TKARONTO was a first for me. It was the first time I scored a feature film and it was the first time I edited a feature film. The choice to score the film with string quartet and piano was an easy one. The characters in the film are dealing with very personal "inner" experiences and the string quartet as a medium, to me, exemplifies this intimacy - if the symphony is the symbol of society then the string quartet is the symbol of the individual.

Unique to this score, and in the spirt of "firsts", I did something I have never done before, which was temp the film (after the edit was complete) with some excerpts of the score. (Temp means using existing music to "temp" or temporarily score the film. However, this "temp" process can be problematic as the association between the "temp" music and the film too often overshadows any new musical ideas from taking hold. Thus the association has been set and every new musical idea seems to be competing with that initial "temp" music.)

Shane had played some of the film up against some of my string quartets, which I recorded a year or so earlier. After playing them up against the film and liking what the result was, Shane encouraged me to visit the idea of composing the score for string quartet . After doing the same - listening to portions of my string quartets played with the film - I found myself enthralled with the idea of scoring this film for string quartet. In additional Shane and I felt that this would be a great way to lift the level of the film, giving it an even more cinematic feel.

The score was composed over the course of a month in a relaxed fashion. I was able to take days away from the score and come back to it. Generally speaking when I was composing I did at least 2 minutes a day, but in some case much more - as was the case with "Solace" which is over 7 minutes. I created motives - like the Eagle Feather theme - and the Nature theme but the latter is very discrete and plays only in the "Solace" cue. In contrast, the "Eagle Feather" theme appears throughout the whole film - with its 2 successive ascending 6th's. However what drove the score isn't the thematic material.

When I set out to score Tkaronto I was interested in one central idea, which was to express emotion to the extent that a person who had little or no spiritual reverence to, for example, the Eagle Feather, could feel the importance of it. This central idea motivated the entire score. We need to feel Jolene as she poured her heart out to Max saying - I don't know how to pray. And, when Max tells Jolene what in means - to give thanks - I wanted to imbue the deepest sense of solace in hopes that we could connect with this humble unifying idea - which I equate with solace. My motivation to convey emotion led me in different directions, as I borrowed from early unreleased works as well as melodies that had never found a home; which was the case with the Eagle Feather theme, something I have been humming for a few years. For instance,

The Last Winter was written for my mother who died in January 1999. The idea of including it in this film came about because Shane and I liked the piece and secondly, the piece expressed something that could be understood as a requiem. That scene (The scene where Jolene and Ray dance and almost take it a step further to an affair) is, in a sense, the death of these characters as they knew themselves. In other words, this was a defining moment in their lives, which is both a birth of something new and the death of something now passed. In the film, Ray would "wake-up", the next day, and walk away from the path he thought he needed to take to be successful and walk the one path that was true. Jolene would pray and cherish the ceremony without fear, she would take the next step in her spiritual journey. So the piece, The Last Winter, which was rewritten for the film, borrowed from the idea of passing. In fact, the shorter cues, entitled Two Worlds and there are a few of them, borrows from the delayed or staggered string technique, which I hoped would gently establish a familiarity with the listener to this sound, thus making this scene seem somewhat familiar in an appealing way.

Of course I could go on, but this gives you a sense of my process: my intentions for this score as well as some of the techniques. However, my hope is simply that you will not only find something in the music that reminds you of the film but additionally something that resonates with your inner world and that this music will ultimately become a part of your soundtrack.

Jordan O'Connor
Summer 2008