“Rubaru” Score Release – Available Now!
I’m extremely excited to announce that my original score for Rubaru is finally available! I began this journey in March of 2018 and now, more than 3 years later, we’re able to release the 50-minute score that we recorded with an 18-piece string section, solo clarinet, and solo violin. You can listen to it on your favorite streaming service or purchase the score from any of the links below.
I started working on Rubaru in March of 2018. I met with the director, Marco Zambrana, and we began talking about the film; I went over early drafts of the screenplay and we discussed what kind of score he wanted. We established fairly early on the kind of tone we would use and that we wanted a strongly thematic score. That summer of 2018, before they began shooting the film, I wrote some of the basic themes that would be used throughout. The exact material of the themes evolved as time went on but the groundwork was laid during this period.
The score and these themes all work together throughout the film to help realize Marco’s vision and bring the audience closer to the emotional narrative.
(I conduct the score to Rubaru as Marco observes)
I did the majority of the scoring work between January and April of 2019. As we got closer to our recording dates (April 11th and April 23rd) I was still composing for some scenes, making revisions from previous scenes, and orchestrating and preparing scores and parts for approved cues. While finishing some of the later cues I had a fellow student composer, Joseph Mumper, help me orchestrate and prepare parts so we could meet our recording deadlines.
Our school wasn’t really equipped for musical recording on the scale we were wanting so much of this was a trial by fire. Between getting recording space in the Production Center, checking out the necessary recording equipment, navigating working with student musicians, and completing the parts prep, we had our hands full in the days leading up to the score recording.
(Testing the recording setup in the Production Center)
Thankfully I had a great team that enabled me to focus on finishing up score materials and being prepared to conduct for our two three-hour recording sessions. Andy Brewster, producer on the film (as well as the orchestra concertmaster and solo violinist), worked on all of the logistics to get the location and equipment squared away. Joseph was hard at work finishing orchestrations and parts, and Chloe Rogers was prepping to be the primary score recording engineer.
We were fortunate to be able to work with 18 string players during our recording sessions; after our primary sessions we recorded all the solo violin with Andy and all the solo clarinet with Noah Bush. Once all the music was recorded I got a bit of a break while Chloe did the work of mixing the score for placement in the film.
(The string orchestra ‘on-stage’ and recording)
After being placed in the film we stepped back from the score for a while before revisiting it the following summer, at which point Chloe did a new mix of the materials that would be more suitable for a stand-alone score release. It was then a matter of waiting until the time was right to release the score album.
The film is being screened at the International Christian Film & Music Festival next week (Friday, May 21st) and the time is finally right to release the score to the world. I’ll make another post before too long going into more detail about the different thematic material I used in Rubaru, so keep an eye out for that. It’s been quite the journey to get this far and I’m very pleased to finally share Rubaru’s score with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this post and listen the score, and if you feel so inclined, let me know what you thought of it!
Until the next time!