Film Score Monthly
SCREAMWORKS RECORDS TO RELEASE NEW SCORE BY CONRAD POPE
The music for ’The Presence’ is composed by ”Hollywood’s greatest musical secret”
(August 31, 2011- Göteborg, Sweden) – The only record label exclusively devoted to music from horror films, Screamworks Records, will release the original soundtrack from the independent horror movie The Presence, starring Mira Sorvino (Mimic, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Guiding Light), Shane West (A Walk to Remember, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Echelon Conspiracy) and Tony Curran (Gladiator, Underworld: Evolution), on October 4, 2011.
The stylish orchestral music for the film is composed by Conrad Pope, one of Hollywood’s most prolific and respected composers who worked extensively as an orchestrator for the biggest names in the film music business: John Williams (Star Wars: Episode I-III, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), Don Davis (the Matrix trilogy), Alexandre Desplat (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1-2), Danny Elfman (Sleepy Hollow, The Wolfman) and Alan Silvestri (Night at the Museum, What Women Want, The Mexican).
Screamworks Records will release the soundtrack both on CD and digitally online on October 4, 2011, co-inciding with Liongate’s US DVD release of the film.
MovieScore Media, the company behind Screamworks Records, previously released Conrad Pope’s score for the independent horror film, In My Sleep, to rave reviews. Review Graveyard wrote that ”Conrad Pope's music is incredible and shows such a wide range that it feels more like a lifelong labour of love than a score banged out under deadline for an independent movie” and Ain’t It Cool’s Scorekeeper enthusiastically claimed that ”Pope is an extremely talented composer… … (his )gifts as an orchestrator I'm sure are indispensable to the composers who hire him; however, I would really love to see him orchestrate less and compose more.”
Pope’s passionate commitment to telling a film’s story with persuasive and compelling music has made him one of the most in demand scoring professionals. He was the supervising orchestrator for the scores to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Parts I and II. Such canny top guns as John Williams, Alexandre Desplat, James Newton Howard, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Danny Elfman, John Powell, Hans Zimmer, and Mark Isham have all called upon his gifts as an arranger, orchestrator and conductor. Pope’s musical qualifications are rare in today’s Hollywood. Classically trained at some of the world’s finest music conservatories, he arrived in Hollywood with abilities to recreate with uncanny precision different styles of music. This talent was immediately seized upon by the industry’s top musical professionals, leading to many arranging assignments of source music for diverse films, guiding him, ultimately, to the orchestrating and ghost writing of many major motion pictures. Today, few music professionals are as esteemed as Conrad for his first-hand, comprehensive command of the many facets of film scoring and, his reputation for consistently delivering the goods.
About Conrad Pope’s beautiful and hauntingly eerie orchestral music for The Presence, writer/director Tom Provost said that it’s ”beautifully crafted, very original and often surprising. The music not only supports and adds to the movie, but like the cabin in which the movie takes place, becomes a character all its own. It is a remarkable achievement.”
The Presence is a darkly romantic ghost story about a woman who travels to an isolated cabin where she finds herself stalked by an apparition who has come to inhabit her space as his own. With the unexpected arrival of the woman's boyfriend, the dark spirit's haunting grows more obsessive. Soon the woman begins to exhibit weirdly irrational behavior as the thin line between sanity and possession begins to unravel.
The Presence will be released on DVD by Lionsgate in the USA on October 4, 2011.
Screamworks Records (http://www.screamworksrecords.com/) is a sub-label to MovieScore Media (http://www.moviescoremedia.com/) which has been nominated for the International Film Music Critics Association ’Soundtrack Label of the Year’ award five yearsin a row and has released original music from over 150 films on CD and digitally online. It is distributed in the UK by RSK Entertainment and in the USA by Screen Archives Entertainment.
 
  
  
  
email Conrad