Jonny Greenwood‘s Oscar-nominated score for “The Power of the Dog” will receive a special live-to-screen performance March 10 with Wordless Music Orchestra at the helm.The performance will take place at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
“Over the last 15 years, Jonny Greenwood’s music for film has become as influential and unmistakable as his work with Radiohead,” Wordless Music Orchestra founder Ronen Givony said in a statement. The orchestra is a house band specializing in combining classical music with various disparate genres such as electronic and rock music. Added Givony, “It’s an honor to perform the world premiere of his original score for Jane Campion’s ‘The Power of the Dog’ for a live audience in Los Angeles, in partnership with Netflix and KCRW.”
Tickets will be free to the public beginning March. 1.
Greenwood, who rose to fame as lead guitarist for the alternative rock band Radiohead, previously received an Oscar nomination in 2018 for his score of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread.”
His score for “The Power of the Dog” has amassed several nominations from various critics associations and awards groups, including the BAFTAs, the Critics Choice Movie Awards, the Satellite Awards and the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards. In addition to scoring “The Power of the Dog,” Greenwood also composed the music for the Pablo Larraín-directed “Spencer” in 2021, and his score received similar acclaim.
Says Greenwood of the score, “Jane was open-minded and very trusting, especially given that there were no real demos made of many of the ideas. The final recordings were often the first recordings. When I look back over our very first email exchanges (though, in fact, some are scanned handwritten notes, which is much nicer), it’s interesting to chart what early ideas did prove fertile (French horns in reverb for the landscape shots, detuned mechanical pianos) and those which didn’t (banjo as soloist in a twentieth-century-style classical string quartet, which was as bad an idea as it sounds).” He adds, “The main thought I kept returning to was that this film is set in the modern era: it’s too easy to assume any cowboy story is the 19th century, and there is lots of culture in Phil’s character. He’s well read, and it’s not hard to image his taste in music being – alongside his proficiency on the banjo – very sophisticated. The pleasure in a character this complex, and emotionally pent-up, is that it allows for complexity in some of the music, as well as simpler, sweeter things for his contrasting brother. Bouncing between these two characters, musically, generated a lot of ideas.”
In addition to best score, “The Power of the Dog,” which is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Savage, notched 11 other nominations, including best picture, best director for Campion and best actor for Benedict Cumberbatch’s lead role as the repressed ranch owner Phil. The film also won best drama motion picture at the 2022 Golden Globes, and is nominated for 10 awards at the Critics Choice Awards.
