Director Kristen Sheridan does a superb job telling the story about the impact of music on an orphaned boy, and the family he never knew. The boy, 11-year old Evan Taylor, who eventually is given the name August Rush, exhibits a childlike faith in his belief that he can “follow the music” in his endeavor to find his parents. Sheridan’s work with composer Mark Mancina to score this movie with various genres including Classical, Irish ballads, Blues, Jazz, some Gospel, and modern contemporary pieces performed by the New York Philharmonic. Sheridan and Mancina collaborate perfectly to juxtapose entirely different types of music at the same time, throughout the film without any obvious sampling occurring. But their magic in combining two different scores in the same key over two alternating scenes is not just confined to the music. They adapt and transform changes with various musical scores with soundscapes from the streets of New York City. The storyline itself is so compelling, it is probably easy to not hear the assiduousness of just how well done the musical score is—in a movie about music. It transcends, or redefines a typical soundtrack.
The theme is established early on (during the opening credits) when Evan, whether listening to nature’s sounds, or wind chimes, says he can hear music in everything, all around him. “…. I believe in music, the way some people believe in fairy tales”. Evan narrates again, “I like to imagine what I hear, came from my mother and father. I believe that a long time ago, they heard the music…. and followed it.”
He didn’t know how right he was, because both of his parents were musicians. His father Louis an Irish immigrant was in a local rock band that played venues like Irving Plaza. His mother was Lyla Novacek, and she was a classically training cellist, that played for the New York Philharmonic. The early part of the movie goes back and forth from present (opening scene with Evan), to past via flashbacks of how his parents met, each with it’s own accompanying score, and often each of these are done in an overlapping juxtaposition of songs that are in the same key. The scenes that showed Louis would have either the Irish ballads or rock music playing. And when the scenes changed to Lyla, you would hear her melodic performances in the New York Philharmonic. Toward the very end of String Section Credits (at 08:34) and at other intervals throughout the story, the music would not fade, but stop at the same exact time, which was to indicate the relevance of the theme—that each of the players (Evan, Lyla, and Louis) could “hear” each other’s music, though geographically separated by thousands of miles. In these spots, the director seemed to make perfect use of “dead air”, or no music, to illustrate the point that they could hear each other’s music.
The only scene in the beginning that had both Louis and Lyla contained entirely different styles of music, composed mainly by Mark Mancina—Chris Tapper, who performs the song, “This Time”, such as the night they met and Evan was conceived. Because this scene had them together, the musical score did not indulge in the aforementioned juxtaposing of two different pieces at the same time, overlapping each other. But also as mentioned earlier, the music often intermingled fused, or found an amalgamation with sounds such as car horns, sirens, metallic subway wheels screeching, various rhythmic meter from footsteps, etc. It was truly well done throughout.
But perhaps the most intriguing and outside-the-box musical scores came (played by Kaki King) was when Evan (and eventually, August) began to play an old Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar. He did not attempt even once to play the instrument in astandard conventional way. Rather, he used it almost as a percussive instrument; banging (perhaps more accurate to say “tapping”) on the strings on the fret board in a very dissonant but rhythmic way, somehow striking all the right notes to stay within a key, making frequent use of harmonics at the twelfth and seventh frets, but upside-down (and not unlike how Eddie Van Halen would move up and down the neck with his right hand as well as left while doing this).
The remainder of the movie largely follows this pattern: Overlapping Louis’ music (while he was in San Francisco) with Lyla’s (while she was living in Chicago). The exception to this musical nomenclature was a scene in chapter 21, Composer at Work, where Evan stumbles his way to a Baptist Church and happens upon a Gospel choir. He was clearly moved by them, as they performed “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr. It was here that another side of Evan’s character was revealed: A musical prodigy. He ends up being brought by the reverend to The Juilliard School, where he begins to compose—and eventually conduct—“August’s Rhapsody”. From this point on, the way the music is being introduced… and rescinded in various scenes, is quite compelling. It’s as if the producers and / or director didn’t just hire a one-dimensional music editor or supervisor. They really had their work cut out for them, but you can hear…. It seems more a labor of love, than work for the music editing / supervision / directing. The end of the movie showcases both the musical, and storyline crescendo, with the long-awaited “August’s Rhapsody” played in it’s entirety, which was truly a beautiful piece of music. Note: I don’t mean to break academic convention by deviating from third-person here, but I’d like to elaborate further about the music at this part, but I don’t want to give away the ending in case you haven’t seen it yet.
