Filmmaker Spotlight Marcelo Zarvos

Marcelo Zarvos, who is composing the score for Remember Me, is a Brazilian born composer. His music, a blend of Brazilian folk, jazz and classical music, has sometimes been referred to as “world chamber music”. He has written scores for films and for television, music for dance and for concerts. He has also written and released several jazz albums.

When he was 10 years old, he started playing classical piano, at 13 he was playing in nightclubs and the next year he was playing in a band called Tokyo We. For the next 4 years, he was part of that band that released a couple of albums and toured around Brazil. When he was 17, he left the band to continue his musical studies. He started his classical training in Sao Paulo with H.J Koelreutter who had previously trained many other great Brazilian composers.

Marcelo initially wanted to study film scoring and enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. After starting there, he decided he wanted a broader background and transferred to California Institute of Arts where he received his BFA while studying classical, jazz and world music. He received his Master’s Degree from Hunter College in New York City. He first started writing his music during this time.

His first score was written for the short Brazilian film, A Soccer Story (1999). The director of the film, Paulo Machline heard him playing in Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory and wanted Marcelo to write a score using his personal blend of brazilian, jazz and classical music that he had heard him play that night. His work on this film led him to his next project and first feature film Tully(2000).
Another of his early work in feature films was The Mudge Boy (2003). Variety reviewer David Rooney described this film as being “graced with a gentle elegantly unobtrusive score”. The Door on the Floor (2004) featured his first score to be released commercially on a DVD. Next up, Marcelo teamed up with director Allen Coulter to produce the smoky and sultry score for Hollywoodland (2006). Robert DeNiro, after hearing his score for Hollywoodland, chose him to score part of The Good Shepherd (2006). Taking Chance (2009) garnered Marcelo an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Musical Composition for Mini Series, Movie or a Special. For the score of What Just Happened (2008), he had to score a movie within a movie . On one of his more recent endeavors, reviewer Zach Freeman calls the score for Sin Nombre (2009) “a surprisingly thrilling collection of music. Zarvos’s work feels raw and unpretentious”.

In addition to his work in film, Marcelo has composed the score for the National Museum of Natural History’s space show Cosmic Collisions and the dance scores for Aquatica, Divinities and The Path. He has also written chamber music, most notably Nepomuk’s Dances for string quartet, Changes for wind quintet and piano and a NEA commission for the string quartet Ethel. Most recently he added his music to Sounds of Brazil – Music for Wind Quartet performed by the Quintet of the Americas.

He has released three albums of his own work. Dualism, Labyrinths and Music Journal combine his personal sound of classical, jazz and brazilian folk and urban music. Labyrinths was named one of the top ten jazz albums in 1998 by CD Now.

Photos of Marcelo Zarvos Scoring The Air I Breathe




Take a listen to some of Marcelo Zarvos's compositions:

From the Emmy Nominated Taking Chance


From the Good Shepherd




Sources:
Zarvos.com
Music Reviews Sin Nombre
The Daily Film Music Blog - The Cat Presents
Film in Focus.com

Photo Sources:
Scoring Sessions.Com