The Newton Brothers | Composers: Midnight Mass

The Newton Brothers are back on All Access, this time to go in-depth about their magnificent work on Mike Flanagan's brilliant Midnight Mass miniseries that you can currently stream on Netflix. While the series premiered last fall, it was Film.Music.Media's #1 television score on our Best Scores Of 2021 list so it's an absolute pleasure to have Taylor and Andy back to talk about their score. Taylor Newton Stewart and Andy Grush make up The Newton Brothers (named after their shared love of Isaac Newton), and on this All Access we revisit their long-lasting collaboration with writer/director Mike Flanagan going all the way back to Oculus in 2013. We start by testing how well the two know each other in another round of the "Composer Newlywed Game" that we recently played with Matt Margeson and Dominic Lewis in a previous All Access. We jump into Midnight Mass where Taylor and Andy take us into the incredibly unique scoring process that initially started as only recording versions of traditional hymns, but then expanded to score when Mike Flanagan realized that just having hymns was not enough to craft the emotional arcs of the characters. Hear the story of how Andy lost his voice recording the hymns, and his moments of anxiety when Mike Flanagan asked him to play a small cameo acting role in the series. The duo also talk about how horror as a genre allows certain creation and experimentation that other genres don't always provide, and why Mike Flanagan's work is more along the lines of character drama rather than pure traditional horror. It's always a pleasure to catch up with Andy and Taylor, who have shown their amazing versatility as musical storytellers across so many wonderful projects. A Film.Music.Media Interview | Produced & Presented by Kaya Savas