Listen To Composer Daniel Pemberton’s STEVE JOBS Score

Back Lot Music has released the soundtrack album for STEVE JOBS, the new film from Academy Award-winning director Danny Boyle and Academy Award-winning writer Aaron Sorkin. The album is available now on iTunes and Amazon.

The STEVE JOBS Original Motion Picture Soundtrack features new music by Award-winning composer Daniel Pemberton, as well as two iconic tracks from Bob Dylan, and songs by The Libertines and the Maccabees.

Universal Pictures’ STEVE JOBS, which stars Michael Fassbender as the pioneering founder of Apple, was released in New York and Los Angeles on October 9.  The film will expand to additional North American markets on October 16 and wide on October 23.

“Fassbender’s Jobs is a tornado of roaring ferocity and repressed feeling.” – RollingStone.com

Enter to win passes to the St. Louis screening HERE.

Director Danny Boyle says, “The first act was influenced by the early sounds of computers. The vast majority of the audience – and this is more and more the case with every year that passes—are digital natives. They don’t remember what it was like in the early days of the digital revolution, at the birth of a digital sound that – at that time – seemed almost futuristic. That notion interested me, and Daniel made use of that sort of retro sound beautifully.”

Prior to the beginning of principal photography, Pemberton worked alongside the filmmakers to develop a unique approach to composing the music for the three distinct periods of time depicted in STEVE JOBS. What they’ve created is a symphonic tour de force with three distinguishable aural points of view to complement the film’s narrative arc:

The first movement, set in 1984, expresses the optimism of Jobs’ first product launch, the Macintosh. Restricting himself to equipment of the time and embracing their limitations, Pemberton utilized what is now technology of the past – synthesizers such as the Yamaha CS-80, Roland SH-1000, Roland Juno-60, and Moog Minimoog – to reflect that era’s visions of the future, while still creating a sound world that would sit comfortably alongside Sorkin’s dialogue and Boyle’s direction.

The second movement, set in 1988 at the San Francisco Opera House, sees the unveiling of the NeXTcube with a theatrical orchestral fantasia.  With composed, large-scale operatic pieces, elaborate emotional transformations of a simple tuning-up sequence, and a dramatic symphony, the score reflects both Jobs the conductor and ringmaster – as well as a man focused on revenge.

The more reflective, internal, and emotional third movement takes us to 1998 with Jobs’ unveiling of the iMac, and echoes the various ways in which we utilize computers as we know them today.  “Today, I write pretty much everything I do on an Apple machine descended, in part, from that iMac,” said Pemberton.  “I use a piece of Apple software called Logic.  I can write music, manipulate sounds, produce recordings, and express myself as an artist without ever leaving the computer.”

This year has seen the release of Pemberton’s acclaimed soundtrack to Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. Read my interview with the composer HERE.

What impact did the screenplay for Steve Jobs have on you, and what were your initial thoughts about scoring?

I read it in one sitting – it was so compelling. I was buoyed along by this current of amazing dialogue. I did hear scoring possibilities as I read it, but I knew that I didn’t want to detract from all that was being said. Film composers instinctively look for places where music can expand the story during wordless scenes, action sequences, things like that. In this, every page is driven by dialogue.

Then I began thinking of the dialogue as the soprano of the score, in certain ways. It’s a fast, constantly flowing stream of information, and I felt it demanded some space to breathe. But at the same time, we didn’t want the music to become so nondescript or anonymous that it had no identity. So the challenge became how to compose music, with a unique identity, that would support the dialogue and allow it to “sing” on top of it.

As a musician and a composer, how have Jobs and his accomplishments impacted your life?

In some ways, an orchestral score is one of the oldest pieces of computer code. Computer code is instruction. But with an orchestra, you have the most amazing computer that’s ever been made – 74 human beings responding to what is, in effect, code, and bringing their own personality and emotion to that code. That’s why they still exist, because no one has ever beaten that effect.

The impact that he’s had on me as a composer means I can be writing opera music one minute, and then suddenly switch to designing electronic sounds or composing for synthesizers. Now, alone, I can dream up and compose anything – and then play it and hear it, every single note, without having to involve anyone else and never having to leave my room. Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing like hearing your music being played by 74 musicians. But it’s great not having to rely on them to listen to your latest composition, especially when you’ve just completed the work and it’s 3:30 in the morning. That’s freedom in composition.

Set backstage in the minutes before three iconic product launches spanning Jobs’ career – beginning with the Macintosh in 1984, and ending with the unveiling of the iMac in 1998 – STEVE JOBS takes us behind the scenes of the digital revolution to paint an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

STEVE JOBS is directed by Academy Award winner Danny Boyle and written by Academy Award winner Aaron Sorkin, working fromWalter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of the Apple founder.  The producers are Mark Gordon, Guymon Casady of Film 360, Scott Rudin, Boyle, and Academy Award winner Christian Colson.

Michael Fassbender plays Steve Jobs, the pioneering founder of Apple, with Academy Award-winning actress Kate Winslet starring as Joanna Hoffman, former marketing chief of Macintosh.  Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple, is played by Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels stars as former Apple CEO John Sculley.  The film also stars Katherine Waterston as Chrisann Brennan, Jobs’ ex-girlfriend, and Michael Stuhlbarg as Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original members of the Apple Macintosh development team.

www.stevejobsthefilm.com

Track List (all tracks by Daniel Pemberton, unless otherwise noted):

1. The Musicians Play Their Instruments…
2. It’s Not Working
3. Child (Father)
4. Jack It Up
5. The Circus of Machines I (Overture)
6. Russian Roulette
7. Change the World
8. The Skylab Plan
9. Don’t Look Back Into the Sun – The Libertines
10. …I Play The Orchestra
11. The Circus of Machines II (Allegro)
12. Revenge
13. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 – Bob Dylan
14. It’s An Abstract
15. Life Out of Balance
16. The Nature of People
17. 1998.  The New Mac.
18. Father (Child)
19. Remember
20. Grew Up At Midnight – The Maccabees
21. Shelter from the Storm – Bob Dylan

Order the album: http://smarturl.it/SteveJobsOST