Curtain Call - The Score

Mike Stromenger's Curtain Call is a 17-part murder mystery web series from this spring that garnered positive reviews and a fairly sizable audience. The score is an orchestral/electronic amalgam composed by Benjamin Emory Larson and Reed Reimer.

In the interest of full disclosure, Reed is a friend of mine. That being said this isn't necessarily going to be a session of sunshine-blowing, pixies and unicorns. That would be irresponsible.

The album opens with the song "Dawn" sung onstage by the victim just prior to her untimely demise. The song serves as the driving force behind much of the musical material for the score. In that respect it functions like the better Bond songs (in fact, it somewhat reminds me of some of David Arnold's work for that series). There are two other themes throughout the score including a love theme for Jennifer and Matthew and a four-note “death” motif.

One can hear in the score an overall affinity and appreciation of good film music without necessarily trying to retread the same ground. The influences I hear in the score include:

• Orchestral and harmonic tendencies of Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard
• Piano writing of Michael Giacchino à la Lost.
• The percussiveness of Bear McCreary’s Battlestar Galactica score (though that tends to be more subtle in nature) and the electronic percussion of John Powell’s Bourne scores.

What we have here in Ben Larson and Reed Reimer is a young composing duo that is sure of their craft. We may recognize where they are coming from but for the most part I rarely felt like they were trying to consciously imitate other composers’ sounds or styles (the one notable exception is that “Across the Stage” is pretty obviously based on John Williams’ “Across the Stars” from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones). To me, standout tracks include: Dawn (Cassie’s Song), Curtain Rises, Across the Stage, Jennifer, Confession, Unrequited, Pat the Liar, Confront and Center, Little Things, The Dance and Curtain Falls. Despite the episodic nature of the series (even though it's really a two-hour movie broken up into seventeen parts), there's a cohesiveness to the score that is occasionally lacking in film music. Very few elements of this score feel out of place timbrally and those that are out of place have a positively jarring effect.

There are only a few criticisms that one might have of the music for Curtain Call. There is perhaps an over-reliance on the percussion to drive the score and that may very well be my own personal taste. The only other criticism I might have is the album presentation itself. I wonder if combining cues together (like John Williams might do) wasn’t a hindrance in some cases. While having a large number of tracks (like a Thomas Newman score) can be a little maddening, I think some cues might have been better experienced on their own.

There’s a lot to like on this album and a generous helping of it, too. The album clocks in at just under 75 minutes (74 if you must be precise). It’s a well-thought, excellently synthestrated (not my term) and richly varied score that, by-and-large, maintains its unity through texture and the use of a handful of well-developed themes. One is left to ruminate on the possibilities of what Larson and Reimer  might accomplish with a project that has a budget large enough for the hiring of live musicians...say about 65 of them.

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