Joan was the daughter of a Master Chief Petty Officer and spent her early years living all over the country near different naval bases She inherited her love for cooking and baking from her mother whose cookies and cakes were local legends in the mid-south Joan’s family eventually settled in Millington where she later attended Memphis State University she was honored as Phi Mu Alpha’s fraternity sweetheart and worked at the legendary Stax Records upon graduation It was also during this time that she met Mark and together they built a life filled with love They had three children and moved to Nashville where Joan continued to raise her family and built a life she was proud of She retired in 2017 after more than two decades of dedicated government service Joan deeply loved her children and took immense pride in their accomplishments She cherished the simple joys of life—playing Bunco with friends and savoring early mornings on her front porch with a cup of coffee listening to birdsong and watching the deer and wild turkeys wander through her yard Thomas Murray Dean and Helen “Bonnie” Dean and her former spouse Jonathan Michael Dean (Anna) Blumberg; grandson TN 37027 with a Funeral Mass to follow at 11:00 am A Reception/Luncheon will follow the service from 12:00 pm-1:30 pm This obituary was published by Obituaries provided free for the community. and website in this browser for the next time I comment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Click Here to Contact Us It is with profound sadness that we announce Daniel W the son of Michael and Glenna (Bray) Blumberg and his unwavering dedication to his family Danny touched the lives and hearts of everyone who knew him He will be deeply missed and forever loved He is survived by his wife Shelly (Fatolitis); son Panagiotis Hilentzaris; mother Glenna Blumberg of Albuquerque New Mexico; sister Tamara Lynn of Spain; his beloved fur babies Ripley & Loki; and many other dearest friends He was preceded in death by his father Michael B Funeral prayers for Daniel will be held Tuesday, April 22, 2025, at 10:30 am at Malone Funeral Home, 324 E. State Street (Route 38), Geneva proceeding to St. Peter Catholic Church, 1891 Kaneville Road, Geneva for Celebration of Funeral Mass at 11:30 am with Father Ryan Browning celebrant.  Click link to live stream the funeral mass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s8JE2EW6Wg a funeral luncheon for friends and family will be held at the historic Arcada in downtown St Charles – a place filled with many fond memories All who loved Danny are welcome to attend and share in remembrance of his life April 21 from 4:00 to 8:00 pm at Malone Funeral Home with a wake servive at 7:45 pm memorials to the Anderson Humane Animal Shelter For more information 630-232-8233 or malonefh.com please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot Get the most important global markets news at your fingertips with a Bloomberg.com subscription where she began studying the violin at the age of four and switched to the viola six years later She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Boston University where she studied with Michael Zaretsky and Steven Ansell and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School Currently Blumberg is Principal Viola of the Redlands Symphony Orchestra and a member of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra She played with the Los Angeles Music Center Opera Orchestra for seven years and freelances extensively throughout the greater Los Angeles area a new music group that specialized in music written after 1980 by Los Angeles area composers for ten years She is Artist Teacher of viola at the University of Redlands is on faculty at Pomona College and Cal Poly Pomona and maintains a large private teaching studio at her home working on many movies including A Beautiful Mind She can be seen in the movie Get Smart and in the most recent Geico commercial featuring the Triangle Soloist She is on the board of the Southern California Viola Society and has been the treasurer and secretary for the Los Angeles chapter of the American String Teacher’s Association and Madge Rice Thatcher Professor of Music at Pomona College Part of  The Claremont Colleges There has been major turnover at the institution following Trump's appointment with several leaders being fired and other affiliated members distancing themselves from the center Kraft and Trump were longtime friends before Trump's foray into politics, and Kraft even donated to his first inauguration. However, the Patriots owner said he stopped talking to the president after the Jan Dana Blumberg is an ophthalmologist based in New York City She has been married to Robert Kraft since 2022 and the pair reportedly started dating in 2017 Blumberg graduated from Brown University in 1995 before receiving her medical degree from St Louis University School of Medicine in 2000 She also received a master's degree in public health from Columbia University and was an adjunct associate professor of ophthalmology at Cornell University, according to her staff bio. Trump takes over as chairTrump took over the Kennedy Center's board after firing former chairman David Rubenstein as well as the center's president Both were appointed to their roles by former President Joe Biden After Trump's appointment was made official Wednesday several high-profile individuals cut ties with the center the creator of shows like "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal," announced her resignation from the center's board on Wednesday Actress Issa Rae canceled a scheduled appearance at the center citing "an infringement on the values of an institution that has faithfully celebrated artists of all backgrounds through all mediums" in a statement posted to Instagram Musician Ben Folds and actress Renee Fleming who both served as artistic advisors affiliated with the center The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a performing arts center in Washington It serves as a national cultural center and hosts shows in theater The center is named in honor of former President John F It is also the site of the prestigious annual Kennedy Center Honors which recognizes the country's most influential performers Melina Khan is a trending reporter for the USA TODAY Network - New England, which serves more than a dozen affiliated news organizations across New England. She can be reached at MKhan@gannett.com “Thank you to the academy and everyone who watched the film and honored the work It means a lot to be acknowledged like this,” Blumberg said For him to trust me in this work and to grow alongside him has been so special The sounds you hear on The Brutalist are made by a group of hardworking radical musicians who’ve been making uncompromising music for many years I’m accepting this award on behalf of them for “El Mal,” from Emilia Pérez.; the film’s director Read “The Brutalist Composer Daniel Blumberg on His Striking, Oscar-Nominated Score,” and follow all of Pitchfork’s coverage of the 2025 Academy Awards. British musician Daniel Blumberg has already cemented his name in film history After debuting scoring abilities on 2020’s The World to Come the composer extraordinaire is back four years later with a monumental sophomore effort––one that reflects the work of a vetted master 82-minute score for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a vast odyssey-inducing epic that subtly clues you into the film’s expression and the dawning sense of hard-earned revelation that runs through the sweeping immigrant story With a Golden Globe nomination for the score already and an all-but-guaranteed Oscar nomination on the horizon Blumberg sat down to talk with us about composing the score the various and experimental approaches he took to recording hyper-involved director like Corbet.   The Film Stage: What are you working on?  Another film that I started on straight after The Brutalist It’s Mona [Fastvold]’s next film [Ann Lee] She just got it together and it just happened to be back to back They normally do second unit for each other And they kind of support each other through it all You were big in the indie-rock scene a long time ago and for more than a decade now you’ve been creating more experimental music with various artists How did you get into composing film scores I’ve been working with mainly improvised music since I was 22 and when I discovered improvised music it was like a relationship to drawing I stumbled into Kieslowski when I was 17––just randomly got a DVD of A Short Film About Killing And then I watched all of Kieslowski’s films Then someone recommended me another director; then I was watching all of Bresson’s films It was always very much driven by discovering directors I wouldn’t even really listen to or particularly notice the score or the performances of the constructs of the films It was quite like a magical medium for me––unlike music He introduced me to film scores because he invited me to the sessions when they recorded the brass for his first film this is the second film we’ve made together Mona asked me to do her first film [The World to Come] That was my introduction; that was the first time I’d worked on a feature because I was working primarily with improvising musicians where it’s so open You don’t know if someone’s gonna play a percussive note for half a second or if they’re playing the saxophone they might circular breathe for an hour But film is time-based in the sense that the scene is three minutes how to retain the qualities of the music that I was excited about And maybe someone like Mona had listened to my records so how to kind of make that work fluidly with the responsibilities of scoring where you’re part of a wider team and you’re all trying to work together to execute what the director’s vision is How I fell in love with film was through directors so immediately it was all about how to do what I do in service to the director and their vision and still make it feel like [the film] is one person’s work Speaking of directors: I saw that you scored a short film directed by Peter Strickland your project with saxophonist Seymour Wright I’m curious how you ended up working with Strickland I know he’s hyper-focused on the sound of his films but I imagine that extends to music as well and the importance of those fusing together for a film That project was interesting because I had this duo with Wright and we were working in a more improvised way an image before we played or a piece of text when we started recording and making records we wanted to kind of do the same: we’d ingested these images and text into the music and we thought it’d be nice to give it to a writer or an artist to make an ekphrasis It’s quite an old-school thing where a write would Brady and I actually really connected on that One of the first books he bought me was a László Krasznahorkai I can’t remember what kind of paintings they are; I think they’re like prostitutes a single sentence that Krasznahorkai wrote in response to these images the first record we had David Toop––who’s a really beautiful writer; he writes about music in an amazing way––he responded to our music Peter’s film actually came from that process We asked Peter to respond to the record that we’d made But it was from the music that the film was generated When I met Peter I was a fan of cinema and he was a fan of music––I have a great DVD collection and he has a great record collection What does the music-writing process look like for a score that’s this gargantuan?  we started from the script––Brady and I talking about it really early on The first instinct was this kind of prepared piano sound where you interfere with the strings of a piano I was literally putting screws into the strings You prepare the strings with different objects and then the hammer hits the string and it makes this kind of percussive sound I thought of that just in terms of construction So it was like a mixture of that and thinking about John [Tilbury]’s playing and also the potential of the piano in terms of and one of the things we talked about was what spaces they’d be shooting in Obviously a lot of it’s shot on a film set When he got the film together and he went to Budapest to start pre-production I went there to live with him through the shoot So you were composing just off-set while they were filming?  The first day of the shoot was the jazz scene where Adrien and Isaac’s characters go to a jazz club and shoot up and come back in the room So I had to get a jazz band together for that I had a theme that we had done quite early I really tried not to get too involved with obsessing over it until it was in pre-production But I had done a piece of music that kind of became the construction theme And there was this idea that that jazz music that they heard And it forms the construction music at the end of the film That band was specific musicians: two guys from Marseille They played music that kind of evoked the ’40s but then also would be able to deconstruct it when they came out high Those players have very specific improvising practices in their own right and I knew they could both play the jazz and the more open music that we wanted for when they emerge from the toilet and Brady is using this in-camera effect from the VistaVision that stretches the light I showed the band the camera tests as an example of how they could kind of stretch it out immediately a collaboration between departments I was hiding microphones and the cinematographer was operating to the music they were making and the actors were responding to it And it was really nice to start that process and that kind of continued through the shoot How much of the film’s score was composed by the time the film was done shooting?  I like working before the pictures are made because the ceiling starts coming down; even just seeing images I like to have the opportunity to rely more on my conversations with Brady The thing is: I don’t want to illustrate stuff You want to find this balance where it’s really part of it One of the things for me was that Brady wanted to shoot certain scenes to music Obviously I was talking about the jazz scene when he’s arriving on the boat at the start of the film––he wanted to shoot that to the music that was literally Brady and I sitting next to my keyboard and him sort of saying and he’s going up and up and then the Statue of Liberty.” And we were really sketching it out so the cinematographer could move to the beat or against the beat it was like a whole choreography that was shot to the music This sort of rough sound immediately inspired the brass one of the things I’d do at the end of each brass section is like What was the back-and-forth like between you and Brady in the scoring or are you composing full pieces and getting back to him with those One of the great things about being on set is: if I see scenes where he’s communicating with the actors I get a real sense of what his intentions are for the temperature of that scene when I’m with the musicians recording the music those are the moments where my instincts are almost trained to his So it’s like I know I can be there with the musician because I don’t have anyone in my sessions Someone like Sofia Agnel––she’s an incredible artist in her own right She’s been making work for much longer than us It’s a combination of kind of asking people because you want them in the process I want them to feel free in themselves but also to have the right amount of context so that it hits the seam or hits what Brady wants It’s a lot about communication and setting up those sessions in a way I have a beautiful remote recording set-up; it’s very small Or are you recording sounds and stacking them onto different tracks across sessions amazing at making quite complicated sounds work together And you can hear that in his records with Scott [Walker.] But it’s a real mix because with The Brutalist the nature of the film––this kind of [makes metronome sounds] I mean it was the first time I was using a metronome Sofia Agnel––I recorded her in Paris––there was one cue where I really wanted her to play with Axel Dörner But they’d played together before so it was almost like live and then there were some cues where it’s about retaining the live quality of it The heroin cue where they’re kind of making love for three days––that was a really improvised session We recorded that in Joel Grip’s painting studio in Berlin And then Joel was playing double bass and I was playing piano Brady’s gonna like this.” I got back from the Eurostar and went straight to his hotel room in London because he was over for pre-production I played it for him and he was so excited.  Brady Corbet’s music video for Daniel Blumberg’s single CHEERUP are you writing out compositions ahead of time and then iterating on it Or is the kind of composing you’re doing more along the lines of directing various music sessions I can’t read music and I’m not classically trained at all so he translated a demo recording I did into score for a group of brass And they have quite a specific way of intonating between each other when it’s a group that plays often together they breathe in the right places and they needed sheet music Those cues are written out and it was much more In the film I wanted that to kind of disintegrate from the moment they meet and it’s so romantic and beautiful and then fit to disintegrate by the time they’re fucking on heroin so I brought it in its most simple form––I played it for them on the piano––and then we improvised around that and that was the limit for that improvisation.  When did you land on that 3-4-note refrain that is the theme me and Brady went through the script during pre-production and I just started playing piano And Brady’s really good to work with because he knows when he likes something There was this day where I was working on that theme and whether it could go to different places and he heard me messing around on the keyboard And he heard that process and immediately was like It needs to sound like he’s working it out.” I had my dictaphone on and for the temp he was using a lot of that dictaphone recording where I’m like starting That was one of the hardest things to work on because there are imperfections and that’s why I mic’d him; I mic’d his piano So you can hear the piano still screeching and you can hear him scribbling on the stave you can really hear that working-it-out process I was trying to work out where that melody could go The idea is that you hear it for the first half and then it develops into Erzsébet’s theme in the second half I recorded John Tilbury trying to work out Erzsébet’s theme in real time You can hear the birds walking around on the roof That’s something where I can really listen to it He’s trying to work out a klezmer integration because he had this idea of introducing klezmer into the theme for me to listen to that––it’s a collaborative piece I think of being with John and his wife Janice during that period and it was very amazing to be able to work with an artist like that Had you ever done something that was this diverse across instrumentation and style And did you know the range would be immense going into it Brady got a lot of shit when he was making it they were trying to make him make it shorter I just found it so funny that people thought it could be shorter I was always aware that this was a really important piece of work it’s a really beautiful text that he and Mona wrote My thing was like: I wanted to get to the end of the process and really feel like I’d done everything I could It was really hardcore for me and for Brady the mixing was insane; it was like mixing two films about trying to get these elements that would speak to the scale of it the score can really help a film when it can be where there are lots of elements to it and characters and new places The score can really help tie stuff together it’s like choosing instruments or musicians that could really… yeah like the brass: it can be really harsh but also really warm how to use as little elements as possible to do as many things as possible in a cohesive way But then the ’80s cue is kind of the most extreme jump in terms of aesthetics.  because in the script Brady wanted to shoot on video––early digital kind of video for the ’80s when it goes to the Biennale that would be interesting for it to suddenly cut from these very acoustic instruments to a digital sound.” And yeah: that was definitely the most fun cue I’ve had a Moog for years and I’ve always used it but not for finishing stuff––it was more like a notepad or something––and that was fun defined the sound of the ’80s with Depeche Mode and Yazoo I worked with him and brought it back to London to work with Brady The last day with the music was just me and Brady with two bottles of wine around my Moog just finishing that song “Please can you do a film that’s just synth one day.” [Laughs] It’s so fun The Brutalist is now in theaters and expands wide on January 24 A New York City film journalist by way of Austin Luke is an arts enthusiast who earned his master’s studying film philosophy and ethics at Duke He thinks every occasion should include one of the following: coffee The defiantly anti-commercial British musician had walked away from mainstream success twice by his early 20s Will his Academy Award convince him to embrace Hollywood directed by Mona Fastvold (the partner of Brutalist director Brady Corbet) the only thing I’d ever won was ‘most improved footballer’ when I was six,” he says I’d never thought about Oscars in my entire life is the least likely Oscar winner you could imagine but because he has spent his career walking away from mainstream success The former schoolboy indie pop star has reinvented himself as an atonal improviser of scratchy it’s all combined with sublime minimalist melodies to create music as beautiful as it is challenging As epic as it is intimate … listen to the overture for The Brutalist.He and I go back a long way I promise Blumberg I won’t go on about knowing him since he was a toddler Or playing football for decades with his father Or playing football with him when he got older Or lending him my Led Zeppelin albums when he was about 10 sweet boy who grew into an unusually intense It manages to be scruffy and immaculate at the same time but everything is meticulously catalogued in 1950s-style filing cabinets but it looks as if he could have moved in yesterday the avant-garde London venue that has been a second home to him for years ‘Look how commercial I am now: I won an Oscar!’ Delivering his acceptance speech in LA earlier this month Photograph: Rob Latour/Rex/ShutterstockBlumberg is a visual artist as well as a musician His work ranges from primitivist cuboid figures to abstracts drawn in silver “My favourite thing in the world is drawing,” he says He tells me about some of his artistic heroes (Joan Miró for starters) and how you have to prime the paper before working in silverpoint As he could about his friendships with elderly people He worked in an antiquarian bookshop for eight years with Celia Mitchell the former actor (and wife of the poet Adrian Mitchell) who died last year at 91: “She was my best friend.” There are so many things he loves to talk about: the mates he plays music with at Cafe Oto; his football team Tottenham Hotspur; and why Italian cafetieres make better coffee when they are smaller how the Polish film director Krzysztof Kieślowski made him understand the possibilities of cinema; the genius of Scott Walker and the French musician Ghédalia Tazartès; becoming soul brothers with Brady Corbet; why he and his ex-partner (the actor Stacy Martin who stars in The Brutalist) get on better than ever … And then there are things that he definitely doesn’t like talking about he formed the band Cajun Dance Party with his friend Max Bloom The band got a great record deal when they were still at school Their first and only album got rave reviews and their song Colourful Life featured in an episode of Gavin and Stacey He is grateful for what the band provided him but he struggles even to say the name out loud “I have this flat because of the first band and it only costs me £200 a month I can barely afford the flat!” This is because Blumberg has not prioritised making money You are one of the most defiantly uncommercial people I have ever met “But look how commercial I am now: I won an Oscar!” I wouldn’t put it past Blumberg to denounce his Academy Award as a sellout He shows me photos of his neighbours happily holding his Oscar earned comparisons to Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth performed in front of huge crowds at festivals and were on their way to super success “I remember playing at Coachella and feeling the worst I’ve ever felt in my entire life.” Why did you feel so bad “Because I didn’t like what I was doing.” As far as Blumberg is concerned there is nothing more uncreative than gigging mechanically doing these songs that I’d written a couple of years ago You’re literally just doing the same thing over and over again.” He felt relieved that his fellow band members continued when he left so I feel embarrassed to be associated with the other stuff.” the more amazing musicians wanted to work with him he recorded a wonderful album of lovelorn lo-fi under the name Hebronix There were hints there of what he would do later in the mix of gorgeous tunes and frazzled dissonance It’s the worst thing you could say to Blumberg they would want him to make a series of albums He remembers talking to the director Lars von Trier when Martin was working with him on the film Nymphomaniac “It was a really important conversation with Lars They sign a contract for three albums to work with the same people,’ and he was like: ‘I would never do that with films.’ You build a team for each thing you do.” When he returned from his nightmare tour with Yuck he popped into Cafe Oto for the first time He saw Keiji Haino playing improvised guitar He decided that this was what he wanted to do musically – be in a state of permanent evolution or revolution He created a simple manifesto – no two gigs should be the same He started to play with other regulars at Cafe Oto A few people would turn out to watch them and he couldn’t have been happier Blumberg at home in his flat in Hackney London – scruffy and immaculate at the same time Photograph: Linda Nylind/The GuardianIn 2015 he was awarded a scholarship to study for a postgraduate diploma at the Royal Drawing School in London and focused on his art he returned to music with an album unlike anything he had made before recorded with his regular collaborators from Cafe Oto It’s about his first breakup with Martin and is astonishingly raw Billboard described it as “one of the more unique and exquisite records you’re likely to hear this year” while Rough Trade ranked it the sixth best album of 2018 He smiles: “I was in a very emotional place.” Perhaps it’s something we have in common I say – we have both struggled with our mental health You get more experience with dealing with wonky times.” When was the first time he became aware of the wonkiness Does he find this too personal to talk about but I’m not sure it’s that productive.” Is he in a good space now Very!” He makes more coffee and we change the subject Unutterably beautiful … listen to the score for The World to Come.Even the self-flagellating Blumberg admits he is proud of Minus and all that has followed. This is where his career really begins, he says – he was too young to understand himself when he started out. The quietly ecstatic score for The World to Come features an unutterably beautiful title song Blumberg was diagnosed with an intestinal disease that leaves him with chronic pain and fatigue chronicles his experience with the condition exquisite harmonies are juxtaposed with the unlovely – retching The score for The Brutalist is as epic as it is intimate. It mirrors perfectly the arc of the narrative – about a Hungarian concentration camp survivor and groundbreaking architect (played by Adrien Brody who won the Oscar for best actor) trying to establish a new life in the US after the war – from the shrieking sax and industrial percussion reflecting the epic landscape and debauched nights out to tender piano pieces telling the love story While film scores are normally written after movies have been shot Performing at End of the Road Photograph: Stephen Parker/AlamyThe score was as much curated as written Blumberg travelled the world recording hand-picked musicians – the trumpeter Axel Dörner in Berlin the multi-instrumentalist Simon Sieger in Budapest the saxophonist Evan Parker and the pianist John Tilbury in Kent That would have been a distraction for many composers so you could hear him breathing and writing notes on his stave I ask Blumberg if he enjoyed all the Oscar razzmatazz He laughs and tells me of the five times The Brutalist team had to visit LA in the awards season “The film company had booked all these Q&As for me and after the first one they said I was so shit at them I shouldn’t do any more They said it in a passive way: ‘Is Daniel too tired to do the Q&A tomorrow?’ And I was like: ‘I think I’m going to sleep tonight “They said my body language was really bad and it looked like I didn’t want to be there.” He tells me how big names in the industry came up to him and punched him on the shoulder by way of congratulation after his win People told him that now he had won an Oscar he should do a big-budget Hollywood movie and rake it in stick the Oscar on the shelf and get back to work He is now composing a score for Fastvold’s next film By 2025-01-26T11:09:00+00:00 Daniel Blumberg and Brady Corbet on the set of ‘The Brutalist’ “I met Brady when he was putting together his first film,” says London-born musician visual artist and composer Daniel Blumberg of Brady Corbet when the actor-turned-­filmmaker was casting his debut feature The Childhood Of A Leader I took him to Cafe OTO [a recording and performance venue in Dalston We were drinking whiskey at 3:30 in the morning and he had to wake up at seven for a casting session He got in so much shit with the casting director because he turned up stinking of alcohol.” and when Corbet was recording the score for The Childhood Of A Leader he asked Blumberg along to watch A member of indie bands Cajun Dance Party and Yuck and the duos Heb-Hex and GUO Blumberg would crash on Corbet’s couch whenever he was in New York with Corbet later inviting him to the scoring session for his second feature Vox Lux as well as providing the liner notes for GUO’s second album and making a 16mm short to accompany the record who has recorded under his own name as well as the pseudonyms Oupa and Hebronix but had not thought of composing for movies until he was asked by Curzon Cinemas to create music for a trailer for an Agnes Varda retro­spective “I mainly work with improvising musicians and that was the first time working to picture and the limitations of that.” heard Blumberg’s music for the Varda project and asked him to score her next film The World To Come Blumberg later won an Ivor Novello award for the score which was recorded mostly in his flat in Stoke Newington Corbet’s epic tale of Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) — a Hungary-born Bauhaus-trained Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the US to pursue the American dream — which he had co‑written with Fastvold “I thought it was a masterpiece when I read the script,” says Blumberg It kept getting delayed but I didn’t take on any other films because I knew it would be full-on.” When Corbet was trying to get The Brutalist financed he put together a trailer and asked Blumberg to score it “I went to Cafe OTO and they let me use their grand piano It’s where you stuff paper and screws in the strings John Cage [the US composer and pioneer in the non-standard use of musical instruments] did it and it made sense because the piano has lots of hammers and it felt the right sound for the film.” and when The Brutalist eventually started pre-production in Hungary the composer moving into the spare room in his Budapest flat trying to be an extension of Brady’s instincts you might work something out over a coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening Corbet wanted to play Blumberg’s music on set it meant writing temp music that would be played while the cameras rolled because the camera could move to it.” Likewise “He explained the shots to me and I couldn’t work out why,” admits Blumberg “But it was good [to have] deadlines because they were like punctuation marks in my writing.” Laszlo’s theme throughout The Brutalist is mostly piano Brady and I talked about there being not too much ornamentation The composition of that came from me living with Brady I can’t read or write music in terms of [classical] notation so I fiddle with chords and record on a dictaphone so I can remember what I’ve done There was this 20-minute recording of me doing the theme Brady heard it through the wall and got excited about that stopping and starting he had thought about UK pianist John Tilbury for Laszlo’s theme and later commissioned him to record the piano parts “He is 88 and has this studio in his garden in Kent with a Steinway a pair on the piano and two [other] mics in the room taking notes.” Tilbury also plays on the 15-minute intermission that divides the three-and-a-half-hour film in two halves “I moved in with John as well because there was so much work to do Eventually I had to spend two‑and-a-half weeks with him.” The Brutalist’s score is not limited to the piano Blumberg uses strident blasts of brass to evoke Laszlo’s inner turmoil “Brass could be warm and optimistic at the start when he’s on the bus to Philadelphia then could also be harsh as he starts to disintegrate in the second half and gets more disorientated by his work,” he says “I had [German trumpeter] Axel Dörner making these construction sounds was sometimes confused about what was a trumpet and what was a sound effect.” where he receives an award at the Biennale “When Brady said he was going to shoot on that format I immediately wanted to make the score suddenly change into this synthesizer score,” says Blumberg who commissioned Vince Clarke (of Depeche Mode and Erasure fame) to do it “I wanted there to be this shock of the first digital sound because the whole score is acoustic recordings.” The Brutalist has earned Blumberg his first Bafta nomination — one of nine the film landed The composer has already moved on to his next project The Woman Clothed By The Sun With The Moon Under Her Feet a musical about the founder of the American Shaker movement which she has co-written and produced with Corbet “As soon as we finished the sound mix on The Brutalist I was reading about the Shakers because I didn’t know who they were The extended version of Anselm Chan’s ‘The Last Dance’ also picked up two awards ’The Piano’ composer will receive his award in October  The Hong Kong star will introduce screenings of ‘Project A’ and ‘Police Story’ at the festival The updating list includes titles’ sales agents and key deals The Barcelona producer’s credits include Carlos Marqués-Marcet’s They Will Be Dust Warner Bros./Legendary video game smash passed $720m at the global box office through April 20 Screen International is the essential resource for the international film industry access to the Screen International archive and supplements including Stars of Tomorrow and World of Locations Site powered by Webvision Cloud Blumberg discusses developing the film’s main musical themes Brutalist architecture derives much of its power from reconciling two seemingly contradictory extremes The simple structuralism of its design and materials lead many to characterize the style as minimalistic the scope of the buildings made in the style often has a maximalist impact on those taking them in A similar paradox lies at the heart of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist a decade-spanning saga tracing the travails of Adrien Brody’s László Toth a Hungarian immigrant attempting to achieve his most ambitious architectural project in post-World War II America This is a towering epic that takes a country’s national character as its very subject without ever losing its footing in the intimacies of a character study While a cinematic undertaking of such colossal proportions requires the orchestration of many below-the-line collaborators one stands out in harmonizing the various inputs: composer Daniel Blumberg Before any images appear on screen in The Brutalist the notes of Blumberg’s overture announce the ambitions and ambiguities of the film bellowing melodies that endow a classical grandiosity befitting the monumental mid-century works evoked by Corbet’s colossal work Yet Blumberg also brings his background in indie rock and experimental music to bear with contemporary flourishes that undercut any easy emotionality from the boldly declarative score It’s an engrossing and consistently enigmatic odyssey for the ears on par with the majesty experienced by the eyes I spoke with Blumberg ahead of The Brutalist’s release Our conversation covered the unique nature of his collaboration with Corbet to develop certain pieces of the score ahead of shooting developing the main musical themes between the start of production and the film’s completion and what choosing specific musicians to record adds to the texture of the work You have a background in visual arts in addition to music Is that something that informed the way that you approached scoring The Brutalist Drawing is how I discovered improvised music I felt like I was improvising on a piece of paper and I was moving along that space and didn’t know where I was going When I heard free improvised music for the first time that relates to my drawings.” Different processes inform your work What were the films that got you invested in the form I stumbled into Kieślowski. I watched A Short Film About Killing quite randomly, and I just was like, “What is this?” Then I watched Dekalog I watched all of Kieślowski’s films and then moved on to Tarkovsky The Brutalist seems like a unique partnership given that your music preceded some of the images and the overture was shot to the music you had already composed rather than fitting it to the picture Brady and I started talking about the process from the script we’ve had this dialogue about each other’s work so it’s quite natural for us to talk about our work we went through the script evaluating pieces that he wanted to shoot to There were practical reasons for me to be on set like the first day of shooting was the jazz scene That was done with a live band playing the theme and we created this from the script talking about what the potential picture would be with Adrien Brody going up the stairs director of photography] could hear the rhythm and move the camera to the music Adrien and the extras—the whole choreography was in time with the prepared piano tick There were a lot of [similar such scenarios] and there was a piano in the train station scene I was playing the piano for the actors to get a sense of how everything was flowing on top of each other: the picture being on set as well and hearing the way that Brady speaks to the actors there are a lot of clues there for what temperature he wants the scene to be there are clues for me to take into account for the music as well so that when I’m working with musicians I have all this information and shared instincts with Brady How did you come to conceive of the overture as a three-part piece We always talked about there being constant music for the first 10 minutes of the film It’s where we introduce the key players and the sonic world of the film [There are] the blaring sirens at the start then you hear John Tilbury’s intimate piano that follows László through the film and then the main theme that’s the warm brass of the bus One of the reasons why we gravitated toward brass was the way they can be warm and optimistic and then quite harsh There are a lot of sounds in the film that may sound like construction sounds The reason why I recorded in Berlin was I wanted to work with him Even the sound mixer would get confused about what was diegetic audio and what was the trumpet We always talked about like László’s disorientation as he gets more obsessed with the project and loses his sense of what reality is but the idea is that the audience feels those things rather than necessarily picking them apart while they’re engrossed in the film The overture introduces a lot of these sounds whose saxophone you hear coming up during the bus Were you thinking at all about calibrating your music in relation to those sweeping scores that define the grand mid-century epics that The Brutalist resembles I try and think of the world that we’re creating and not really think of historical [comparisons] one of the concerns was scope in terms of instrumentation that could travel through the eras and themes that could travel through the story When there are these huge brass moments at the end Brady was also nodding to the history of cinema with his some of his choices like shooting a lot of The Brutalist in VistaVision Then it ends up in this ’80s digital format at the Venice Biennale and it’s the same with introducing the synths At what point do you start thinking about the instrumentation Is it as soon as you’re hearing the notes in your head That’s what a piano is: a percussive instrument Prepared piano is where you interfere with those strings John Cage lodged screws in between the strings so that when those hammers hit That was something that I immediately heard when I read the script The piano is this huge acoustic space; you can really focus microphones in different corners of the piano and get a lot of sound out of that instrument It felt quite architectural as a starting point And the piano was definitely the starting point in terms of instrumentation I also liked the scope of how it could be very intimate and melancholy John Tilbury was someone who I thought of immediately when I read the script as a player and extraordinary artist who could have the responsibility of following László throughout the film That 15-minute intermission is solo piano [emphasizing] his use of space in his playing and touch What went into composing that intermission music for John Tilbury to play It sounds different than a traditional entr’acte He’s got a Steinway in a shed at his house We did weeks of recordings together for the sequence that we chose for the intermission which is a few notes played by the brass at the start and then is the starting point for László’s theme It develops into Erzsébet’s theme in the film’s second half where László’s theme goes into this romantic piece of music that we subvert with “Heroin,” the erotic love-making music that’s based around that theme The music for the intermission is John working out in real time that theme and trend “Here’s your theme,” and played Erzsébet’s theme very basically on the piano A lot of it was him writing notes on his staves I had microphones on him as well as on the piano in the room It really fit finding Erzsébet and this quality that Brady loved about the pianist being present and the artist working things out and John was trying to introduce Klezmer music It was a moment that felt perfect for the intermission Were you approaching the music of the two halves differently I’m constantly referring back to the arc of the whole film and it’s one of the difficult things about it being three-and-a-half hours long: If I put music in I sometimes need to watch a hell of a lot of the film—if not all of it—to see how that’s flowing But it’s nice to have that punctuation mark of the first half and second half The first half ends with this optimism getting into gear and the very strange percussion that Michael Griener played The beginning of it has this really beautiful By the time that you hear the theme at the end The themes function as extensions of characters How often is it representing the characters themselves and how often is it commenting on the characters we were focusing on the artistic process of his character That loneliness of the solo piano—you hear that a lot when he’s on his own One interesting thing about the sequence called “Heroin,” when they’re on heroin and having sex for three days That was a moment where I introduced the theme It was something that we just immediately placed on the film Vox Lux demonstrated that Brady Corbet is someone who’s thought a lot about how music can both shape and reflect society Were you all talking about that history with The Brutalist and trying to reflect that in the score one of my responsibilities was evoking the era It was quite extreme improvisation in the ’40s sequence but I knew the players that I worked with could [also] play that kind of bebop stuff when [the narrative] fast-forwards 10 years to New York in the 1950s and the music’s stretched in the same way that they use in-camera effects in VistaVision where the light is stretched across the image I worked with musicians who I knew could do both of those things It was great working with Vince Clarke as well who kind of defined the sound of the ’80s with Depeche Mode and Yazoo It was very nice to work with synths after a long year of acoustic recordings Brady said you had basically no budget for the score Did those limitations spur any kind of ingenuity A lot of the musicians I worked with were used to adapting to what they have I have a high-quality remote recording setup Most of the music wasn’t recorded in a studio The “Heroin” music was recorded in my friend’s painting studio in Berlin I just bring this small setup and set up the microphones There are positives and negatives about working in studios; it would have been a different score if everyone had just come to the studio and done it in a very condensed way But I think that’s one of the interesting things about it It’s very much led by the specific musicians that I wanted to work with She plays very particularly on the strings of the piano bouncing balls on the strings of the piano and different objects that she uses to manipulate the strings like no one else We had to find a time in Paris to record together I recorded him in a space in Kent for the Carrara sequence so I went with my recording setup and recorded the impulse response of the valley You literally shoot a gun and record the way that the valley echoes that gunshot we applied the algorithm that we created onto Evan’s saxophone so his saxophone from Kent is in the valley in Italy Some of my favorite films are films about making films they all made meta films about making films One of the things that I loved about The Brutalist is that Brady made a film about his struggle making films That artistic struggle was quite moving for me Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based film journalist and other commentary on film also appear regularly in Slashfilm document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id" "a2c8878462d26aa5d9165104c295a5d0" );document.getElementById("facec42938").setAttribute( "id" Composing only his second feature film, Daniel Blumberg gathered solos, performances and improvisations from instrumentalists all over Europe — from the garden studio of an octogenarian pianist on the southern coast of England, to a posh studio in Paris, to musicians’ flats and kitchens in Berlin and elsewhere — and assembled them into an imposing cathedral of sound that matches the scale of Brady Corbet’s VistaVision epic. Tracking Adrien Brody’s Hungarian architect (the fictional László Tóth) from his arrival at Ellis Island sometime after World War II, Blumberg’s score asserts itself immediately with the musical thrum of construction — achieved with a hammer-like rhythm on prepared piano — and the churning, chaotic sound of industry by way of a warmly masculine brass anthem and all kinds of clacks, saws and snarls from his ragtag “orchestra.” Awards Edward Berger, Brady Corbet, Coralie Fargeat, James Mangold, Denis Villeneuve and Malcolm Washington on adapting as you go, feminism in film — and vaping in the Sistine Chapel. “Brady always talked about this collage aspect,” says Blumberg, referring to the film’s mix of 35mm and digital formats with archival footage. The musician’s own instincts already leaned that way, and when he started thinking about the score, “It’s not like, ‘Oh, I want the trumpet on this.’ It’s like, ‘Axel Dörner would be perfect for this,’” he says of the trumpet master he recorded in Berlin. The composer assembled a dream team of musicians, many of whom were already friends or mutual friends — or, in the case of 88-year-old John Tilbury, a longtime hero. Blumberg took his portable recording equipment to them partly out of necessity; Tilbury doesn’t travel, and Sophie Agnel, another accomplished pianist, had restrictions on her busy schedule. But this also led to more free-form experimentation, allowing the musicians to really express themselves. And even the space itself became part of the music. It was pouring rain one day on the roof of Tilbury’s kitchen shed, which caused Blumberg to worry. The pianist said: “I can do a duo with the rain.” Blumberg said: “I know — I’ve got your record where you do a duo with the dust.” “But in the end,” Blumberg says, “it was just beautiful, and we used it.” Guy Pearce, Adrien Brody and Isaach de Bankole in “The Brutalist.” (Lol Crawley / A24) (That “duo” is best heard in the scene where Tóth and his crew build a library for Guy Pearce’s character, Harrison Lee Van Buren.) Even before scoring his first film, “The World to Come,” in 2020 (directed by Mona Fastvold, Corbet’s partner), Blumberg was expecting to score Corbet’s ambitious throwback opus. They began discussing it years ago in its initial preproduction stage before the pandemic, when the project was temporarily scuttled and recast. The score was under construction before and alongside the picture, and Corbet always said he wanted to shoot some of his movie to the music. The piece that underscores Tóth’s chaotic opening moments, from below deck of a ship to his sight of an upside-down Statue of Liberty, was actually a demo that Blumberg made in his London flat. Corbet amplified the track on set, and cinematographer Lol Crawley was “kind of moving with the music,” explains Blumberg, “and the choreography of Adrien and the extras. They were all moving like a kind of dance.” (Blumberg later improved the track with his virtuoso musicians.) The sound of searching was baked into the score. Blumberg doesn’t read or write music, so “I’m always just sort of bashing away, trying to find chords,” he says. “Brady heard me in my room doing that, and he came in and he was like, ‘I mean, that’s literally the sound of someone working something out. That’s what we want to try and retain.’” Movies The veteran actor, known for “Memento,” “L.A. Confidential” and HBO’s “Mildred Pierce,” has been earning praise for his complex portrayal of an enigmatic industrialist. “A lot of the temp was done to these kind of weird recordings,” Blumberg says with a laugh, “where I’m, like, dropping my vape on the floor.” To retain that spirit, he put a microphone on Tilbury himself, to capture the sound of the pianist adjusting in his chair or breathing; if you listen closely during the film’s intermission, you can actually hear Tilbury scribbling on his sheet music. Both the film and its score achieved remarkable scope and weight out of relatively thin resources — there are no strings on the score — but perhaps the greatest length Blumberg went to was traveling to Carrara, Italy, where the scenes in its famous marble quarry had already been shot. He recorded the quarry’s unique impulse response (achieved by firing a gun), then applied that reverb onto a recording of his saxophone player, Evan Parker, that had been made in an office in Kent, England. “We put Kent in Carrara,” says Blumberg — aptly summarizing his strange and towering achievement. California Subscribe for unlimited accessSite Map 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The GREATER MSP Partnership announced today that Jake Blumberg will become managing director of the Itasca Project effective February 12 Jake will play a central role in driving cross-sector collaboration across the region’s economy and fostering a more robust and diverse ecosystem of civic leadership in Greater Minneapolis–Saint Paul Jake has served as executive director of GiveMN which grows giving for the nonprofit sector through GiveMN.org GiveMN has helped generate more than $300 million for thousands of Minnesota nonprofits and schools and set record-breaking totals for Give to the Max Day most recently $37.4 million this past November Demonstrating a passion for innovative collaboration he has helped lead record-breaking and history-making campaigns across the political “I am immensely proud of the impact GiveMN has had in growing the fundraising capacity of Minnesota’s nonprofits and schools over the past nine years and I am deeply grateful to the team of dedicated staff and generous board members who worked together to connect thousands of donors and organizations,” said Blumberg “I couldn’t be more excited to join GREATER MSP as managing director of the Itasca Project and build on its legacy of civic engagement and innovative collaboration across sectors.” The Itasca Project is a cross-sector alliance focused on strengthening the Minneapolis–Saint Paul region’s civic ecosystem and identifying long-term issues that matter to the future prosperity and competitiveness of the region the Itasca Project became part of the GREATER MSP Partnership in 2022 Itasca’s work with partners in the business higher education and nonprofit sectors has advanced more and better early childhood education increased the amount that businesses spend with local and diverse suppliers improved career and college readiness among high school students and young adults sparked additional support for affordable housing strategies and funding and catalyzed many other civic endeavors “Jake joining as managing director of the Itasca Project marks an exciting new chapter for our region,” said Peter Frosch President and CEO of the GREATER MSP Partnership innovative thinking and passion for building a thriving inclusive community will accelerate our work to build America’s strongest civic ecosystem.” “I’m thrilled to welcome Jake as our new managing director,” said Steve Grove CEO and publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune and incoming chair of the Itasca Project leadership committee “Jake is full of energy and passion for Minnesota and he will bring a strong new set of eyes to reimagine how this project can play a unique role to tackle some of the biggest opportunities for growing this region and community.” The GiveMN Board of Directors has appointed Jenna Ray GiveMN’s deputy executive director and Chief Impact Officer “GiveMN is grateful for Jake’s nine years of leadership and his passion for the Minnesota civic sector; he has laid a tremendous foundation for us,” said Rev “We are excited about the future of our organization and its immense ability to grow giving and ignite generosity While we look forward to the next great chapter in our evolution we wish Jake nothing but the best in his next endeavor.” Media Contact: Don Ball, GREATER MSP at don.ball@greatermsp.org Focusing on small- to medium-sized organizations RaiseMN builds more healthy and sustainable fundraising practices so nonprofits can continue to pursue and expand their mission in their communities Launched in 2009 by the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation GiveMN is supported by many generous foundation and corporate partners Media Contact: Katy O’Neill, Beehive Strategic Communication at koneill@beehivepr.biz a prestigious Hungarian Jewish architect who relocates to America after surviving the Holocaust While weathering the ups and downs of his new life in Pennsylvania Tóth’s monumental portfolio catches the eye of local industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) decades-long relationship between the two men Van Buren houses Tóth and welcomes his wife who were violently separated from Tóth for years during World War II a tumultuous dynamic fueled by Van Buren’s megalomania and Tóth’s creative compulsion Blumberg related to the theme of artistic obsession and applied it to his score on a thematic and practical level pushing his own work to the side while developing pieces for The Brutalist it was solely to fund his travel and recording equipment so I was doing two or three shows a month to sustain being able to work on it for so long,” he said allowed Blumberg to work with artists at their own pace honoring their unique methods—a freedom Tóth is rarely afforded in the film sitting in the garden shed where the pianist keeps his Steinway with Blumberg recording as Tilbury scribbled notes on a stave and played fragments of song These sessions became “Overture (László),” and their in-progress feel reflects the artistic process so crucial to The Brutalist Elsewhere, Blumberg commissioned piano-string improvisations from Sophie Agnel, a synth-pop beat from Vince Clarke played live on set by drummer Antonin Gerbal Pitchfork spoke with Blumberg about artistic fixation Daniel Blumberg: He came to London to cast his first film, The Childhood of a Leader We had dinner together and started drinking We saw some noise show and then ended up just drinking till three o’clock in the morning He slept on the sofa and had to wake up at seven in the morning to go and cast this nine-year-old The casting director got so annoyed with him because he was having to speak to parents and he smelled of whiskey he sent me the script and we started discussing it I really felt that he’s someone who will make films for my generation… for the whole of my life The script that Brady and [co-writer and partner] Mona [Fastvold] wrote reads really beautifully The film is about an artist and the artist’s struggle and I’ve dedicated my life to my work for better or for worse There were definitely elements of it that I felt like I could relate to in terms of how it can affect the relationship between your work and your relationships in life Getting obsessed or monomaniacal about projects I was really aware that it was a film about Brady making films so I know how he’s been treated by certain people in the film industry and we did a demo using some of the samples that I’d created in a prepared piano session [Corbet] wanted to shoot to the overture so that Adrien [Brody] and the cinematographer could move to the music And then the scene in the brothel with the piano that was the first instance of being alone with László and having a more intimate moment with him So we talked about there being solo piano interacting with the music that they’re listening to in the brothel Photo by Trevor MatthewsThe score can sound massive How did you achieve that intimacy?All of that is very particular Two mics—a classic stereo pair—on his piano So you could hear his stool and him breathing and him touching the piano with his hands The mics in the room pick up rain on his glass roof Brady and I really wanted that piano that follows Adrien’s character to have this intimacy because it’s in a lot of the scenes when he’s alone and pianist Simon Sieger] could play jazz that would evoke that era I knew that they’d be able to play out of this quite rigid jazz beat into something more abstract which was in line with Brady’s idea for the picture [Adrien Brody and Isaach de Bankolé] would be in this scene in the club and then they’d go and shoot up and the sound would continue through the wall The idea with the picture was that they would use this in-camera effect in the VistaVision camera that sort of stretches the light in this weird way And I knew the musicians would be able to do that as well—stretch it out and make it sound more druggy I was initially interested in what spaces they’d be shooting in They’d gotten a gutless piano… a real piano just with the guts taken out so you could move it on a film set So the musicians came and they found a real piano to borrow The biggest fear for me was that I wanted them to play this theme. The idea was that [László Tóth] heard this music in the ’40s, and then, later, when he starts making the building, it’s the cue for “Construction.” But burning that theme onto the film was quite scary because it was quite early in the process and we wanted it to develop into score for the next scene which is when there’s this big train crash I went to the set so that I could get the actors to sing in the right tune There was this tiny synagogue that they were shooting in and I was literally standing behind the camera just playing the chord every time before they shot I had to rehearse with all the extras; they shot in Hungary We messed around with the voices a bit in the mix it’s that prayer and then suddenly the drums the percussion when they hit [their chests] becomes the beat That was recorded in Steve Noble’s kitchen in London but it’s literally just him with a drum skin on his lap Well it’s such an overwhelming idea: for [László] to meet his wife who he’s been separated from through all that trauma of the war Even thinking about it is quite overwhelming I liked the idea of hearing László’s theme throughout the first half and then it developing into Erzsébet’s theme when you meet her I really wanted the theme to have this journey of disintegration So you hear it in this really pure form at the start of the second half And then by the time they’re fucking on heroin That was this session that I did with Axel [Dörner] and Carina [Khorkhordina] where we used Erzsébet’s theme as a starting point And then moving into an improvisation and then back into the theme The idea was that everything sort of disintegrates in the second half [of the film] My session with the prepared piano was at [Cafe] Oto way before we started the production I spent the day with Billy Steiger and Tom Wheatley And we were experimenting with bits of paper It was a day of really miking up the piano in quite interesting ways with stereo and vocal mics There were about 16 mics on the prepared piano at Oto I use a microphone called the U 89 for a lot of my recording So we could really get this huge sound out of the percussion because a lot of the stuff that might sound like drums is low end [of the piano] So I got really rich sounds from that session that I used throughout the film John Tilbury definitely is related to [John] Cage in the way that he prepared the piano John [Tilbury] used mostly screws and coins came into the studio and had this little bag… she actually puts the coins and stuff on the strings Sophie Agnel doesn’t prepare the piano; Sophie actually plays the strings of the piano I’m partly saying that because I think that’s quite a distinction for her There’s this beautiful sound where she’s rubbing them with a mallet so they’re resonating and it’s like an orchestra I wondered how sound ricocheted off those marble slabs so we shot a gun into [the marble quarry in Carrara]; you record that gunshot and the effect [the marble] has on the echo of it And then you take that and bring it into this program and it basically removes the gunshot So it makes an algorithm of the response of the raw sound and then makes it into a reverb that you can then apply to anything Brady always talked about wanting to shoot some of the 1980s stuff on Betamax so I thought it’d be interesting to mirror that with the music and ’80s technology So it came from the way he was describing how he was going to shoot and this idea that it would suddenly cut to the 1980s And then I thought of Vince Clark because he defined the sound of the ’80s with Depeche Mode and Yazoo [Clarke and I] worked on [“Epilogue (Venice)”] in New York We just got two bottles of wine and just played my Moog we would have screenings with the sound team and Brady I just remember standing in the toilet of this post-production studio just crying with Brady If you have done all of this and still can't find the email Oscar and BAFTA-winning Blumberg has created an epic score for Brady Corbet’s film The Brutalist That doesn’t even include the headline from Architectural Record: ‘To Make The Brutalist Monumental the Filmmakers Approached Cinema as Architecture’ and it’s as breathtaking and unbalancing as Corbet’s shot of an upside-down Statue of Liberty from bepop to jazz to synthpop via Blumberg’s personal very east London take on musique concrète for sure – one for which Blumberg has been BAFTA-nominated alongside multiple eight other nominations for the film news that broke midway through our interview (‘Why are my family texting me?’ he wondered it was simply a case of following his filmmaker peer’s lead it was the most important project I've ever done – for many reasons and Brady's a very close friend of mine,’ says the 34-year-old of the 36-year-old from Arizona He first met the American during the making of his first feature the 2020 film by Corbet’s filmmaker wife So Blumberg knew better than most the seven-year saga of The Brutalist’s stop-start journey from brain to page to screen ‘The idea of helping him make his work was important And making something and not f*cking it up was the main ambition.’ Blumberg wrote his first piece of The Brutalist score, a four-minute section, in 2020. Corbet wanted to film a budget-raising ‘teaser’ segment in the Covid-emptied streets of Venice that would ultimately form the epilogue of his film escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox in terms of it being this vast acoustic [instrument],’ he continues ‘But I wedged things into the strings you make it into a percussive instrument.’ It’s a technique favoured by John Cage ‘who would put screws and stuff in… then you can make these “ding dong” sounds’ Covid and financial challenges meant it would be another three years before production finally began in budget-friendly Hungary Locations around Budapest stood in for the Pennsylvanian countryside in which Pearce’s rapacious industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren commissions Tóth to build a hilltop community centre a – yes – monument to his late mother and bedded down in Corbet’s apartment in Budapest ‘in a tiny room where I had a keyboard and my bed’ The first day of production was a pivotal scene in a jazz club as exacting in his vision as the uncompromising Tóth wanted to shoot the scene to a live jazz band – playing a jazz piece freshly composed by Blumberg ‘But the scariest thing was that we wanted László to have this defining moment in his life Where he hears this music and never forgets it Then you hear it in its totality towards the end of the film when the construction [of Tóth’s building] starts because you're imprinting an idea for a three-and-a-half hour film – and I was hoping that it would be good enough to maintain that from such an early stage of the film.’ visited the location armed with mics and a gun You fire a gun and put the recording at the highest sample rate so you're getting as much information as possible and then the response of the valley on that gunshot I took it back to London and made an algorithm of it Then you tell the program that that's the source it removes the gunshot and makes this kind of reverb based on the echo of the gunshot Then I applied that to Evan’s saxophone.’ Blumberg spent 18 solid months composing a score that would end up comprising 32 pieces of music running to 81 minutes I ask him: given his friend’s messianic mission to make his movie – and bring it in on a frankly astonishing sub-$10 million budget without curtailing his vision – was it incumbent on the composer to match the director’s rigour and vigour a man with a gentle nature and a spirit of steel ‘I wanted to get to the end of the process and know I did everything possible to make this score the best it could be he and Corbet have something akin to a pact ‘I started young with music and he started very young with acting,’ Blumberg who formed Cajun Dance Party as a schoolboy says of the adolescent star of teen drama Thirteen (2003) ‘And we're people who said no to compromise That’s something we have an affinity on So it felt like an amalgamation of this relationship and all this [creative] stuff Next up: Daniel Blumberg is working on Mona Fastvold's new film and their 18th-century immigration to America from Manchester – and it's a musical And we thought The Brutalist was a bold undertaking for the composer.. The Brutalist is in UK cinemas from 24 January Read: Architecture and the new world: The Brutalist reframes the American dream the writer Craig McLean is consultant editor at The Face and contributes to The Daily Telegraph The Observer Magazine and the London Evening Standard He was ghostwriter for Phil Collins' bestselling memoir Not Dead Yet Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist has found its way into all the awards conversation with everything from Corbert’s masterful direction to the performances by Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce and Daniel Blumberg’s score getting notice The film is centered on visionary architect László Toth (Brody) who flees post-war Europe after experiencing the ravages and suffering of the Holocaust where he spends decades in the struggles to build his artistic legacy lauded and stymied by industrialist millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren (Pearce) The London visual artist and indie musician/composer replaced Corbet’s longtime collaborator Scott Walker who passed away before production and to whom the film is dedicated Blumberg and Corbet have been friends for years and this film is a close collaboration between them Blumberg and other musicians often played live on set during the filming as well as working with 88-year-old renowned classical pianist John Tilbury leveraging multiple musical eras and instrumentation to capture the scope of Corbet’s epic film You lived in the same space as director Brady Corbet in pre-production and through much of the filming In what practical ways did that immediacy impact the finished music I lived with him during pre-production and filming so I had a little room with my keyboard and a single bed The demo for the opening of the film was done a few nights before being shot It was great; instead of having to send it to him or have a more distant interaction and being near Brady gave me a sense of the temperature of a scene or what he wanted it to be I don’t want it to feel like this alien thing stuck on top of something else and have it all make sense as one piece of art I have a good example of where living on set made a difference I always have to work it all out practically so I try chords to see how they can build together “That’s what it should sound like: an artist working it out.”  Music in The Brutalist is doing so much through the 3 1/2 hours It’s a great example of the balance of minimalism and maximalism The use of piano feels at times traditional or nostalgic but you also use it in the context of found sound or industrial noise Using a prepared piano was an idea that came from reading the script with all its architecture and construction I love that when you use screws and interfere with the strings of the piano and the hammers hit those strings; it’s like a percussive instrument The piano also has huge acoustic potential Where you put microphones can change the sound and I used a lot of microphones on the low end And you have this colossal talent in pianist John Tilbury I had a mic on him so you could hear his stool shuffling The idea was you could hear the presence of the artist throughout so you could even hear the birds walking or the rain falling on the roof it just all ending up going in the recording There’s also this balance of emotional instrumentation and a sort of alienating dissonance sometimes from the same instrument in the same cue and brass instruments can be really warm but also very harsh who is just an exceptional and unique trumpet player There were times he was playing his trumpet to sound almost like it was a drill and we ended up putting a lot of that on the building site Part of the responsibility of scoring is zooming in on László Tóth That’s why I wanted to use sounds of John Tilbury’s playing because we wanted to follow László’s journey as an artist and find that intimacy The theme is used in very different ways throughout the score We loved the main theme and were trying to figure out where it could go from there the whole second part of the film gets more and more intense and that’s when you hear it at its most dramatic So it’s definitely referred to a lot if you’re listening The jazz club cue is a fascinating mix of 40s jazz I saw the first day of shooting was that scene and I got this group of independent musicians together all of who are brilliant improvisationalists They all know how to play jazz and can evoke that era Brady wanted to do a Vista Vision effect that stretches the light out I didn’t want to do it as an after-effect; I wanted it to be part of the experience of the scene That it was done the first day of shooting and doing it live was crazy but it brought together all the departments in a wonderful way All that live acoustic music is in such contrast to the cue with synths in the 80s scene at the end of the film wanted to switch visually to an early digital process for the 80s Vince Clarke came to mind because he defined the era of the 80s with Depeche Mode and Erasure I went to New York to work with him and brought all these themes that I heard throughout the film You’ve been in the conversation for an Oscar nomination It’s so thrilling that people are enjoying the film We’ve been through great times and bad times and he just made the film he needed to make but to know Brady’s work and the work of so many talented people is finding an audience that loves it Featured image: Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” Courtesy of A24  Keep up with The Credits for the latest in film She is best known for her work on projects such as the Toronto Community Housing Corporation's Lawrence Heights redevelopment the Harrison McCain Pavilion at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery These projects exemplify her belief that design can be a force for positive change Blumberg has consistently addressed complex urban challenges through architecture Related Article Blending Heritage: Canada’s Integration of Revival Architecture and Modern Design Marianne and Shirley have each, in their own right, made profound and lasting contributions to architecture in Canada and abroad. They have helped define what architecture can be—not just as design, but as cultural and civic leadership. - Bruce Kuwabara from KPMB offers visitors an immersive exploration of the ocean as a life-giving resource and a cornerstone of sustainability You'll now receive updates based on what you follow Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors The winner will be announced at the ceremony at Ovation Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles and Danny Elfman for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Follow all of Pitchfork’s coverage of the 2025 Academy Awards. Clément Ducol & Camille - Emilia PérezDaniel Blumberg - The BrutalistKris Bowers - The Wild RobotVolker Bertelmann - ConclaveJohn Powell & Stephen Schwartz - Wicked First-time Oscar winner Daniel Blumberg composed an electrifying score for ‘The Brutalist’ Young British composer Daniel Blumberg has won his first Oscar, taking home the 2025 Best Original Score award for The Brutalist The 35-year-old also won the BAFTA last month for scoring the film starring Adrien Brody whose performance as fictitious Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor László Tóth Only his second ever film score, Blumberg’s music marries lyrical piano lines and jazz saxophone with discordant brass orchestration to reflect Tóth’s inner torment Blumberg beat Conclave composer, Volker Bertelmann, Emilia Pérez composers Clément Ducol and Camille, Wicked’s John Powell and Stephen Schwartz and The Wild Robot’s Kris Bowers to the top gong Blumberg said it “means a lot to be championed like this” Read more: All the Oscar-winning film scores from the last 50 years Blumberg’s only previous scoring credit on a feature-length film is Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come Fastvold co-wrote The Brutalist with her husband The film is dedicated to the memory of Scott Walker which were held in Hollywood on Sunday 2 March Best Director for Sean Baker and Best Actress for Mikey Madison Kieran Culkin took home the Best Supporting Actor award for A Real Pain and Zoe Saldaña won Best Supporting Actress for Emilia Pérez Discover Music Ravel Einaudi Events See more Best classical music See more Classic FM Live Playlists See more Latest news Paderewski Classic FM Hall of Fame Videos See more Latest videos Allegri Lesley Garrett SCITUATE – For Bart Blumberg, finding a third career after he retired from teaching at age 58 came naturally The Hull resident turned to doing more of what he already enjoyed the most in his free time: looking at things around him and capturing images he hoped would also speak to others "I'm very observant of my surroundings and am attracted to beauty in nature and architecture," Blumberg He currently has 23 photographs of the full moon rising over Scituate and Hull on display at the Scituate Senior Center. This theme is one of his favorites: each month brings a new opportunity to look for the "fleeting magical lighting" he finds in a rising moon He even has a phone app that shows him the different angles the moon will come up on the South Shore The color of the rising moon rapidly changes from pink orange and gold to silver in the first half hour "It can be a flash to catch a particular color as the color changes about every five minutes," he says Blumberg is part of a growing presence of senior artists in public places on the South Shore 'Art is for everybody' in public places"Art is for everybody," Blumberg says I have been impressed with the number of artists who are older than me I have met on the South Shore." art classes and art appreciation programs are being included in more senior centers "It is a newer and very welcome trend and has served us well here for many reasons," Hayes Kelley said The Scituate senior center is unusual in having its own gallery space dedicated to the visual arts. The Joanne Vignoni Papandrea Gallery is named in memory of the late artist a gifted teacher who was well-known for her still-life and landscape paintings Papandrea enjoyed teaching seniors because "they are so thirsty to learn." She fostered a wide network of artists and organized sales and exhibits to raise money for Scituate's new senior center Hayes Kelley formed a visual arts committee to help create a space in the new senior center building for a gallery The goal has been to present a variety of art forms and styles The artwork and the gallery has also drawn more interest to the senior center and given older artists more visibility in the wider South Shore community In addition to the gallery on the walls in a main hallway the senior center visitor will find watercolors Many senior centers offer classes in different arts and crafts. In Duxbury, the senior center has an ongoing Art is for Everyone program, funded by a grant from the Grafton Foundation. The current newsletter has a call-out to all artists that art kits are available for people to use at home Bart Blumberg has been a part of the growing opportunities for artists in public spaces for the past decade He had not taken that many photographs when he retired in 2012 after 20 years teaching fifth grade at the South River School in Marshfield His first career was in health care policy he had always experienced the world around him in a visual way He shot 35 mm slides as a teenager and had worked with a digital camera as an adult Once retired, he was freer to travel around, always having a camera. One day in 2012, he was on a tour at Fenway Park when someone asked about a single seat painted red in the deep right field bleachers. There was a story. Slugger Ted Williams hit the longest home run, a reported 502 feet, in Fenway Park game history on June 9 when the ball traveled to the right field bleachers and hit a man watching the game Blumberg kept looking at the red seat and took photos from different distances and angles; he later submitted one in a Red Sox contest to celebrate Fenway's 100th anniversary His was one of three winning photos selected in the contest; it also hung in the West Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for three months It was an auspicious beginning to what has become a very fulfilling third career In February 2020, just before the pandemic took hold, Blumberg also had a photograph showing Graves Light and Boston Light in Boston Harbor in an exhibit at the South Shore Natural Science Center in Norwell He quickly became active with Hull Artists and has been president of the board of directors since 2017 Blumberg speaks of "making the ordinary extraordinary." "I often try to capture a “wow!” moment of beauty an emotionally evocative connection with people or a unique perspective of a structure," he says 'I want the viewer to reflect on a time they experienced something similar or to create a new perception." close to "the ever-changing land and seascape to inspire me I’ve gone from 'I take pictures,' to 'I’m a photographer'” to 'I’m an artist and photography is my medium.'” His 23 photographs of the full moon rising will be on display through March Reach Sue Scheible at sscheible@patriotledger.com and minor keys squirm beneath even the most triumphant melodies This internal tension mimics Corbet’s extreme shifts in scope—from intimate to colossal—and Tóth’s relentless struggle as he grasps at a phantasmic American dream After docking in New York alongside countless displaced Jews Tóth relocates to Pennsylvania to live and work in his cousin’s furniture shop His modern designs eventually land him an architectural commission for wealthy industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) initiating a decades-long relationship between Tóth and his patron But despite Van Buren’s apparent generosity—he boards Tóth and facilitates the arrival of his long-lost wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy)—the dashing millionaire harbors deep-seated malice The dynamic between benefactor and craftsman ascends and plummets over the film shaping the course of Tóth’s post-war life Blumberg has a great hand in The Brutalist’s thematic gesturing His score often counters the immediate connotations of what’s onscreen “Erzsébet” is a tender piano piece that accompanies Tóth’s reunion with his wife and niece But beneath the delicate keys are children shouting Strings surge as Tóth meets his family at the train station Erzsébet has suffered a life-altering injury “Handjob,” a brief dirge of drones and brass that curdles at the edges hints at the lingering pain of their separation The way Corbet contrasts Blumberg’s sweeter piano melodies against seedier scenes—of Tóth strung out on heroin watching porn in a movie theater—suggests that our protagonist’s pleasures are vaporous and fleeting Sole previous scoring credit on a full-length film for the singer guitar player and visual artist is The World to Come The young British composer Daniel Blumberg has won his first Oscar for his second-ever musical score for a feature film, for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist Blumberg, 34, won the Bafta award last month for the score, which has met with considerable praise and which plays a prominent role in the film. The Brutalist is the story of a fictitious Hungarian architect who moves to the US after surviving the Holocaust The score for the film mixes piano and saxophone jazz with abrasive brass and percussion to convey Tóth’s inner torment. Blumberg’s work was compared by many to that of Mica Levi, another young British avant-garde composer and the frequent collaborator of Jonathan Glazer Blumberg’s sole previous scoring credit on a full-length film is Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, which won him an Ivor Novello award. Fastvold is the co-writer of The Brutalist Cafe Oto in Dalston Photograph: Marc Zakian/AlamyBlumberg was a founding member and lead singer of the band Cajun Dance Party from 2005–09 after which he sang and played guitar as part of indie rock band Yuck He released his first solo work in 2013 and has since worked mostly from Cafe Oto in Dalston In his speech, Blumberg sung a shoutout to his friends at the venue, as well as to the “radical, uncompromising” musicians who worked on The Brutalist alongside him Blumberg said that it “means a lot to be championed like this” and thanked Corbet who he described as an “artistic soulmate” He composed the music for a short film by Peter Strickland and for the British Film Institute’s 2018 Agnès Varda season Anora takes home best picture Oscar Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison win best acting prizes Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña win supporting awards Anora’s Sean Baker wins for directing, editing and screenplay This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page the new A24 movie The Brutalist tells the story of László Toth a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who flees to America “to rebuild his life and his marriage to his wife Erzsébet” after surviving the Holocaust “On his own in a strange new country where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren recognizes his talent for building But power and legacy come at a heavy cost…” Blumberg traveled with a mobile recording rig to capture improvisers such as trumpeter Axel Dörner And to capture the shifting sound of culture as the movie’s story made its way into the 1980s Blumberg traveled to New York to work with Depeche Mode/Erasure/Yazoo veteran Vince Clarke The fruit of his labor is nearly two hours of original music that just received a Golden Globe nomination The most important stories and least important memes in recognition of his thrillingly original music for The Brutalist… Camille & Clément Ducol (Emilia Pérez) and Robin Carolan (Nosferatu) it’s a towering construction with many unique parts each one integral to the structure of the experience somewhat disorienting Overture through heady jazz sequences (performed live on set) dreamlike solo piano lines (often played on prepared piano by John Tilbury) and Axel Dörner’s unnerving trumpet blasts, The Brutalist is a memorable listen both in and out of the film There’s an improvisatory element to some of the music which creates a feeling of explorative creation and You feel that perhaps most fully during the Intermission which features pianist John Tilbury seemingly feeling his way through what becomes the score’s main melodic thread A fully realised version of what he is working through follows musician and composer who works across forms He was the guitarist and frontman of the indie band ‘Yuck’ and a founding member of the group ‘Cajun Dance Party’ In more recent years he has released solo albums of his own music and later turned to composing for film. The Brutalist is not his first score for writer/director Brady Corbet the pair working together on the 2019 short performance film GYUTO That featured music by Blumberg and his duo (or GUO) partner Blumberg won a 2022 Ivor Novello award for his score for Mona Fastvold’s The World to Come, and his score for The Brutalist is nominated for an Oscar at the forthcoming 97th Academy Awards His BAFTA win is a strong sign that the American Academy voters may follow suit… all will be revealed at the Oscars on Sunday 2 March For a full list of this years EE BAFTA Film Awards winners visit bafta.org The Brutalist is in UK cinemas now and you can listen to Daniel Blumberg’s score is released by Sony and can be heard wherever you enjoy your music Editor’s note (Keith Cowing): Barry Blumberg was one cool dude I was in on one of the first conversations at NASA Ames when his name came up to attend an event – and then afterward to run NASA Astrobiology Institute He came up to me in the hallway during the meeting and sheepishly – like a 10 year old kid with a secret – to tell me that he had been selected Barry was fun and we had some hilarious times together I knew he liked rocks so I said I’d get him one I did and but I ended up giving it to his his grandson at Barry’s funeral in Philadelphia Barry’s selection was one of the most inspired things Dan Goldin did. The field of Astrobiology would not be what it is today – a global discipline with a truly cosmic reach. I had fun writing this piece “Astrobiology at T+5 Years“ for the NSS magazine with Barry in 2002: “Research spawned by the ALH84001 meteorite from Mars has led to a re-examination of just how small an organism can be as well as new ways of thinking how to find evidence of life elsewhere Research in extreme environments on Earth has further expanded the boundaries wherein Earth life can exist – thus expanding potential extraterrestrial locales where we should be looking for life elsewhere I was honored to be part of Barry’s memorial service at NASA Ames in 2011 along with Dan Goldin and others Keith Cowing representing the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and the Coalition for Space Exploration speaking at the memorial service for Nobel Laureate Baruch Blumberg at NASA Ames Research Center on 21 June 2011 Cowing was presenting a photo that flew on the Senatobia-1 educational balloon to an altitude of 95,129 feet during the launch of the STS-134 Space Shuttle mission in May 2011 Baruch S. Blumberg’s centennial—a Nobel laureate cutting through scientific disciplines, springer.com (open access) He found the work for NASA very exciting. He wanted to encourage young people to become scientists and wanted to make high-school students and even grade-school students to become interested in this area. He knew it will take generations to get their project finished.” Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻 2025 © Reston Communications. All rights reserved. THE BRUTALIST’S MAESTRO “This project, it was like a pact” sealing his friendship with director Brady Corbet, says composer Daniel Blumberg (Ilana Blumberg).Share THE BRUTALIST\u2019S MAESTRO \u201CThis project, it was like a pact\u201D sealing his friendship with director Brady Corbet, says composer Daniel Blumberg (Ilana Blumberg).Share Subscribe now and Hans Zimmer among the potential nominees for Best Original Score Reznor and Ross are also Best Original Song nominees Maren Morris and her co-writers are seeking nomination for Best Original Song the Wild Robot song “Kiss the Sky.” Pharrell Williams made the shortlist for the title song to his Piece by Piece movie There are also multiple songs on the shortlist from Emilia Pérez: Clément Ducol and Camille wrote the song “El Mal” for performers Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón Along with the music categories, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the shortlist for Best Documentary Feature Film. Included in the batch is director Gary Hustwit’s documentary Eno As for the songs, only one Golden Globe nominee is not on the Academy Awards shortlist, and that is Miley Cyrus, Lykke Li, and Andrew Wyatt’s Last Showgirl song “Beautiful That Way.” The 2025 Academy Awards take place on Sunday, March 2, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Conan O’Brien will host. Interaxis' Adam Blumberg shares how cryptocurrencies evolved as trillion-dollar disruptors The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs by the Securities and Exchange Commission dominated trends in the first quarter of 2024 cryptocurrencies have quickly evolved from digital novelties to trillion-dollar technologies poised to disrupt the global financial system Digital currencies are being increasingly viewed as investments which is why advisors need to be educated about the subject director of WealthStack content and solutions about how advisors can prepare themselves and their clients for a crypto-inclusive future The implications of blockchain technology  Why decentralized finance and Web3 represent significant advancements Shannon Rosic WealthStack website WealthManagement.com Adam Blumberg Interaxis and a former registered investment advisor He co-founded Interaxis in 2019 to educate advisors and investors on digital assets and decentralized finance His Interaxis YouTube channel is viewed by thousands across the globe He is a regular contributor to Coindesk’s Crypto for Advisors and was featured on Bloomberg TV and Blockworks Director of WealthStack Content and Solutions Shannon Rosic is the Director of WealthStack Content & Solutions at Informa Connect Rosic supports and drives the omni-channel growth and development of WealthStack the fastest growing and most credible event dedicated to technology in the wealth management industry  She also serves as the market-facing representative for the group RIA Edge 100: Growing Rapidly but Responsibly What truly sets peak performing retirement plans apart Tech Stacks & Growth Strategies for Future-Ready Advisory Firms Ask the Experts: Grow Your Practice with Philanthropy: Comparing DAFs and Private Foundations See how advisors are combining active and passive strategies for optimal portfolio results Registered in England & Wales with number 01835199 by February 13, 2025Source: YouTube showing us his process and equipment and everything Here's a Composer Daniel Blumberg featurette for Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, via A24's YouTube: Find more posts in: Featurette, To Watch, Trailer Add our RSS to your Feedly +click here+ Latest posts now available on Bluesky: Get the latest posts sent on Telegram Want emails instead?Subscribe to our dailynewsletter updates: Blumberg said: “Brady and I wanted there to be continual music for the first 10 minutes of the film and the entire opening sequence was actually shot and choreographed to the music using my initial demos The ‘Overture’ introduces the main players who appear throughout the film—including pianists John Tilbury Sophie Agnel and Simon Sieger; Axel Dörner on trumpet; Evan Parker on saxophone—and it also covers the full spectrum of sounds and dynamics and the instrumental techniques that blur with the diegetic sound With the ‘Overture’ I wanted to create this extremely disorientating sensory overload that immediately immerses you in the film.” The Brutalist stars Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach de Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival and gets released widely in the United States on Friday The Brutalist (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack): 01 Overture (Ship)02 Overture (Laszlo)03 Overture (Bus)04 Chair05 Van Buren’s Estate06 Library07 Jazz Club08 Porn09 Monologue10 Up the Hill11 Pennsylvania12 Bicycle13 Steel14 Intermission [ft John Tilbury]15 Erzsebet16 Handjob17 Bath18 Building Suite19 Ribbon Cutting20 Picnic by the Lake21 Gordon’s Dinner22 Looking at You23 Train Crash24 New York25 Stairs26 Carrara27 Marble28 Tunnel29 Construction30 Heroin31 Search Party32 Epilogue (Venice) The Brutalist’s 34-year-old composer created the film’s Oscar-nominated score while crashing on director Brady Corbet’s couch In one scene in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist László Tóth—played by Adrien Brody—observes Yom Kippur The ceremony holds a special significance for Tóth who has just escaped the Holocaust in Hungary and landed in Philadelphia It also holds significance for the film’s now Oscar-nominated composer “It’s a prayer that I know,” says the London-born Blumberg recalling the day on set when he taught the cast how to sing the confessional chant “Ashamnu” (“We Are Guilty”) “I go to synagogue on Yom Kippur with my dad,” he says “and it’s just a particularly beautiful moment in the service.” is among the new board members President Trump appointed to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after recently ousting leaders and firing board members from the nation’s cultural center Blumberg and the other new members were announced on Wednesday along with the news that Trump was made the center’s chairman “It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!” Trump wrote in a social media post On Monday, the Trump administration purged the board of 18 members appointed by former President Biden philanthropist and co-founder of the financial firm The Carlyle Group was previously set to chair the organization until 2026 The center promptly named a slate of new members to the board; it also terminated the contract of Deborah F Rutter said it had been the honor of her career to lead the institution The new board members include the president’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Blumberg, a New York City-based ophthalmologist, was recognized as one of New York Magazine’s Top Doctors of 2021 and 2022. She and Kraft married in October 2022 in a surprise wedding celebration in New York City Kraft’s son, Josh, announced earlier this month that he is challenging Boston Mayor Michelle Wu in the upcoming mayoral election a longtime nonprofit leader and a Democrat Kraft has claimed to have cut off his ties to Trump Neither Blumberg nor Robert Kraft could immediately be reached for comment Trump has indicated that he would be dictating programming at The Kennedy Center one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions specifically declaring that he would end events featuring performers in drag and Renée Fleming announced their resignations from their positions at the center after Trump was made the chairman The center has historically been run by bipartisan boards Trump’s other appointees are Allison Lutnick according to a statement issued by the Kennedy Center Materials from the Associated Press were used in this report Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez. Home Delivery Gift Subscriptions Log In Manage My Account Customer Service Delivery Issues Feedback News Tips Help & FAQs Staff List Advertise Newsletters View the ePaper Order Back Issues News in Education Search the Archives Privacy Policy Terms of Service Terms of Purchase Work at Boston Globe Media Internship Program Co-op Program Do Not Sell My Personal Information The first sound to really hit you in “The Brutalist” is that of trumpets making it known that you’re experiencing an arrival a sense of splendor that touches on its lead character László Tóth in America seemingly reaching safe harbor upon fleeing his native Hungary where he was surely consigned to death as Nazis gained control as well as the epic scale that director Brady Corbet will come to fulfill in following him through the travails to erecting a building in his adopted homeland a monument meant to reflect the values of the God-fearing millionaire (Guy Pearce) that commissions it but ultimately in its concrete design presents a country that’s given him a cold shoulder it’s what surrounds the bombast that start to come to life as your memory of it wears on the ambient dirge that immediately precedes the brassy fanfare akin to churn of the boat that Tóth emerges from and the scattered notes of various instruments bursting here and there as if rhythm eludes them all trying to find their place in the grand scheme The cacophony notes the irony of a promised land that sits on quicksand but what is completely genuine is the sense of possibility in the air as Daniel Blumberg’s score comes to overwhelm you in a film that perhaps dismisses America as a place of opportunity for Tóth when a turned-over image of the Statue of Liberty sets the tone for a story in which he may never feel welcome but serves as a canvas where a certain level of formal experimentation coalesces into a cinematic landmark Blumberg was involved in building “The Brutalist” from the ground up having met Corbet and his partner Mona Fastvold around the time the former was making his directorial debut “The Childhood of a Leader.” Pursuing visual arts at the time with a scholarship at the Royal Drawing School after already making a name for himself in music Blumberg had to be particularly intrigued when Corbet invited him back to the recording studio where he was working on the score with the legendary Scott Walker Although composers traditionally come into the process towards the end of the production Blumberg and Fastvold’s friendship allowed for a different dynamic where the former was around on set to pick up the environmental nuances of the frontier setting for the Katherine Waterston/Vanessa Kirby drama and the process repeated itself for “The Brutalist,” where Blumberg roomed with Corbet during the film’s shoot in Budapest and created a roving studio where musicians could record on location and enabled the composer to reach far and wide for the exact specialists he was looking for Blumberg’s close relationship to Corbet and Fastvold also made an impossible situation slightly easier to bear when Walker who had provided the music for Corbet’s first two films passed away in 2019 and Blumberg assumed the role working with Corbet and Fastvold at the script stage of “The Brutalist” to create such a robust atmosphere for the film sonically The score doesn’t only summon the dreams and nightmares of its characters anchored primarily by a piano to reflect the tortured soul of László but captivates in subverting Americans’ belief in a steady march towards progress with the absorbing cadence it finds in construction without suggesting that what’s out of step is off-key Blumberg could reflect on a years-long journey with the film in which the process led to some scenes being inspired by the music and others where he could be inspired by what was happening on set as well as being able to set the tone for the entire production when gathering a group of artists to play at a jazz club for the first day of the shoot When you and Brady first started having conversations about “The Brutalist,” what was discussed Lol Crawley mentioned that — it sounded like a great way to start the production when it had all that energy It was quite scary because it was the first idea that was printed forever on the film and I wanted them to refer to this theme that would later become the construction theme in the second half of the film When construction [on the Institute] gets underway so it was scary [to commit to something at the start] that would have to continue through the three-and-a-half hours of the film and I was thinking it better be good.” But I had put together a group of people that I knew could evoke that era of jazz but also take it into more open music after they take drugs in the [bathroom] and to actually play that transition into kind of more woozy state that they’re in after they shoot up It was really good because it was the first day setting down the tempo that Brady and I hoped would happen where there was a flow between the departments but also Adrien [Brody] and Isaach [De Bankole] were able to react to the score in real time That was something that we talked about from the start was that I thought it would be a good opportunity with me being on set to collaborate with the sound recorder [and others on set] and for it to flow quite naturally and [the score] not be an afterthought but quite integral to the narrative and the scenes Is it true that you had the overture ready enough for the introductory scene of the film to have that kind of interaction with what could be filmed on set We always thought of the overture as a piece of music that would continue for the first ten minutes of the film from the opening [on the ship] until the end of the bus ride to Philadelphia. That was something that Brady really wanted to shoot to the music, particularly in the ship scene when László is arriving in New York He wanted to shoot to the bus to music as well and it was interesting to make music before there were images The overture was Brady and I sitting next to my piano and keyboard in his flat and me playing these ideas that I had then László goes up the stairs…” and imagining how the scene would be shot we were really happy with it and it provided a structure to the shoot Lol could adjust his movements to the music and then all the choreography of the extras and Adrien and we were using very basic demos with quick sounds that I have on a keyboard Then later when I was building [the sound] and we’re actually recording with real instruments, the overture was the foundation of the whole score, so it would introduce the main theme, but also the instruments and the musicians. The key musicians all have solos on the bus You hear Evan Parker’s soprano saxophone coming in during the credits that you hear later in Carrara and Sophie Agnel an amazing pianist from Paris who just plays the strings of the piano interfering with the strings with different objects You hear all these quite unique players in the bus and then in between those two scenes [of the ship and the bus] you introduce the character of László and John Tilbury an extraordinary artist who plays the more melancholic kind of piano that follows Adrien through the film Tilbury was a really crucial influence on how you thought about Lazlo musically even before he came on to play such a role in the film I’ve been a big fan of his since I was introduced to his work by Seymour Wright the saxophonist that played a bit on the score I thought of how John Cage would put screws and coins in the piano and the hammers would bang on the strings and make quite percussive sounds – sounds that I imagined could relate to the sound of building and construction and ideas forming And I thought of Tilbury because [he also works] with prepared pianos when you interfere with the strings to make percussive sounds and just has an amazing touch It was a mixture between the initial prepared piano I did with two friends at Cafe Oto snuck in to this venue near where I live in London and spent a day just sampling sounds so you could really get an incredible amount of low end Sometimes it might not be obvious what a piano is on the score but initially we were drawn to the idea of the instrument being so huge and the acoustic potential being able to bring you through the whole story were there actually sounds from the location that were inspiring you We didn’t use the audio from my piano for the film for that scene but we actually used it in the film when she’s in the bath a bit later It sounded quite nice and we set up some mics after the scene was shot A common thread throughout Brady’s films has been sound mixer Peter Walsh I was traveling around Europe because I had very specific players that I wanted to work with and bringing him back all these recordings and he’s very good at finding ways of balancing quite complicated sounds on a mix but that’s something that he did incredibly with Scott’s albums and his work and Pete and I met on Brady’s first film because he was co-producing that as well We’ve since done three records and this is the second film we’ve done together This was a very intense mix because of the length of it — it was like mixing two films but we work very closely and he’s a massive part of why it could work was it much of an adjustment to think about music as it applied to a narrative or did it come pretty organically It was quite a natural thing when Mona asked me to do her [film “The World to Come”] but also very tricky because I’ve mainly worked with free you’re playing with a saxophone player they might make a very short percussive note or they might circular breathe for an hour you just don’t know how long a phrase is gonna be Retaining that energy of the music that I love or working with people who are not necessarily used to having such specific time constraints is a challenge You’re trying to honor that piece of work or align your instincts with someone that you really respect and I really like that It’s different to making a solo record where you’re the last voice in the record it’s trying to help Brady achieve what he wants to do Knowing that this has been in the works for some time what’s it like getting to this moment with it It’s been quite amazing that people have responded positively to the film because you never really know. Brady’s quite a radical filmmaker. He’s making narrative cinema, and I work with artists who sometimes I feel are underappreciated. Like Steve Noble is an incredible percussionist and drummer and you can go and see him in London and there’s six or 16 people at his concert So I’m used to seeing people make incredible work and not necessarily get that much feedback but quite nice because I know Brady made the film that he wanted to make and it’s quite surprising that other people also liked it I was up till five in the morning last night working on this and I’ve gone on straight into Mona’s new film so being deep in that and then talking about the work Brady and I did is quite a nice mix “The Brutalist” is now in theaters You must be logged in to post a comment This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.