MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

A short review for a short score, but one which marks the emergence of a composer who could one day be very popular. Ryan Shore is Howard Shore’s nephew, and has already undertaken orchestrating duties for his uncle on a number of scores, notably the recent Dogma and Existenz. His debut score as a solo composer is for the highly regarded World War I animated drama A Letter from the Western Front, directed by NYU student filmmaker Daniel M. Kanemoto and which won several respected student film and animation awards in 1998, including the coveted Gold Medal at the Student Academy Awards.

This CD, produced as a promo for Ryan on the Ex Mortis label, is only nine minutes long, but the music contained within it is excellent, and makes a good and lasting impression, despite the brevity of the running time. Surprisingly, the score is not synthesised, performed instead by an impressive sounding orchestra from the Tisch School of Arts in New York. On the whole, Ryan Shore is more conventionally romantic and melodic than his uncle usually is, and the overall sound is crisp, sharp and clear.

Of the six cues, four are quite similar, each featuring the lovely central melody, described in the director Kanemoto’s liner notes as “incredible”. First heard in the opening track ‘A Letter from the Western Front’, and again in ‘June 9th, 1918’ and the delightful (but short) ‘End Credits’, Shore’s theme is lush and noble in a Bruce Broughton kind of way, and features a exquisite cello solo backed by a deep bed of strings. The longest cue, at 2 minutes 43, is the gripping ‘The Confrontation’, in which Ryan seems to have adopted some of his uncle’s dissonant techniques, with throbbing basses adding weighty counterpoint to the plaintive strings above it, and concluding with a highly disturbing passage for harp waves and shrill, almost Herrmannesque violins.

And that’s it really. Nine minutes of great music that provides the world with an introduction to the work of Ryan Shore. I have absolutely no idea whether you can buy this CD anywhere – I came by my copy via a friend who knows Ryan’s agent – but I recommend you hear it if ever you have the opportunity. Who knows – maybe an arrangement of the theme will crop up on a Ryan Shore compilation when he wins his first Oscar in 2014!

Track Listing:

• A Letter from the Western Front (0:40)
• June 9th, 1918 (1:51)
• Wake Up, America (0:59)
• The Confrontation (2:43)
• Silence (1:29)
• End Credits (0:55)

Running Time: 09 minutes 04 seconds

Ex Mortis 001 (1998)

Music composed and conducted by Ryan Shore. Orchestrations by Ryan Shore and Kevin Kaska. Recorded and mixed by Joe Pleiman. Mastered by Bruce Buchanan. Album produced by Ryan Shore.