Sin Nombre (Orginal Motion Picture Score)

Berklee-trained Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos cements his reputation as one of the leading composers of indie filmmaking (The Door in the Floor, Hollywoodland, The Wrestler) with this evocative score for writer-director Cary Fukunaga’s Ecuadorian immigrant’s odyssey (which also took Directing and Cinematography awards at Sundance in 2009). Using the story’s rich indigenous music textures as a foundation, Zarvos constructs a spare, yet no less emotionally compelling score where Central American folk modalities and Western neoclassicism swirl into a seamless evocation of place, time and dramatic conflict. The composer helps fuse those disparate traditions with a driving, minimalist sense of rhythm that also becomes musical metaphor for the film’s physical journey, while his judicious, refined use of melodies makes them all the more memorable in a score that turns largely on textural intrigues.