Music Composed by JON EKSTRAND
MovieScore Media’s latest release from the Scandinavian film music scene comes courtesy of Swedish composer Jon Ekstrand (Child 44, Life). Directed and co-written by May el-Toukhy, the family drama Queen of Hearts tells the story of a woman named Anne who jeopardises both her career and her family when she seduces her teenage stepson, Gustav, and is forced to make an irreversible decision with fatal consequences. The largely textural musical accompaniment paints a portrait of disturbing family relations and painful secrets lurking in the shadows until an emotional catharsis unties the family’s bonds.
The film has been a massive success with critics and audience. It won the Audience Award and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, and won three awards at the Göteborg Film Festival, including the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film. It premiered dometically in Denmark in March and most recently in Sweden. It has been picked up for theatrical distribution in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, South Korea and Mexico.
“With the score for Queen of Hearts, I wanted to create a feeling of being inside a bubble, slowly falling down the rabbit hole and finally reaching the bottom and with no way of getting back up,” summarizes composer Jon Ekstrand this most unsettling score. “My directions for the musical accompaniment was that there could not be any melodies in the music for the first 2/3 of the movie and that ‘nature’ and ‘wood’ should be my guiding words throughout the score and that we wanted to work with the looping voices as rhythmic element and tonal pads.”
Since 1999, Swedish composer / sound designer Jon Ekstrand has worked and contributed as a composer or a sound designer on several films, television films, TV series and short films, including music for 4 episodes of the Swedish TV series Sebastian Bergman and the 2017 sports drama Borg vs McEnroe, starring Shia LeBeouf and Stellan Skarsgård. As a composer, he has collaborated with film director Daniel Espinosa on several occasions, including Easy Money (Snabba cash, 2010), Child 44 (2015) and most recently on Life (2017), starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson and Ryan Reynolds.
MMS19011
Release date (digital): May 10, 2019
TRACKLIST
1 Rabbit Hole Prelude 3:26
2 Adagio for Gustav- Part 1 3:16
3 Mirror Cycles 3:46
4 Hide and Seek 5:34
5 Lake 1:56
6 Adagio for Gustav- Part 2 4:04
7 Call and Response 4:04
8 The Crash 3:09
9 You Think I’m a Monster 5:14
10 Adagio for Gustav- Part 3 1:56
11 Rabbit Hole Postlude 2:50
