Hans Zimmer and Jay Rifkin's Media Ventures studio is commendable for many things, especially the opportunity it has given so many people to get on the ladder of Hollywood film composers.  Its biggest negative though, for my money, is that by and large these composers - with little or no experience - are "initiated" by writing additional music for big-budget Hans Zimmer action scores and then almost immediately thrust into the limelight with big action movies of their own, perhaps before they're ready.  This is completely opposite to the traditional route of composers "proving themselves" with work on smaller pictures and eventually getting noticed, and I think that the main reason that most of the composers to have emerged from Media Ventures is that the composers just don't get the feeling of these smaller pictures, of having to work creatively to beat very tight budgets and produce their best for a wide range of movies, eventually getting noticed by a big-name and getting their big break.

I've written a few times that I thought various composers would do well to step back a little from the lucrative mainstream fare they invariable score and try their hand at something a little different.  The signs are that Harry Gregson-Williams is becoming the first Media Ventures composer to do just that, by choice at any rate.  He's now mixing in the massive movies he scores with a few more intimate works, and they probably don't come much more intimate (or less lucrative for a composer) than this small film about Portuguese Fado singing, from director Dan Ireland, and so it's also no surprise that Gregson-Williams is probably now the Media Ventures composer with the brightest future ahead of him.  Sure, the likes of Klaus Badelt have talent, but if he keeps scoring one big-budget action film after another then it won't be long before he's displaced by the next "bright young thing" to emerge; for a Goldsmith, Bernstein or Williams-type longevity as a film composer, you need to mix it up, show you're not afraid to take risks and go out on a limb sometimes and score something like this.

Anyway, that's quite enough preamble, what's the music like?  The album opens with a beautiful guitar theme that instantly brings to mind the light, breezy air of Luis Bacalov's Oscar-winning Il Postino music.  It's the sort of graceful, charming piece that so often accompanies Spanish and Italian movies and to hear a Hollywood composer writing that way is a real treat.  Thereafter the score is more of a mixed bag, with various other beautiful little pieces ("Smooth as a Pooltable", the piano-based "Foodplay") being combined with a few more modern, synth-based tracks like "Vicky on her Bike", which don't fit in especially well, but aren't in any way offensive.  Finally, there are some Thomas Newman-style piano riffs ("Portuguese Fishermen") which aren't any less good than if Newman had written them himself.

Mixed in with about half an hour of Gregson-Williams music are three Portuguese songs, two sung by Mixia and one by Suba (I'm not sure whether it's compulsory for Portuguese folk singers to have only one name or not, but the evidence here certainly suggests so - perhaps it's an attempt to compensate for the fact that the score's composer has three names just to himself).  They're all very pleasant, and the final one actually comes from a film score (Antonio Carlos Jobim's for Black Orpheus).

Passionada is a very attractive score from a composer who is emerging (somewhat against-the-odds) as one of the most prolific and entertaining in Hollywood.  Big things should surely be expected.

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