Lakeshore Records will release the Trumbo – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack digitally and on CD November 6, 2015. The album features the film's original score by Theodore Shapiro and classic tracks from Big Jay McNeely and Billie Holiday.
"I had a strong sense of what I wanted the score to sound like but I didn't know of any other scores that were similar," said Shapiro, who initially received select scenes from the film before it had been 'temped' with anyone else's music.
"I wanted the score to refer to the musical language of the period while having a modern sensibility," Shapiro described. "I wanted to avoid writing a period score that would make the film feel purely historical, and therefore cut off from feeling contemporary and immediate. I didn't want it to be overly polite. So without having a cut of the movie to work with, I sat down and wrote a suite of music based on what I hoped would work. Jay loved it, and the suite formed the foundation of the Trumbo score."
"Throughout the score I used dense clusters of harmony, useful both for their tonal complexity and subtle evocation of jazz harmonies," Shapiro explained. "The main theme of Trumbo is a simple and haunting theme played on the piano, with dark block chords in the bass and a droning texture of low saxes and electronically manipulated cello. It speaks both to Trumbo's character and also to the toll exacted by the blacklist— the lives ruined, and the principles of the country compromised."
Trumbo will be released by Bleecker Street on November 6.