Featuring Original Music By Stephen Rennicks
Lakeshore Records will release the VIVA – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on April 29th and on CD shortly thereafter. The album features the film’s original score by Stephen Rennicks (ROOM, FRANK).
“In writing the music for Viva the challenge was to get themes and sounds which were somehow ‘of’ the characters and of the beautiful but bedraggled backdrop of the city of Havana,” said Rennicks. “The director, Paddy Breathnach, and I felt from early on that the instrumentation should have an acoustic feel and the themes be simple but strong and, in reference to the main character ‘Jesus’ in particular, have some sense of a veiled nobility.”
Directed by Paddy Breathnach, written by Mark O’Halloran and produced by Rob Walpole and Rebecca O’Flanagan for Treasure Entertainment, Viva tells the story of Jesus; a young man who does make up for a troupe of drag performers in Havana, but dreams of being a performer. When he finally gets his chance to be on stage, a stranger emerges from the crowd and punches him in the face. The stranger is his father Angel, a former boxer, who has been absent from his life for 15 years. As father and son clash over their opposing expectations of each other, VIVA becomes a love story as the men struggle to understand one another and become a family again.
“What you get is music with instrumentation that is at home in the setting of the story and melodically steers a more neutral course, underpinning the drama rather than creating it, that’s the idea at least,” Rennicks described. “The images, the acting, the dramatic arc of the film are all so beautifully treated that luckily all I needed to do was be as sympathetic as possible to what was already there.”
For over sixteen years, award-winning Irish composer, Stephen Rennicks, has been crafting inimitable soundtracks for the best of independent cinema and television in Ireland, the UK, Europe and America. Over the years he has collaborated with academy award nominated filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson on all five of his motion pictures, which include ADAM & PAUL, GARAGE, WHAT RICHARD DID, FRANK and Academy Award® nominated ROOM.
Outside of his partnership with Abrahamson, Rennicks has written acclaimed scores for Richie O’Donnell’s celebrated 2010 documentary, The Pipe, Paddy Breathnach’s 2004 comedy Man About Dog, Stephen Bradley’s 2005 horror comedy Boy Eats Girl, and John Butler’s 2013 hit, The Bachelor Weekend (The Stag). His recent television work includes Channel 4’s 2015 hit drama, Not Safe for Work.
Magnolia Pictures present VIVA in theaters on April 29, 2016. Lakeshore Records will release the VIVA – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally on April 29th and on CD shortly thereafter.
TRACKLIST
1. Opening
2. Bitches
3. Mirror
4. Club
5. Beat
6. Ask Mama
7. Eat Together
8. After Javier
9. Jesus
10. No Food
11. Rent for Food
12, Dying
13. Ice Cream
14. Viva
15. Starve
16. Shutters
17. Hurr
18. End Game
19. The Dying
20. Ending
