Weekly Recommendations – w/e 16th February 2024: Empire Queen: The Golden Age of Magic, & I diafanoidi vengono de Marte

Continuing with our catch-up of weekly recommended scores, here’s another round-up of scores that caught my attention over the week ending, 16th February 2024.

Empire Queen: The Golden Age of Magic (2024) – Nicolás Repetto (MovieScore Media)

Empire Queen: The Golden Age of Magic (dirs. Christopher Dane Owens, Jason Schulz) is a fantasy action-adventure comedy. Magic is forbidden in the kingdom, and a group of adventurers set out on a dangerous quest to overthrow an evil queen and restore magic for everyone. Argentinian-American composer Nicolás Repetto’s score harkens back to the epic orchestral fantasy adventure scoring of the likes of John Williams. Thematic in nature, Repetto’s music shifts effortless between various musical genres: swashbuckling adventure, lyrically romantic, mischievous. With a running time of over 2 hours, the music for Empire Queen: The Golden Age of Magic carries the listener on a magical, exciting journey that never lets up.

Weekly Recommendations – w/e 9th February 2024: Flyways: The Untold Story of Migratory Shore Birds, Il Pianeta Errante, Faruk, & Kôtei no inai hachigatsu/August Without The Emperor

Continuing with our catch-up of weekly recommended scores, here’s another round-up of scores that caught my attention over the week ending, 9th February 2024.

Flyways: The Untold Journey of Migratory Shore Birds (2023) – Cezary Skubiszewski (RealityBytes)

The subject of the Australian feature documentary Flyways: The Untold Journey of Migratory Shore Birds (dir. Randall Wood) is bird migration and the negative effects of climate change on their breeding and feeding sites. There’s a delicacy about Polish-born Australian composer Cezary Skubiszewski’s score that makes the album a very appealing listen. Written for a relatively small ensemble, the composer uses various combinations of instruments in interesting ways, many of the musical ideas revolving around a three-note motif inspired by the composer’s own experience of bird song. A nice alternative to the large orchestral scores frequently written for natural world documentaries, Skubiszewski’s music reflects the birds that fly vast distances during their migrations.