![]() Some of the music occasionally has a country twang, both in its orchestrations, and in some of the slurred accents at the end of the string phrases, which increases its tonal appeal. The whole thing overflows with charm and warmth, and is awash in beautifully sentimental string passages, backed by appealing woodwind writing, and enlivened with moments of sprightly piano-led effervescence, light comedy, and entertaining action featuring lively guitars and jovial percussion. Project orchestra and it’s a wholesome, defiantly old-fashioned orchestral score of the type that people like Michael Kamen, Marc Shaiman, Bruce Broughton, John Debney, Mark Isham, David Newman, and others wrote with consistent regularity in the 1980s and 1990s. It was recorded in Macedonia with the F.A.M.E.’s. If her score for Dog Gone is anything to go by, then this is likely to be the start of an excellent new film music career for her. This feels like a natural progression from there. ![]() She wrote an original piece of music for Ellen when she was just six, and claimed it took her just 20 minutes when Ellen asked her how she did that, she shrugged and said “it just came out”. All this is just scratching the surface – her Wikipedia page is amazing, and lists even more achievements – but it was probably only a matter of time before she turned to film scoring. Then, in 2021, she won the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album for ‘Bridgerton: The Musical,’ which she co-wrote with her friend, singer-songwriter Abigail Barlow. She changed tack somewhat in 2018 and released an album of jazz-inspired pop songs called ‘Emotions’. She was performing at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and the Montreux Jazz Festival before she was a teenager, and then, guided by her mentor Quincy Jones, she started writing her own jazz music. She performed at the acclaimed Ravinia Festival at the age of five, was making appearances playing Mozart on the Ellen DeGeneres show from the age of six onwards, and started writing her own original piano music thereafter. She was a virtuoso on the piano almost before she could talk. To say that Bear was a child prodigy is something of an understatement. The point I’m making is that scoring a studio movie when you are barely out of your teens is something that rarely – if ever – happens, and yet here’s Emily Bear, doing just that. I honestly can’t think of anyone else who was working in film music in this way when they were this young. Even Erich Wolfgang Korngold was in his 30s when he scored his first film, Captain Blood, in 1935. Cliff Eidelman was 24 when he scored Magdalene and Triumph of the Spirit in 1988/1989. James Horner was 29 when he scored Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982. I‘m trying to think of a comparable event from the past involving a composer this young. The fact that a composer like Bear is even writing music for a reasonably high profile film at the age of 21 is something quite astonishing in its own right. However, I want to take some time out to write about Dog Gone’s score, which was written by 21-year-old composer Emily Bear. It premiered on Netflix at the beginning of January and, normally, it’s not anything I would give a second thought to, based on the film itself. ![]() ![]() Fielding’s search for Gonker becomes a local cause célèbre, making the news, and inspiring the community. It’s a heartwarming true story about a college student named Fielding Marshall and his epic search for his beloved dog, Gonker, who goes missing on a hike and has to be found quickly as he is ill and needs a life-saving injection. One of my fellow students in the class was a classical pianist and he couldn’t play a note of jazz improv because he didn’t have sheet music in front of him dictating what to do.Dog Gone is a family adventure-drama film, directed by Stephen Herek, starring Rob Lowe, Johnny Berchtold, and Kimberly Williams-Paisley. When I was in music school, I took an improvisation class. As Quincy Jones remarks, “She plays like she’s 40 years old…” Usually jazz pianists can play some classical repertoire, but classical players who try to play jazz often sound forced and wooden. Only 1 year later, she was having pieces published and distributed by Hal Leonard when she was only 4 years old. Where did this young talent come from anyway? Born in 2001 in Rockford, Illinois, Emily was composing music by the time she was only 3 years old. Well, 11 year old Emily Bear has done just that, and proof is on her new Concord album, Diversity. It’s another thing when that same classical prodigy can play jazz well enough to please a giant like Quincy Jones. It’s one thing to find some young classical talent that’s been nurtured from age 3 on the Suzuki method with a toy piano and can glide through Chopin and Schumann.
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