITY BYTES’ WITH THE RED ORCHESTRA BY ELOI RAGOT

MovieScore Media launches its new documentary-focused sub-label called Reality Bytes. The sub-label intends to release the best and most interesting documentary titles on the market, where both the topic of the film as well as the quality of the score merit further attention. Co-inciding with the film’s wide release on August 26, the inaugural title of the new sub-label is The Red Orchestra with music by Eloi Ragot. Written and directed by Carl-Ludwig Rettinger, the movie re-examines the story of the Red Orchestra: the most important resistance network in Nazi Germany, whose operations extended from Berlin and Brussels to Paris. The album features Eloi Ragot’s score recorded with the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and co-incides with the premiere of the film in Germany.

"I first thought working on a WW2 documentary was a bit tricky because of the sheer scope of the story”, said Eloir Ragot. “But Carl-Ludwig Rettinger pushed me to be as near as possible to the characters, their feeling, their ideas, their love affairs, and especially one of the main founders of the Red Orchestra, Leopold Trepper. That led to the decision to have a rather small-sized orchestra, with piano as well as cimbalom, a Hungarian instrument. It brings to me this Eastern and 'film noir' sound and its bounciness underlines well how bold and courageous the members of the organization were. I based many musical themes on rythms and ostinatos to reflect the way those people were always on the move in order not to get caught. Also, some electronic and in particular Moog synth pads and percussions were a perfect match to the many images of the films shot in the 70s about the Red Orchestra and help bringing a modern view on the events."

French composer Eloi Ragot’s best-known work may be his original music for the Netflix TV series The Break that won the Best French-speaking Series Award at the Series Mania Festival 2016. A second season was released on November 2018. Since then, he's worked on Dutch TV-Series Women of the Night (Netflix), Canadian feature film Reservoir as well as the Belgian Sci-Fi series Unseen whose soundtrack has been released by MovieScore Media. Eloi just finished working on another television series entitled The Window, to be released in fall 2021.

Reality Bytes is the first record label in the world that is exclusively devoted to original music from documentaries. It’s a new sub-label to MovieScore Media, a company that released over 500 soundtrack albums since the launch in 2006. With its special knack for identifying up and coming talent, MovieScore Media was the first label to release music by many of the hottest composers in Hollywood today, including Benjamin Wallfisch (the composer of Blade Runner 2049 and It), who had his first MovieScore Media album of seven released in 2006; Daniel Pemberton (the composer of The Man from U.N.C.L.E and Enola Holmes), who had five MovieScore Media albums released before his big Hollywood break; and Pinar Toprak (the composer of Captain Marvel) who had her tender score for The Lightkeepers released by MovieScore Media ten years ago.

Among the many acclaimed albums in the MovieScore Media catalogue are soundtracks for Let the Right One In (Johan Söderqvist), four volumes of TV series Merlin (Rob Lane et al), Centurion (Ilan Eshkeri), A Royal Affair (Cyrille Aufort & Gabriel Yared), Mathilde (Marco Beltrami) and Stalingrad (Angelo Badalamenti). In its ‘Discovery Collection’, MovieScore Media has released world premiere recordings of scores by esteemed composers such as Michael Kamen, Basil Poledouris, Patrick Doyle, David Shire and Dario Marianelli. In 2012, an album released by MovieScore Media’s sub-label Screamworks Records, The Shrine (music by Ryan Shore), was nominated for a Grammy Award in the ‘Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media’ category.

Since 2018, MovieScore Media focuses on album production and digital distribution, and releases its albums in CD format through other partner labels, including Quartet Records, Music Box Records and Kronos Records. Albums are available digitally from all major digital platforms, including iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Google Play and Apple Music. Since 2021, MovieScore Media’s digital releases are distributed exclusively by Symphonic Distribution. 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Port Authority" music by Matthew Herbert

MovieScore Media’s latest composer on its roster is influential electronica artist Matthew Herbert, whose intense ambient score for Danielle Lessovitz urban transgender drama Port Authority builds on a varied number of influences. This unorthodox love story set in New York's queer ballroom scene, and follows Paul, a 20 year old Midwesterner who quickly catches eyes with Wye, a 22 year old girl voguing on the sidewalk. After Paul seeks her out in secret, an intense love between them blossoms. But when Paul discovers Wye is trans, he is forced to confront his own identity and what it means to belong...

Matthew Herbert’s body of work in the field of electronic music is impossible to categorize. In one of his interviews, he summed up his artistic credo in the following way: "When everything I read politically and watch and hear has been absorbed, there comes a point where you must feel it viscerally otherwise you are closed to the horrors of it and thus closed to the possibility of action, closed to the idea that you could make a difference or could have prevented the outcome. This internalizing of the struggle, the friction, the melancholy I feel should be at the emotional core of the work. After all, I am making music and not writing a newspaper article. But with the invention of the sampler, I can now explicitly root my work in the literal, critical present. I can describe the real in the frame of the imaginary."

Matthew Herbert is an award-winning composer, artist, producer and writer whose range of innovative works extends from more than 30 albums (including the much-celebrated Bodily Functions) to scores for Oscar-winning films (A Fantastic Woman) as well as music for the National Theatre, Broadway, TV series (Noughts and Crosses, BBC), games (Lego) and radio. He has performed solo, as a DJ and with various musicians including his own 21 piece big band and 100 piece choir all round the world from the Sydney opera house, to the Hollywood Bowl and created installations, plays and opera. 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Finders of the Lost Yacht" music by Panu Aaltio

Original score from the 2021 family adventure feature film directed by Taavi Vartia, starring Olavi Kiiski, Oskari Mustikkaniemi and Mimosa Willamo, produced by Taavi Vartia Tuotanno and released by Nelonen Media (Finland).

Pertsa and Kilu’s imaginative plans become all too real when they find themselves on the trail of a bank robber and a missing yacht.

“It’s hard to explain just how big Pertsa and Kilu are in Finland and how much of a privilege it was to join this long tradition that has been going on since the 1950s. Since the story here is foremost about friendship, and that theme is central in the score as well. The main theme is very much about the adventure, but borrows a little from rock ‘n roll and jazz to portray the inventive non-conformist attitude of the two friends, who among other things end building their own airplane and submarine out of scrap metal!” – Panu Aaltio

Finders of the Lost Yacht marks the eighth MovieScore Media release with Panu Aaltio for whom the label released the acclaimed Tale of a Forest (2012) and Tale of Lake (2016), both of which won the Best Original Score for a Documentary award of the IFMCA. The string of collaborations include The Home of Dark Butterflies (2009), Finland’s official submission for the 2009 Academy Awards and the epic Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2009), the Greece-set adventure score The Island of Secrets (2015) or more recently Super Furball (2018) and 95 (2018). Training as a cellist since the age of six, Aaltio also studied music technology and classical composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and film music at the USC where he received the Harry Warren scholarship for Excellence in Film Scoring.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Dos" music by Diego Navarro

Original score from the 2021 thriller feature film directed by Mar Targarona, starring Pablo Derqui, Marina Gatell and Kandido Uranga, produced by Rodar y Rodar Cine y Televisión and released by Filmax (Spain).

A man and a woman wake up naked in a room with their abdomens attached to each other.

“Scoring Dos has been such a journey in all aspects, professionally and on the personal level. Trying always to be loyal with my writing, I attempted to experiment and step outside my comfort zone. The film, as an original psycho-thriller is based on the philosophical concept around number two. Not only all the mathematics relations, but also the fight between two opposites poles, the Yin and Yang and the eternal attraction they feel finding, at the end, unexpected common points. From the film’s initial concept, I decided to create the score following the ‘two’ premise. All the music has been created around number two. From Socos Duo (cello and marimba) who plays a main role in the score, together with the orchestra and the use of electronics, the structure of all the pieces, time signatures used, main intervals of the theme, rhythms, harmonic transitions between each piece, orchestrations, etc. All has been created taken into consideration number two, its multiples and its mathematic relations. The score ends with a transcendent piece with the cello soloist playing a main role, and going beyond: They met and no matter the circumstances, being detached or not, they will recognize each other forever…” – Diego Navarro

Diego Navarro is one of the most renowned names in Spanish film music nowadays. His latest works have received several awards and nominations like his World Soundtrack Award nomination for Passage to Dawn, and a double nomination to the IFMCA awards, for Capture the Flag. His music for The Mauthausen Photographer was nominated for ‘Best Orchestral Score’ at the XI Gaudí Awards and the II Spanish Audiovisual Music Awards. Navarro is also the director of Fimucité, the Tenerife International Film Music Festival, which will celebrate its 15th year in September 2021.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Un rescate de huevitos" music by Zacarias M. de la Riva

Original score from the 2021 animated film directed by Gabriel Riva Palacio Alatriste and Rodolfo Riva Palacio Alatriste, featuring Maite Perroni, Bruno Bichir and Jesús Ochoa, produced by Huevocartoon and released by Pantelion Films (USA) and Videocine (Mexico).

Toto and his friends must rescue his egg children after they’re taken away for a gourmet food event in Africa.

“For me it is always a gift to write music for an animated motion picture. It is never an easy task, the music has to carry the images emotionally and has to help with the storytelling. The possibility of writing big action scenes, of giving the emotional dimension to the characters all without losing the comical touch needed and with a 75 piece orchestra is always an exhilarating and challenging experience. It was a great joy to revisit some of the leitmotifs I had created for Un gallo con muchos huevos  (‘Little Rooster’s Eggcellent Adventure’, also released by MovieScore Media), and also to compose new ones with the arrival of new characters such as Max and Uli’s (Toto’s children), or the Duchess and the Russians (the bad guys). And it was truly marvellous to work again with directors Gabriel and Rodolfo Riva-Palacio. Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did!” – Zacarias M. de la Riva

The score for Un rescate de huevitos was written by Zacarias M. de la Riva, one of the most versatile talents of the Spanish film music scene. A former student of telecommunication who then enrolled to the Berklee College of Music to study film music, de la Riva has already proven himself to be talented in every genre he’s come across. Previous de la Riva scores issued by MovieScore Media include his collaborations with Gabe Ibáñez, Hierro (2009) and Automata (2014), the cinema-themed murder mystery Imago Mortis (2009), the Indiana Jones-inspired animated adventure Tad, The Lost Explorer (2011), the icy prison break thriller Below Zero (2021) and the precursor to Un rescate de huevitos, Un gallo con muchos huevos (2015).

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "Zana" music by Dritero Nikqi

Original score from the 2019 drama thriller film directed by Antoneta Kastrati, starring Adriana Matoshi, Mensur Safqiu and Astrit Kabashi, produced by Crossing Bridges Film and released by Synergetic Distribution (USA) and Matchbox Films (UK etc).

Haunted by her long suppressed past and pressured by family to seek treatment from mystical healers for her infertility, a Kosovar woman struggles to reconcile the expectations of motherhood with a legacy of wartime brutality.

“Working on Antoneta Kastrati’s film, Zana, was one of my most challenging experiences, both as a composer and a sound artist, first of all for the reason that her courageous sharing of her wartime trauma is also a collective experience for most of us involved in this film. In that sense, it took a deep dive in that part of the psyche that tends to keep those memories in a closed box, therefore it took an extensive seeking through sounds in order to reach a fitting aural description and authentic emotional impact to match the weight of Zana‘s narrative. This had impacted my approach in using more unorthodox techniques in creating the sound that would represent the inner noise of suppressed trauma, but also that of human pursuit of normality and the strange way it travels in doing so. So, not only the film demands a representation of all of those extreme ranges of emotion, but also there is ‘the object’ that is invovled there as a secret door, the VHS tape of Zana. That element features heavily – this by tape manipulation on Nagra recorder, tape effects, recording and splicing on VHS tape, and distorting the field recordings from the film set – on almost all sound design and music. At the end this is contrasted by the string quartet piece and the song that features the vocals of Fatime Kosumi – ANDRRA – which arrive as a release to all the tension that is prevalent throughout the film.” – Dritero Nikqi

Composer and sound engineer Dritero Nikqi mainly focuses on experimental music and audio-engineering. Within this framework he has co-founded the collective Punëtori Muzikore and started the recording studio, Studio C, both in Prishtina. He has been part of numerous expositions and performances, plays in different bands and has been the sound director for several documentaries and feature films. His latest credit is the Swiss/Kosovo short film Four Pills at Night.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]

MovieScore Media: "The Potato Venture" music by Panu Aaltio

Original score from the 2021 comedy adventure feature film directed by Joona Tena, starring Jouko Ahola, Mimosa Willamo and Tommi Korpela, produced by Yellow Film & TV and released by SF Film (Finland).

A start-up entrepreneur tries to import potato to Finland in the 17th century.

“What kind of music do you write for a comedy and adventure film about modern startup culture dropped into 17th century Finland involving potatoes? To say I was dreading writing the first note would be an understatement. The pandemic also prevented us from involving a traditional orchestra, so I had to get creative with the instrumentation. The score ended up mirroring the film’s anachronistic nature, and became a hybrid of baroque music and modern film scoring. Certainly it’s quite different from anything else I’ve done!” – Panu Aaltio

The Potato Venture marks the ninth MovieScore Media release with Panu Aaltio for whom the label released the acclaimed Tale of a Forest (2012) and Tale of Lake (2016), both of which won the Best Original Score for a Documentary award of the IFMCA. The string of collaborations include The Home of Dark Butterflies (2009), Finland’s official submission for the 2009 Academy Awards and the epic Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2009), the Greece-set adventure score The Island of Secrets (2015) or more recently Super Furball (2018) and 95 (2018). Training as a cellist since the age of six, Aaltio also studied music technology and classical composition at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and film music at the USC where he received the Harry Warren scholarship for Excellence in Film Scoring.

https://moviescoremedia.com/newsite/

 

Jeremy [Six Strings]