EVEREST Visual Soundtrack Preview From Oscar-Winning Composer Dario Marianelli

Varèse Sarabande will release the EVEREST – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally and on CD September 18, 2015.

The album features the original music composed by Dario Marianelli (ATONEMENT, THE BOXTROLLS). The score is great and it’s what makes the movie even more intense!

“My initial instinctive approach to the score, which our director, Baltasar Kormákur, liked and encouraged me to follow, was to have a calling voice, a distant siren call,” explained Marianelli.  “It is at the same time a voice that represents the ancient goddess-like mountain, but also a luring and irresistible calling to one’s own destiny.”

Marianelli’s musical “siren call” was performed by singer Melanie Pappenheim. “The same tune that I wrote for Melanie was also played by two wonderful string players in many variations—Caroline Dale and David La Page, with whom I also have worked on several other movies,” he said.  “There were also moments where I tried to evoke a primal, raw power, and I tried to build a sense of surging pressure with the blasting brass instruments.”

“The opposite point of the musical compass is the ‘conquering’ attitude of the mountaineers, a kind of macho, go-getting approach to nature,” Marianelli continued, “which is reflected in a much more propulsive, percussive and energetic musical idiom.”

Inspired by the incredible events surrounding an attempt to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain, EVEREST documents the awe-inspiring journey of two different expeditions challenged beyond their limits by one of the fiercest snowstorms ever encountered by mankind. Their mettle tested by the harshest elements found on the planet, the climbers will face impossible obstacles as a lifelong obsession becomes a breathtaking struggle for survival.

The epic adventure stars Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Robin Wright, Michael Kelly, Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley, Emily Watson and Jake Gyllenhaal.

Marianelli was born in Pisa and studied piano and composition in Florence and London. After a year as a postgraduate composer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, he spent three years at the National Film and Television School, from which he graduated in 1997.

Marianelli’s film scores include THE BOXTROLLS (2014), ANNA KARENINA (2012), JANE EYRE (2011), SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN (2011), EAT PRAY LOVE (2010), THE SOLOIST (2009), AGORA (2009), ATONEMENT (2007), V FOR VENDETTA (2006) and PRIDE & PREJUDICE (2005).  He has written orchestral music for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra and the Britten-Pears Orchestra, as well as vocal music for the BBC Singers, incidental music for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and several ballet scores.

Dario won the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and Ivor Novello Award in the Best Original Score category for the Working Title film ATONEMENT, for which he won the World Soundtrack Award and was BAFTA nominated. He was also nominated for a Classical Brit Award in the Soundtrack of the Year category for ATONEMENT and earned additional Oscar nominations for PRIDE & PREJUDICE and ANNA KARENINA.

Universal Pictures’ EVEREST may now be experienced exclusively on IMAX 3D and premium-large format 3D screens on September 18. It will be released wide—including standard 2D and 3D—on September 25.

Varèse Sarabande will release the EVEREST – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally and on CD September 18, 2015.