1. This is such an emotive score. How did you become involved in the movie?
From the beginning of my career as a composer I had the pleasure of working with Pablo Moreno and his film company Contracorriente Producciones (now Stellarum Films). This film is an order from the Claretian Family that comes after Moreno´s movie “A forbidden God” (Un Dios Prohibido 2012), and as in the previous films I scored, Poveda, Luz de Soledad, and Red de Libertad. Moreno gave me the pleasure to compose the music for this beautiful movie.
2. How many players did you have for the score. who was the cello soloist? And is it a live choir
The main group of musicians are The Mad4Strings string orchestra, about 25 players. The cello soloist is Dragos Balan, a genius who is the 1st cello of the orchestra of the Royal Theatre of Madrid. It was a miracle to have him, and his interpretation of my music was one of the best things that I have experienced. In addition, I had the opportunity to have exceptional musicians for the soloist parts too; Juanjo Hernandez for the flute and alto flute, Salvador Barberá oboe and English horn, David Martinez violin, the sopranos Natalia Bravo and Sonia Santoyo and the guitar parts of Swignleman (Diego Martinez). The choirs and other instruments like brass and electronic parts were realised by synths and samplers. The mixing was made by the incredible mixer José Vinader, he made the magic to combine all the instruments.
3. The opening track sets the scene for the style and sound of the music did the director have specific notions about what kind of music he wanted.
Yes, Pablo always gives me a lot of different examples to express himself and tell me what he wants in the movie or a specific sequence. In this case most of the examples I had were Morricone and Hans Zimmer. It’s useful for me because with these examples I can understand the feelings, the atmospheres, and the instrumentation that he wants. Then, I tried to forget the examples and built something new by myself, inside the lines he gave me.
4. Do you perform on the score.
Yes, after composing and orchestrating the music, I conducted the orchestra, and in the movie, I played the clarinet in a dance sequence. I was on set, but only appear in a couple of frames.
5.The edition on Spotify is 54 mins in duration is this a full score edition or are there more cues.
In this edition I tried to include most of the music and put together similar cues to create larger tracks. Some cues were too short or had little musical importance, but this did not exceed ten minutes.
6 It is a delicate yet grandiose work how much time did you have to write and record the score.
I was lucky because I had much more time to create this music (comparing with the previous films or the standard situation to film scoring). I wrote the main theme in November 2019, and the total of the score was composed between March and May of 2020 (including orchestration and edition of the parts by my own). It was a calm process because there were several changes in the edition of the movie too. We had the recording session in 2020 September 3rd, and the soloist sessions the following days. It was a large but intense work that I fondly remember.
MOVIE MUSIC INTERNATIONAL. (MMI) . 