MOSMA 2021 – Festival summary

Friday - 10/9/2021 - 20h - CONCERT ‘Stories of Women’

 

PROGRAM

Story 1

Promising Young Woman, Anthony Willis

Original title: Promising Young Woman

Oscar for best original screenplay 2021 y 2021 BAFTA nomination for best original score

This first section also includes pieces from the scores of How to Train your Dragon: Homecoming and Solitary.

 

Story 2

For Sama, Nainita Desai

Original title: For Sama

Nominated for the 2020 Oscar for best documentary, winner of the 2020 BAFTA Award for best documentary and nominated by the British Independent Film Awards for best original score.

This second section also includes pieces from the score of American Murder: The Family Next Door.

 

Story 3

Blood, Paloma Peñarrubia

2021 ASECAN nomination for best original score.

 

Story 4

The Queen’s Gambit, Carlos Rafael Rivera

Original title: The Queen’s Gambit

2021 Emmy nomination for outstanding original music.

 

 

The next day, we continued with the second concert of the festival, this time at the Sala Unicaja de Conciertos María Cristina, performed by the Movie Score Málaga Assemblé Orchestra, formed by 10 musicians, stupendously and efficiently conducted by Isabel Rubio.

 

The program offered music dedicated to the ‘Stories of women’, divided into 4 blocks of 4 different composers, most of them present there.

 

The night began with the delicate and melodic work of Anthony Willis, with a delightful composition for ‘Promising Young Woman’ which was followed by music from ‘How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming’ and ‘Solitary’. Next came a block by Nainita Desai, who used the electronic tracks to give additional depth to the problematic, conflictive, and dramatic stories, but with slight hints of positive resolution, which her orchestral music transmitted to us. Here we were able to listen to several short pieces from the documentary movie ‘For Sama’ and from the most watched documentary on Netflix to date ‘American Murder: The Family Next Door’.

 

As a curiosity, the same day of the concert, it was announced that both composers were nominated for Discovery of the year at the World Soundtrack Awards, and with the music we were listening to in the evening.

 

Perhaps the least positive points of this first block of the concert were the amount of short pieces that were interpreted, which made the continuity a bit difficult, and the extensive speeches that both composers gave when they went on stage, which although were interesting and added context, were a bit too long as they had to be translated into Spanish.

 

Next came Paloma Peñarrubia‘s music for the film ‘Blood’. A very original piece, conflictive, tense, and slippery, which moved and oscillated between passion and drama, blurring the unstable lines of sanity with ease. The addition of unusual textures to the traditional orchestral sound amplified that sense of anguish, unease or bewilderment at more than one point. A great and original musical block.

 

And finally, we had the suite of ‘Queen’s Gambit’ by Carlos Rafael Rivera, who made his presentation with a video message on screen. A great performance of a complex piece with an overwhelming sonority, which despite having only 10 musicians on stage, sounded as if we had a full orchestra. A great success to move this piece in the original program from the third block to the end, and finish the evening with a great dose of energy and positivity.

 

A very enjoyable concert, which, although perhaps was a bit dense at the beginning, offered us unusual music in a very appropriate format.

[PICTURES – Rafa Melgar for SoundTrackFest]

Saturday - 11/9/2021 - 20h - CONCERT ‘Tribute to the Music of Video games’

 

PROGRAM

IA Corrupta [Rogue IA]. Alternative versions of immortal works (Reimagining)

1. Entrando en la red – Invasión alienígena. 

Tron and Space Invaders, by Sergio de la Puente.

2. Lucy in the Sky with Videogames.

Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Pac-Man, Castlevania, by Javier Bayón.

3. El lingote

Sonic the Hedgehog, The Secret of Monkey Island, Mortal Kombat, Wii Theme, Plants vs Zombies, by Carlos Martín Jara.

4. El viaje del bloque.

Tetris, by Dani Trujillo.

5. Virus Attack.

Resident Evil, by the Ferrando brothers.

6. El club de la lucha.

Street Fighter 2, by Luc Suárez.

7. Juegos de guerra.

Gears of War 2, by Óscar Senén.

 

Fin de la anomalía [End of the Anomaly]. Real versions of original pieces (World premiere)

8. The Season of the Warlock, Carlos Martín Jara.
9. Reventure, Daniel Parejo.
10. Call of the Sea, Eduardo de la Iglesia.
11. Blasphemous, Carlos Viola.
12. Knack II, Anthony Willis.
13. Fornite, Anthony Willis.

 

Epilogo corrupto [Rogue Epilogue] (Reimagining)

Bis. ¡Esparta!.  Halo 2, by Luc Suárez and Javier Bayón.

 

Third concert of the festival, performed by the Movie Score Málaga Assemblé Orchestra masterfully conducted by Joan Martorell at the Teatro Cervantes, which offered for two hours a wonderful tribute to video game music divided into two blocks: the first with pieces from mythical video games ‘reimagined’ (according to the program, due to a “corrupt AI / virus”) and the second with world premieres of current video game soundtracks, mainly by Spanish composers, who were present in the venue.

 

The orchestra was complemented by a rock combo, pre-recorded electronic tracks, and the participation of most of the composers featured in the concert on stage, who could be seen frantically enjoying their creations. And it was well deserved!

 

It would be impossible to highlight a single moment of the concert, since it had multiple really creative, surprising, and fresh pieces. Especially in the block of re-imaginations, where all the pieces were presented with a video in which the composers themselves explained in a fun, crazy, and ingenious way, what we were going to hear. Special mention to the graphics that accompanied each and every one of the pieces, both in their introduction and execution, as well as the lighting effects that we saw on stage, which introduced us even more in this bacchanal of video game music, which at times did not have much to envy to the famous ‘Video Games Live’ tour.

 

The concert had a great start with the versions of Sergio de la Puente for Tron, respecting and expanding the original sonority, and above all we should highlight the creativity with which he developed Space Invaders, a game that has no soundtrack beyond some “slight beeps”, and that in concert took shape to offer an orchestral experience that was complemented with the characteristic sounds of the arcade machine.

 

Javier Bayón‘s delicious, mournful, and psychedelic suite for Mario-Zelda-Pacman-Castlevania, gave way to Carlos Martín Jara‘s stupendous version of Sonic and Monkey Island, sprinkled with excerpts from the Wii theme and Plants vs Zombies. Special emphasis should be made on the version that closed this block with Mortal Kombat, and that increased the musical madness of the game by having the composer himself coming on stage, taking a microphone, and starting to narrate the names of the characters but “Spanishized”, along with the movements of the game in a rhythmic and joking way, while the orchestra played at full blast.

 

Fabulous musical and aesthetic duel between Dani Trujillo and Daniel García in the reimagining of Tetris. The well-known game, where you have to fit the pieces correctly in order to win, was transferred to the musical aspect, and both composers competed with each other to try to fit their version of Tetris to the public.

 

Great version of the Ferrando brothers (Nacho and Jorge Ferrando) for Resident Evil, where the evil virus was the musical protagonist, in a gloomy, dark, and guitar version of the soundtrack, making it clear that good does not always triumph over evil.

 

Luc Suarez on guitar, accompanied by the full power of the orchestra, brought a wonderful rock touch, aggressive, dynamic, and very powerful, to a video game that deserved no less: Street Fighter 2. And for dessert, we had the Hollywood style symphonic music of Oscar Senen, tense and nervous, for the intense Gears of War 2.

 

After the anomaly of the reimagined and “corrupted” versions of video game music, the second block of the concert began with the symphonic and magical music of Carlos Martín Jara for The Season of the Warlock, followed by a great music of Daniel Parejo for Reventure and the great “orchestral soundscapes” of Eduardo de la Iglesia for the world of Call of the Sea. In the last part we could enjoy the interesting music of Carlos Viola for Blasphemous, and the multiple melodic and dynamic pieces of Anthony Willis for Knack II and Fornite.

 

And here comes perhaps the only weak point of the concert, as this final part dedicated to the current games became a little dense at times, especially when short pieces followed one after the other in a somewhat mechanical way, leaving the audience a little off balance and without references, and giving rise to some awkward silences of seconds between pieces.

 

But returning to the positive part, which was almost everything else in the concert, I would like to highlight once again the impressive conducting work of Joan Martorell, who managed to put cohesion throughout the evening in a disparate and diverse set of pieces and styles, where symphonic music was constantly mixed with a rock band and pre-recorded electronic effects.

 

As a funny point, indicate that the “virus” that supposedly corrupted and gave rise to the reimagined pieces, did not want to miss the end of the party and managed to sneak an unexpected sports broadcast on the PA system of the venue through the director’s headphones.

 

And we can’t end this article without mentioning the last piece of the evening “Sparta! Reimagining Halo 2, by Luc Suárez and Javier Bayón”, with a blast of adrenaline and energy that had the two composers giving their best on guitars, followed at the same level by an unleashed orchestra, to end the concert in its highest point.

 

In short, a wonderful concert and we would almost say that is an essential concert for video game lovers, which we hope that the festival can publish online, as it did with the concert of re-imaginations of the maestro Morricone last year. I think all who attended were left with the desire to relive those moments again, and to capture the infinite details that the composers put in each and every one of the works.

 

Undoubtedly, the best concert of MOSMA 2021, with a format that clearly offers freshness and originality, with very high levels of quality, and where both the composers and the audience enjoyed to the maximum.

 

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