The Score Report, 6/9

Big news this week, as always! This time the awesome thing is that we have several women composers whose work is being feature. While that shouldn’t be a big deal, the fact of the matter is that we live in a world where it’s a big deal, and we’re going to keep celebrating when it goes right and calling for more equality until the day comes when it’s not a big deal anymore.

First up, Anne Dudley’s score for the BBC series Poldark is out TODAY! The period drama is about a soldier from Cornwall who returns from fighting the American War of Independence to find his life in shambles. Anne Dudley is a composer, producer, and instrumentalist whose credits include scoring American History X and The Crying Game. She also served as music producer for Les Misérables. Find the trailer below. You can check out the series when it airs on PBS June 21st.

Next, we have Wendy Wang’s score for Man Up, the film debut of Kevin Wu. The score is meant to evoke the feel of 80’s teen movies while underscoring the melodramatic tendencies of the two main characters. Wang fronts the band The Sweet Hurt. She’s performed with The Bird and the Bee, Ry Cooder, Florence + The Machine, and others. She’s also produced and engineered for institutions as diverse as Louie and Studio Ghibli.

Next up, the soundtrack for Infinitely Polar Bear features music from George Harrison, Ike Turner, and many others, but the standout is a new track from China Forbes of Pink Martini. (If that doesn’t immediately make your heart leap, go out right now and buy a copy of Hang On Little Tomato.) The movie was written and directed by Forbes’s sister, Maya Forbes, and touches on their shared experience growing up with a bipolar father. The album also features excerpts of the score by Theodore Shapiro, who did all of those grand sweeping bits in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that weren’t David Bowie songs.

Lastly, June 15th sees the release of Andre Matthias’s score for Lost for Words, a drama exploring the romance between a haunted American Marine and a Chinese ballerina. As they teach each other to speak their respective languages, cultural and political pressures threaten to drive them apart. Matthias said, “In recent years, film music with actual melodic themes has become quite rare, so the opportunity to write a traditional romantic score with an Eastern touch was wonderful.” The music is very much a part of the action, sometimes coming to the foreground. Anyone who’s done scoring work knows how rare a thing that is, and what a statement of intent it is on the part of the director to take the music that seriously.

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