2015 Sundance Trading Card Series: #7. Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum (Stockholm, Pennsylvania)

Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2014 discoveries”…
Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum: Plants Can Hear. Atmos. Stumbling Stones in Potsdam.

Lavallee: We read Nikole Beckwith’s Stockholm, Pennsylvania as psychological warfare —— what was the approach in audibly depicting Leia’s longing?
Kroll-Rosenbaum: Stockholm is a nuanced portrait of an incredibly complex situation. The music is full of possibility and openness. It comes in waves and breathes. It was important that the music leave room for interpretation, so that the audience could experience discovery along with Leia. Nikole paints in very clear and purposeful strokes, and the music is designed to be transparent in its motivation.
Kroll-Rosenbaum: There is a range of different kinds of music in the score. There is music that is about the outside, literally and figuratively. I built a harmonic structure out of two chords that sits somewhere between resolution and forward motion. I thought about ancient music, music unheard, music that wasn’t referential, something very basic and primitive.

There is also a more intimate music that is about solitude, reflection and time. This music also weaves into the sound and space of the house. I collaborated with Brian McOmber with fusing warm analog synth textures and anxiety provoking sound design, at times full of frustration and loss, with gestural instrumental music that pushes and bends. Always shifting between the interior and exterior, the score is a window minus sill, frame, and panes, an aperture, nothing more, but wide open.

Lavallee: Film history is chock full of high tempo “family reunifications” but few of this sort. What instrument set was used to portray Marcy’s renewal with pain (of a different threshold)?
Kroll-Rosenbaum: The instrumentation of the score is strings, harp, horn, and synths. Marcy experiences tremendous challenges as she grapples with her own expectations. For this very psychological element, Brian and I collaborated on weaving tense acoustic and electronic elements with the strings.

Lavallee: We heart film scores. We’d like to know what are some overlooked or forgotten film scores that are worth a listen/discovering?
Kroll-Rosenbaum: I’m glad you love film scores! There is so much great music that everybody should know. Let’s see… in no particular order…. I love Bernard Herrmann’s score for The Torn Curtain that never made it into the film. I think there is so much to learn from the modernism and the kind of thematic risk-taking. I’d say all of the film music by Copland, Prokofiev, and Vaughan Williams. It may seem like nepotism, but one of the reasons I married her is because she is one of the Greats – Go listen to Laura Karpman’s score for The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden for a doc score that is brilliantly wild, unique and hauntingly beautiful. Also her sci-fi scores for Spielberg’s Taken and Odyssey 5 are vivid and explosive. A reminder about Gabriel Yared and the delicious score for The English Patient. I totally enjoy the Esther Williams’ technicolor films. That kind of swirling string writing is so specific and really dazzling in a kitschy wonderful way. I think that the Prelinger Archives are full of great old films that were recorded with wonderful orchestras, often without composers listed. It’s a treasure trove for unknown scores. Woody Allen’s use of Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé in Love and Death. Sondheim’s score for Reds. Elmer Bernstein. Scores that are smart and inextricably bound to the storytelling.