The Lost OST
A few years ago, I was asked to score an indie feature. I was given ultimate creative freedom!, and then the director tossed out every note of it. It was too much.
I’m slowly rewriting, recording, and releasing the score, as a way of trying to figure out what too much is.
This kinda amorphous melody came after a few requests to pull away from a Bernard Herrmann-y, in-your-face kind of string music, and instead toward something more like a texture or soundscape. I couldn’t seem to go far enough in that direction for my collaborator, but I’ve come to really appreciate the nudge/challenge. The final result proudly hinges on a clear chord change, and the voices add a new layer to the intentionally claustrophobic music that comes first.
Thanks to the amazing Paul Wolfram, who patiently played through dozens of individual pitches on the cello, using a number of extended techniques, so that I could create a sampler of strange cello sounds. Every sound here is from that one instrument, other than the soaring voices of Steph Leke, Melissa Wozniak, and Rachel Boeglin.
Paul’s legato plodding here stems from my quixotic mission to make this score have melodies.
Long before it became clear that, okay, it wouldn’t have melodies, the project pushed me to be direct, meaning: no hiding underneath a million chords or inner voices. Fortunately, I decided to write for solo piano, where my technique severely limits my options :)
