Composer | Author | Producer
Today I was listening to the one-act opera Lord Byron’s Love Letter by Raffaello de Banfield and libretto by Tennessee Williams. Reader, have you heard of this creation? I didn’t think so.
I only have a copy myself because one fine afternoon ages ago I found myself scrounging among the used bins in Amoeba Hollywood looking for something strange with a brand new Visa card in my wallet. So I will tell you about this little operatic oddity.
There are four film composers who stand high above all others in musical brilliance, command of the craft of scoring for action, and originality. They are Krzysztof Komeda, Toru Takemitsu, Ennio Morricone, and Bernard Herrmann. And I think Komeda may be the favorite of my favorites. Like most of the […]
A funny short film “All the Great Operas in 10 Minutes” from Kim Thompson.
As the host of this channel says, it won’t even take you 10 minutes. And as a bonus the film is narrated in a cute Canadian accent 🙂
Few film composers are recognizable (to me, at least) from the very first bars of the score.
In Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels (FR: La baie des anges) however, it took me only seconds into the credits sequence to guess: Michel Legrand.
Devin Sarno’s music is, to my ears, a natural for creating counterpoint to moving images. It usually starts off very quietly before building into a crescendo of multi-layered, often feedback-driven music characterized by unknowable overtones and harmonics. It might be meditative. It might be inscrutable. It might be terrifying. With Sarno one never knows in advance!
Listening to the LP of the soundtrack of the 1971 film Klute. Strange piano with what sounds like… what is that tone-bending instrument? Celesta? Glass bells? Wind chimes? Very interesting musical sequence for a mainstream film. Who is this composer? Seems I would have heard of someone so original before. Harry Partch? Terry Riley? Jerry Goldsmith on peyote?
