First Contact: «Conquest of the Skies 3D»
There are composers who always work alone, there are composers who perform occasional or regular collaborations with some other composers, but there are few examples where we have three composers working hand in hand and score after score. That is the case of Joel Douek, Elik Alvarez and Freddy Sheinfeld, a trio of talented young composers we were able to meet at the International Film Music Festival Province of Córdoba in 2013, who continue delving into a genre where they have demonstrated that suits them perfectly, the documentary genre.
Having composed the music of documentaries like Galapagos 3D, Kingdom of Plants 3D or Egypt Unwrapped among others, now they come with a new score, the music of the documentary series «David Attenborough’s Conquest of the Skies 3D» dedicated to narrating the evolution of flight by creatures who have inhabited the earth since ancient times until today. With their music, we can follow the adventures of flight, from early prehistoric insects and pterosaurs, to modern birds and flying mammals.
The premiere of the film was held a few weeks ago in London, having great success with audiences and critics, and as it has already happened with Galapagos 3D, there will be two versions of the footage that was shot, one in a 3D IMAX film format and another will be published as a TV series to be broadcast by Sky Television in 3D.
Conquest of the Skies 3D is produced by Sky Television, and has the presence and the narration of the prestigious Sir David Attenborough, regular in this kind of documentaries. Varèse Sarabande is interested in editing this soundtrack, which has used an orchestra of 65 instruments recorded live, and that’s currently being adapted for CD version.
Around 86 minutes of music have been composed in total, with more than 30 tracks dedicated to the different moments or animals that are covered in the documentary. Joel, Elik and Freddy have relied on the orchestrations of Greg Pliska and Sandro Morales Santoro for this job.
After listening to a few cues of the soundtrack, it is interesting to discover that we can find fast, energetic, colorful, descriptive, and highly detailed tracks, together with more soft and subtle tracks that seem to leave importance to the images, but that aren’t diluted or lose the musical notion. Complementary themes, with high lyrical content and very evocative, that surely dress and fit perfectly the documentary (that we have not seen yet).
It is curious to discover how soundtracks for documentaries have so much to say, musically speaking, but then however are not as well-known as films soundtracks, or more recently TV series soundtracks and video games soundtracks.
We’re wishing for CD release of this delicious soundtrack by Varese Sarabande very soon, but meanwhile, you can have a good preview with 12 full tracks on Soundcloud, which will give you an idea of what you can enjoy with Joel, Elik and Freddy’s music for «Conquest of the Skies 3D».
