Composer Shapes Fantastical Sounds for the Grishaverse
“My favorite thing to do is to build a world, musically,” says composer Joseph Trapanese, who got to do just that for “Shadow and Bone,” the eight-part fantasy series that drops April on Netflix.
Based on novels by Leigh Bardugo, the show combines elements of magic, horror, war, crime and romance in a setting that resembles th-century Russia. Fans know this as the Grishaverse — the name is derived from the world’s elite sect of magicians — and Trapanese’s music helps to guide viewers through the many characters and their complex relationships.
Executive producers Eric Heisserer and Shawn Levy contacted the composer before shooting began in Hungary in late , and by the time they wrapped in February , Trapanese had already come up with minutes of, as he puts it, “themes, textures and sounds,” based solely on reading the scripts and the books that inspired them.
“You’re going to hear influences from that Russian czarist period,” the composer says, and those dark hues — lots of cellos, basses and low brass — dominate the seven-plus hours of score that Trapanese wrote over months last year.
The key themes belong to Alina (Jessie Mei Li), the orphan whose unexpected power might save her country, and General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), the Darkling whose own powers are gradually revealed. Their themes are “mirror reflections of each other,” Trapanese explains.
He chose a violin for Alina, “an intimate, raspy sound that, as she discovers and hones this tremendous power, is transformed into this more mature, developed, refined kind of playing.” For Kirigan, it’s the double bass, a throaty sound that highlights “the loneliness of this dark hero who’s seen a lot of tragedy.”
Accompanying the Crows (Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, Kit Young), the scheming underworld figures in the series, Trapanese hints at Romani music, “a very Slavic sound, because the Crows are so scrappy and inventive and improvisatory,” he says. A touch of zither, and a more folk-like sound from the strings, seemed appropriate.
The composer chose to record in Budapest, not far from where the series was filmed. With musicians, he was able to create the “cinematic” sound the producers sought, although he says he did considerable audio manipulation for dramatic effect. Those techniques came in handy in depicting the magic of the Grisha, who can control and direct fire, wind and water.
Trapanese’s eclectic résumé includes collaborations with Daft Punk on “Tron: Legacy” and M on “Oblivion,” musically supporting the hip-hop of “Straight Outta Compton” and the songs of “The Greatest Showman,” scoring “Quantico” for ABC and the live-action “Lady and the Tramp” for Disney Plus. His next project is Joseph Kosinski’s sci-fi film “Escape From Spiderhead,” also for Netflix and due later this year.
But, he says, he’s never faced a challenge quite like scoring the Grishaverse. “Whenever you see elements being manipulated,” he says, “oftentimes I’ll be doing something similar with the music.”