Motherless Brooklyn (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

There’s a certain risk entailed in working with people you love and admire because, let’s face it, collaboration can get messy for all kinds of reasons. The safer choice is to stay a fan or a friend, protect the mystery of your favorite artists and keep marveling at the magic they make from a seat in the audience. But if you’re lucky enough to get to direct your own film, the allure of ringing up people whose work thrills you, well….it’s irresistible. And if you’re really lucky…it all goes brilliantly and you make some magic together.

This is the bet I made when it came to dreaming up the music for “Motherless Brooklyn” and what you’ll hear on this record is a mashup of the geniuses I rang up: Thom Yorke, Wynton Marsalis and Daniel Pemberton.
I met Thom over 20 years ago, after seeing Radiohead melt everybody’s minds with an early live performance of “OK Computer” at Irving Plaza in New York. No writer of songs from my generation has ever equaled Thom’s capacity for expressing the longing in the heart and the terror in the head at the same time; or for creating gorgeous melody within fracture and dissonance. These same co-existing paradoxes are what drew me to Lionel Essrog as a character and I knew I wanted Thom to give that character his own sad ballad. Friends or not, my brain warned me, “Yeah, you and every other director on earth, get in line.” But I summoned up the courage to send him the script and tried to explain it all without overdoing it, prepared for him to politely demur.

Not a week later I woke up from an anxious dream before dawn and, in the dark, noticed I had one of his no-caps emails waiting.

‘e
here’s an idea
very rough, but nicely feeling like its from the past…
daily battles
thm’

Less than three minutes later I’m sitting in the dark with tears in my eyes and my mind racing on how to sculpt the film around the song.
We used his first take. He added vocal layers and a mellotron and we got our mutual friend Flea to come in and put bass and a beautiful lonely trumpet line on it…but the core of it is the stripped down track I heard that morning, when I’m not sure I’ve ever been made happier by an email.
Almost as good as that was watching Thom’s face the first time he heard Wynton Marsalis’s jazz arrangement of the song.

Which takes me to Wynton: a long essay would be needed to encompass the breadth of this man’s musical prowess, let alone what he has done to solidify jazz as America’s classical music. But his itch to expand and explore through new forms and collaborations has the sincerity and urgency of a true seeker. He started off saying he and the great Phil Schaap would help me curate and choose a set list for the quintet in the club. Then he said “I’ll find you some badass motherfuckers to play it.” Then he said “Well if an actor plays the trumpeter I might as well play the trumpet for him.” Then when I said I had a notion to have Thom’s song reprise within the story, as though being played by Miles Davis in 1957, he said “It’s a pretty tune, I can knock out something for you.” Then when I asked him if he could do a few of the key horn solos from Daniel Pemberton’s score, he read the sheets like an adept, declared “this is some good shit…me and the guys can do most of this in a day easy, you know.” And they did.

So you have here Wynton and his hand-picked quintet of all-stars delivering a crushing rendering of Thom’s ballad, four hot spins through classic jazz pieces by Brown & Roach, Mingus and Coltrane and two new instant standards by a guy named Daniel Pemberton. So, a word on him…

If there’s a more exuberantly protean talent than Daniel Pemberton working in film music today, I haven’t heard their stuff. When I first talked to him on the phone he was wrapping the thighs of a percussionist in newspaper and having the poor guy use his legs as tom toms to get a unique sound. The first time I met him, he came into a bar at 1am in a whirlwind of scattering sheet music, primary color clothing and mad enthusiasm. When I risked referencing the famous score of “Chariots of Fire”, as an example of a period film with a bold modern sound, knowing the odds of an eye-roll were 50-50, he shouted “The first 25,000 quid I ever made I used it to buy Vangelis’s personal CS-80…I OWN THAT KEYBOARD!” And we were off. With a quarter of the time he should have had for a score this big, he wrote like a possessed savant and then turned into an absolute boss and produced, in one week of recording, not only what I’ll declare one of the best film scores of the last decade but within it two pieces that all the players who recorded them called “straight up classics.”

My two needle drops from personal favorites by Bird & Diz and Babs Gonzalez round it out.
When you work on a thing long enough, you can get sick of it no matter how good it might be. I’m listening to it on a plane with clouds drifting by below and I haven’t taken it off repeat yet.
Hope it hooks you too.

EDWARD NORTON

BACK COVER:
Album produced by EDWARD NORTON
Executive Album Producers: WYNTON MARSALIS, BILL MIGLIORE, GIGI PRITZKER, RACHEL SHANE AND MICHAEL BEDERMAN
Executive in Charge of WaterTower Music: JASON LINN
Music Supervisor: LINDA COHEN

LEGAL LINE:
(P) 2019 This compilation WaterTower Music as licensee for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Motion Picture Artwork © 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Motion Picture Photography © 2019 Motherless Ventures, LLC.
All rights reserved.

INSIDE CREDITS:

Album produced by EDWARD NORTON
Executive Album Producers: WYNTON MARSALIS, BILL MIGLIORE, GIGI PRITZKER, RACHEL SHANE AND MICHAEL BEDERMAN
Set List Consigliere: PHIL SCHAAP
Executive in Charge of WaterTower Music: JASON LINN
Music Supervisor: LINDA COHEN

Music Recording and Mixing Engineer: TODD WHITELOCK
Copyist: JONATHAN KELLY
Vice President Administration, Office of Wynton Marsalis: EDITH BOLTON
Contractor: PETER ROTTER

Music recorded at: POWER STATION, NYC / SEAR SOUND, NYC / AIR LYNDHURST, ABBEY ROAD & ANGEL STUDIOS, LONDON

Album Mastered by MARK WILDER at Battery Studios

Album Business Affairs: ARI TAITZ and JOHN F.X. WALSH
Art Direction: SANDEEP SRIRAM

Thanks to:
Peter Axelrad, Paul Broucek, Rocco Carrozza, Vincenzo De La Rosa, Kerrylyn Genetive, Ray Gonzalez, Joe Kara, Kevin Kertes, Katie Lambert, Genevieve Morris, Robert Zick  

FEATURED MUSICIANS:
Wynton Marsalis (Trumpet)
Isaiah J. Thompson (Piano)
Russell Hall (Bass)
Philip Norris (Bass)
Joe Farnsworth (Drums)
Willie Jones III (Drums)
Jerry Weldon (Tenor Saxophone)
Ted Nash (Alto, Tenor, Soprano Saxophone)

SONG LABEL COPY:

“Woman In Blue”
Written by Daniel Pemberton
Published by Warner-Olive Music (ASCAP)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Willie Jones III, Philip Norris, Isaiah J. Thompson, Ted Nash & Daniel Pemberton
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.


“Daily Battles”
Written by Thomas Edward Yorke
Published by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd (PRS)
Performed by Thom Yorke & Flea
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

“Relaxing With Lee”
Written by Charlie Parker
Published by Atlantic Music Corp. (BMI)
Performed by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Curly Russell, Buddy Rich
Courtesy of The Verve Music Group under license from Universal Music Enterprises
(P) N/A (pre 1972)
ISRC: USPR35000122


“’Round About Midnight”
Written by Thelonious Monk, Cootie Williams and Bernard Hanighen
Published by Ultra Empire Music obo Thelonious Music Corp. (BMI); WB Music Corp. (ASCAP)
Performed by Babs Gonzales
Courtesy of Blue Note Records under license from Universal Music Enterprises
(P) N/A (pre 1972)
ISRC: USBN29200063



“Blues Walk”
Written by Clifford Brown
Published by Second Floor Music (BMI)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson & Jerry Weldon
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.


“Daily Battles”
Written by Thomas Edward Yorke
Jazz Arrangement by Wynton Learson Marsalis
Published by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd (PRS) All rights administered by WB Music Corp.; Skayne’s Music (ASCAP) Rights outside the USA administered by Kobalt Music (ASCAP)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson & Jerry Weldon
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.


“Jump Monk”
Written by Charles Mingus
Published by Ave Adams, Flying Red Rhino. All Rights for Adams Avenue and Flying Red Rhino controlled and administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission; Jazz Workshop, Inc.; The Mingus Music Werkshop (BMI), Administered by Songs of Kobalt Music Publishing (BMI)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson & Jerry Weldon
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

“Delilah”
Written by Victor Young
Published by Sony/ATV Harmony (ASCAP)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson & Jerry Weldon
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.


“On A Misty Night”
Written by Tadd Dameron
Published by Carbaby Music Inc. (ASCAP)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Joe Farnsworth, Russell Hall, Isaiah J. Thompson & Jerry Weldon
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.


“Motherless Brooklyn Theme”
Written by Daniel Pemberton
Published by Warner-Olive Music (ASCAP)
Performed by Wynton Marsalis, Willie Jones III, Philip Norris, Isaiah J. Thompson, Ted Nash & Daniel Pemberton
(P) 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

• Russell Hall – bass
• Isaiah J. Thompson – piano
• Joe Farnsworth – drums
• Jerry Weldon – tenor sax
• Ted Nash – alto sax, soprano sax, clarinet, flute, piccolo
• Philip Norris – bass
• Willie Jones III – drums