https://daviddas.com -- As chief self-appointed of the Leonard Bernstein Fan Club (certified for decades now), I watched Netflix's Maestro biopic with eager anticipation. At first it didn't disappoint...but then it did, but for unexpected and ironic reasons.
Watch Maestro here on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81171868
The official film site (including tickets/showtimes): https://maestrofilmofficial.com
Maestro is a 2023 American biographical drama film that centers on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre. It was directed by Bradley Cooper, from a screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer. It was produced by Martin Scorsese, Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Fred Berner and Amy Durning. The film stars Carey Mulligan as Montealegre alongside Cooper as Bernstein; Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, and Sarah Silverman appear in supporting roles.
Maestro premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2023, where it was nominated for the Golden Lion. The film received a limited theatrical release on November 22, 2023, before being released on Netflix on December 20. It received positive reviews from critics and was named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute. It has also been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards.
#bernstein #netflix #maestro #classicalmusic #music #film #filmcriticisms #leonardbernstein
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82XkaNRt9dw
A panel discussion between composers David Das, Edwin Wendler, David Kole, and Jason Miller talking about a variety of opportunities and challenges that composers face in the modern era.
Topics discussed include creative challenges, dealing with temp tracks, creativity, studio stories, working with directors, editors, music supervisors, and using the computer as a musical instrument,
This was recorded at the IMSTA FESTA in Los Angeles, CA on May 13, 2017.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-WqhHvZly4
Eros Piano is a piano concerto written by the American minimalist composer John Adams. The work was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation in 1984 and was completed in 1989. Its world premiere was performed by the pianist Paul Crossley and the London Sinfonietta conducted by Adams on November 24, 1989, in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The piece is dedicated to Paul Crossley. It is the first of three piano concertos by Adams, followed by Century Rolls in 1996 and Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? in 2019.
The composition of Eros Piano was inspired in part by the piano concerto riverrun by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. In an interview with the author Edward Strickland, Adams said "I encountered Takemitsu's riverrun, a rather modest piece about fifteen minutes long for piano and orchestra that he wrote for Peter Serkin, who played it in several American cities several years ago, but nobody seemed to have a very strong response. The English performance I found extraordinarily beautiful and listened to it many times and had the response I often do of writing a piece of my own in order to exorcise it." He added, "Eros Piano is a gloss on riverrun, as Harmonielehre is a gloss on various Romantic composers."
Eros Piano was also influenced by the music of other American composers such as the jazz pianist Bill Evans, for whom Adams and Takemitsu had a shared fondness. The composer described the piece as "a quiet, dreamy soliloquy for piano, played against a soft, lush fabric of orchestral screens and clusters." The piece is written in a single movement and has a duration of roughly 15 minutes in performance.
The work is scored for solo piano and a small orchestra comprising two flutes (both doubling piccolo), two oboes, two clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons, two horns, one percussionist (vibraphone, crotales, and maracas), optional keyboard sampler, and strings.
Despite being one of Adams's lesser known works, Eros Piano has been generally praised by music critics. In 1999, Allan Kozinn of The New York Times wrote, "Eros Piano extends Mr. Adams's language in a different way. Written after an evening with Toru Takemitsu, it embraces the atmospheric gracefulness of that composer's later style through inventive string voicings, and its solo piano line hints at the shapely improvisations of Bill Evans, to whom the work is in fact a tribute." Reviewing a piano reduction of Eros Piano arranged and performed by the pianist Vicki Ray in 2009, Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times described the concerto as "neglected" and called it a "lush, torchy 1989 valentine for piano."
#piano #johnadams #minimalism
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spPER8SQzRM
An excerpt of a cue ("Reunion") from composer Benjamin Wallfisch's score to Amazon Studios' Thirteen Lives.
Benjamin Wallfisch is a British composer, conductor, orchestrator, and producer of film scores. Since the mid-2000s, he has worked on over 75 feature films, including composing original scores for Blade Runner 2049, Shazam!, It, It Chapter Two, The Invisible Man, Hidden Figures and A Cure for Wellness.
In 2017, he was jointly nominated with Pharrell Williams and Hans Zimmer for Best Original Score at the 74th Golden Globe Awards for his work on Hidden Figures, and a BAFTA Award and Grammy Award for Blade Runner 2049. In 2020, he was nominated as 'Film Composer of the Year' in the World Soundtrack Awards for the second consecutive year.
Wallfisch's movies have made over $2.5 billion in worldwide box office receipts, and in 2019 Variety inducted him into their ‘Billion Dollar Composer’ series in recognition of this.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCbYQi7loQI
https://daviddas.com -- This is a companion video to my separate video study of Bernard Herrmann's Prelude to Vertigo. Check out the other video where I dissect it in detail and point out some of its incredible creativity and genius: https://youtu.be/heOERx0Arco
#BernardHerrmann #Vertigo #FilmScore
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9MMsEO1jh8
http://daviddas.com — A quick tutorial on how to quickly sift through a large quantity of clips to find the sections that you want to include in your Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) project and get them into your timeline.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYu-q32Ga8Q
Check out composer-conductor Russell Steinberg's unique lecture series, especially 1000 Years of Western Music Backwards, which is one of my favorites. Available at https://russellsteinberg.com, and use code LECTURES50 until January 2nd. This isn't a sponsored post; I'm just a fan.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7V9L7CoehM
The full 4k orchestral score to Lukas Foss's Piano Concerto No. 2, written between 1949 and 1953.
#orchestra #piano #score
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmVAKYbi-Kk
This clip comes from a September 30, 2023 Career Symposium hosted by the Society of Composers & Lyricists at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. Academy of Scoring Arts President David Das interviewed award-winning composer Mark Isham on his 2006 film noir score to Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia.
This video is an excerpt from that conversation. The full video is available to ASA and SCL members at both https://scoringarts.com and https://thescl.com.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWUp6wHptJk