OT - Nuno Maló, Film Composer

[Miguel Andrade 1,263]

First, I'm sorry of talking about other composer than our good old Johnny Boy...

This last friday I had the pleasure to met a young Portugues composer called Nuno Malo, along with is lovely wife and his father (both of them also musicians, a piano player and a guitar player, respectively).

I went to Lisbon, as he was spending a few weeks in his parents home, and as soon as I arrived he took me for a nice luch, were we keep talking and talking about music... One of the longest luchs I've had.

After that we went to his house/studio were we continued talking about music, his life in L.A. (were his been studying at USC) and his two first projects.

He was recently comisiioned by a Taiwan based label to compose the music for a cd, sounding like italian film music. Most of it recall Ennio Morricone's scores, but they aslo asked him to arrange a traditional chinise song into an orchestral pice that would be close to the sound of Titanic (naturally that sound much more like Horner music... but what a piece, ten minute long, with folk instruments and all). Since this is a lower budget project, only the soloist were live players, and the rest was done by Nuno on synthtysers.

But the major pleasure was to listen to excertps from his first score for a featurre film, directed by Portuguese director Joaquim Sapinho. Called "A Mulher Polícia" (Police Woman), this is a great tragedy, as he explained to me the plot. Most of the music is orchestral, and was beuatifully recorded by the Budapest Symphony last month. On the beginning of the film is a piece made on synths, that recall the Thomas Newman of American Beauty, very atmospheric. The finale, for orchestra, is marvelous... Theres a slow part on teh string, sort of biulding tension, much in the same way as the first part of the shower scene in Psycho. Then as the main carachter has is happy ending (if you can call it a happy ending...at least she has revenge), the music gets a little warmer, and you feel hte resolution... I must say I was very impressed with everything.

You can hear the main theme on a 15 sec trailer at www.amulher-policia.com This was recorded over a year ago and was made on the synths only.

I know that Nuno's music might be still far from being artistic mature, and one may find all the influences in there... But if you happen to find one of his cd's, give it a try --- at least the non-filmic one, since there's no word regarding a cd release of his film score.

As I've just said I was very much impressed with his work -- even more than from some work by profesional composers!

And Nuno, if you hapen to read this, thank you for a very pleasent afternoon. I hope we can meet agian very soon. And I wish you all the luck in the world.

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

Interesting story. Did you meet him again?

 

I just purchased these two scores from SAE for almost nothing. I sampled Amália on Spotify and was intrigued.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

Just purchased No God, No Master. It contains a beautiful cue that's a pastiche over Kamen's Band of Brothers. I don't mind pastiches when done this well.

[Thor 7,504]

9 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Just purchased No God, No Master. It contains a beautiful cue that's a pastiche over Kamen's Band of Brothers. I don't mind pastiches when done this well.

 

Great score, his best, IMO.

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

His scores have the real emotions that are lacking in many scores nowadays. Let's hope he doesn't get lured into scoring superhero movies.

[filmusicfan 24]

Check out "La Era De La Oscuridad" from MIEL DE NARANJAS. I had the pleasure of working with Nuno, orchestrating a little for him, and was amazed with the depth of emotion in his music. This track was the End Credits and it's gorgeous:

 

 

 

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

Gorgeous!

[Jurassic Shark 12,075]

I'm checking out Nuno Malo's score to Backlight. Apart from the wailing stuff it's interesting, with Malo's usual great sense of drama and feeling.