MARCELO ZARVOS

MARCELO ZARVOS

A veteran composer with many high-profile film and television scores to his credit, Brazilian pianist Marcelo Zarvos was born in São Paulo. Initially studying classical music, Zarvos attended Berklee College of Music and CalArts, and later became active in the jazz world, releasing a highly praised collaboration with saxophonist, Peter Epstein called Dualism. His creative endeavors also expanded to include rock, electronic, and world music, a versatility that he would eventually parlay into a highly successful career composing film music. Zarvos’ credits include The Good Shepherd, The Words, Brooklyn’s Finest, The Face of Love, Reaching for the Moon, Sin Nombre, Hollywoodland, Adult Beginners, The Humbling, Little Accidents, American Ultra, and Enough Said. Twice nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards, Zarvos’ television works include Too Big to Fail, The Big C, Extant, Phil Spector, and two Showtime series, The Affair and Ray Donovan.

My early musical memories have to do with nature. That has also has to do with what I selected in my memory, and a show like The Affair, which is all about that and how people are...how their recollections of something are always going to be different, even if they themselves remember now and remember a few years from now, but certainly between characters. And I find that what really works on The Affair is trying to build a sense of introspection in the music. We've become pretty good in the show at really getting to that place very fast, and I think the music, the way that it's shot, and the way that it's written, of course, all work in conjunction. There’s something about a passage of time in your mind. Then it's not about the clocks. It's more about the suspended, almost like the absence of clocks, and the idea of suspended time, which memory is more like that since in our memory all time happens at once. Everything is happening at once...I think that the key remains in having love for those characters as you're writing them and not judging them because it's not my place to judge. It's my place to illuminate what's in there without any kind of moral or personal judgment. So, if it's a monster, you have to embrace the monster and kind of love the monster, in a way.

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ON RAY DONOVAN
Wolf in the Gate is the piece that happens when Mickey comes by Ray's house without Ray being there at the end of the episode. And I always found that at the end of the Ray Donovan for me really, to head it down to the basics, is this very elaborate cat and mouse game, fight to the death between Ray and Mickey. Most people I think would say that after Ray, everybody's favourite character is Mickey because, I don't know, he's just funny. Jon Voight, it's one of those roles that are so perfect. It really is, and it's also one of the few characters that's allowed to have humor in the show. And I think that makes a big difference, but it's just really a great chemistry between those two characters. And I feel like the Wolf in the Gate has this kind of, also, a little bit of a noir feeling that Ray Donovan has throughout and certainly that too has that kind of vibe.

This is an excerpt of a 7,000 word interview which will be published and podcasted across a network of participating university and arts literary magazines.

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