NEW YORK, NY (Commotion Records) - "...featuring a beautifully understated score by Joseph Vitarelli, My Architect has the lush look and sound of a major studio production." - John Hartl, The Seattle Times "one of the best films of this, or any year." - Leonard Maltin, Hot Ticket
Commotion Records/KOCH Records invites fans of one of the most critically-lauded documentary films of 2003, Nathaniel Kahn's Academy Award nominated My Architect, to explore yet another of the film's treasures: the soundtrack. The album includes composer Joseph Vitarelli's exquisitely produced score and will be released on July 13.
The music of My Architect, like the film itself, reflects the stages of a son's quest to understand the famous father he barely knew - renowned architect Louis I. Kahn. "There is an inherent romanticism in Lou's work and in Nathaniel's search to find his father that inspired much of the score," Vitarelli explains.
Classical music guides much of the narrative thread, and for this, Vitarelli recruited a medium-sized orchestra of some 45 musicians, lending a unique warmth and richness to the overall production. This lush quality also serves to enhance the music's intended mood - which can be solemn and mournful, as in the opening "Adagio" theme, or light and mischievous, as in the three movements of the "Travel Waltz" and its companion "End Credits Suite," which closes the film.
As Nathaniel Kahn observes, "When you listen to any of Joseph's music, you feel this tremendous soul and heart. That's a remarkably uncommon thing. We knew we needed both of those qualities, as well as the humorous voice that you hear in pieces like 'Chez Louis.'
When I heard Joseph's work, I knew he was a perfect fit for our movie."
The soundtrack also features taped snippets of Louis Kahn himself, as in the visionary moment captured in a track called "The Brick" in which Kahn expresses his love for that particular material. Elsewhere, two other vocal performances suggest the harmonious meeting of cultures in the film: the devotional "Call to Prayer" (a striking solo by a Muslim muezzin recorded on location at the mosque in Kahn's monumental National Assembly Building of Bangladesh) and the celebratory Hebrew hymn "Hayom T'amtzeinu" rendered with fervor by a cantor originally from Kahn's home city of Philadelphia.
In sound and in sentiment, the music of My Architect maps the odyssey of Nathaniel Kahn's film with varying degrees of humor, reverence, sanctity and humility. But perhaps most importantly, like the film itself, it stands as a tribute to the legacy - and mystery - of an elusive artist, and as a fulfillment of one man's wish to reconstruct his father's life.
