Sing Sing Composer Bryce Dessner Talks Scoring A24’s Beautiful Prison Drama
Summary Sing Sing is an A24 triumph that succeeds thanks to an emotional blend of truth and drama. The movie is based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program that exists at Sing Sing and tells the story of the production of a play called Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code which was actually performed at the prison in in 2005.
“I Have To Work On This”: Bryce Dessner Reflects On Scoring Sing Sing "It wasn't the practical thing to do — it was the dreaming thing to do." Screen Rant: How this was first presented to you, and what made you want to take this on? Bryce Dessner: They were applying to festivals, and I think maybe they didn't get the first one they wanted. So, we were on a tight deadline and then, luckily, it expanded, which gave us more room. They have this really wonderful, equitable, and very original way of funding these films, and because of that, everybody's kind of on the same playing field. It was interesting with this because the budget for music was small, like the budget for the film. Small budget is not the word.
There’s solo cello stuff, a solo saxophone, and solo woodwinds that, to me, lift off a little bit out of this more droning, ambient texture, so you have this feeling of an oceanic kind of score. And the lines are blurred, so it's also not pointing too hard at the sentiment or the emotional. I write a lot of music for the concert hall that's not written for image or for film, and this score resembles that music the most out of anything I've done.
“Portal to Portal” or “Perfect Place” have really simple, repetitive piano, and that was partly responding to image as well. That’s just what they needed, and that’s what was sitting against picture. “Sing Sing” or “The Gate” are two that feature the solo cello. The cello, for me, either Divine Eye or Divine G, the two primary characters, so we have this sense of Shakespearean drama. They’re literally reciting Shakespeare, but it's that idea of a solo instrument a solo monologue, in a way.
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