EVIL
Music composed and conducted by
FRANCIS SHAW

iTunes purchase link: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=158342341&s=143444

Listen to these clips from the score (more available at our web site and at iTunes):
- Journey to New School: http://www.moviescoremedia.com/audio/evil1.mp3
- Erik and Marya: http://www.moviescoremedia.com/audio/evil3.mp3
- Swimming Race: http://www.moviescoremedia.com/audio/evil4.mp3
- Erik Controls His Anger: http://www.moviescoremedia.com/audio/evil6.mp3
- Pierre Leaves School: http://www.moviescoremedia.com/audio/evil10.mp3

Nominated to a 'Best Foreign Language Film' Oscar at the 2004 Academy Awards, Swedish drama Evil featured an elegant and beautifully constructed orchestral score by British veteran composer Francis Shaw. Recently, the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters acknowledge Shaw's Evil score - it received the 2006 Ivor Novello Award for 'Best Original Film Score' in competition with The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Pride and Prejudice.

Evil is Swedish film music company MovieScore Media's eighth film score release since the launch of the label in January 2006. It's its first release of music from a Swedish film. “When I first watched Evil back in 2003, I immediately noticed the strikingly rich score by Francis Shaw, a composer who I had been following since the mid 90s when he wrote an orchestral score for a Swedish action film called Vendetta. Shaw has a unique style, and it was clear that Evil was a perfect film for him to showcase his strong melodic writing and beautiful orchestrations”, says MovieScore Media's executive producer, Mikael Carlsson.  

Performed by the Danish Radio Concert Orchestra, the score for Evil features restrained romantic writing and a nostalgic main theme, as well as darker, more dramatic material. 

Evil tells the story about Erik (Andreas Wilson) who is expelled from school for fighting. He ends up at a private boarding school where the senior students control the young ones. Erik finds a friend in Pierre (Henrik Lundström), his room mate. The story revolves around Erik who just wishes to be left alone and graduate. He doesn't listen to what the seniors have to say and they don't like it. Directed by Mikael Håfström (Derailed) and based on Swedish author Jan Guillou's bestselling novel, Evil was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award at the 2004 Oscars.

Francis Shaw is a versatile composer familiar with many different styles and genres: concert music for orchestra, ensemble and choirs, music for children, opera, film and television scores. Ranging from Ancient Greek, Roman and Celtic music realisations using period instruments to orchestral film scores (Jamaica Inn, Shackleton, Vendetta and Evil) and computer generated TV music (Mummies of the Taklamakhan Desert and Mysteries of Karnak) his media music is wide ranging in style. He studied composition with Lennox Berkeley in London and Goffredo Petrassi in Rome. Contact with Yehudi Menuhin resulted in the commission of 'Divertimento for Strings', which he conducted at the Windsor Festival in 1972. This was the start of his professional life as a composer.

His work for feature films started with orchestrating much of Richard Robbins' music for the highly acclaimed A Room with a View, followed by original scores for Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls and Frederick Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol (co-composer with Lalo Schiffrin), starring Michael Caine, And a Nightingale Sang. In 1994 he composed at short notice the score for the Swedish/Italian film Vendetta. The success of this led to his scores for Swedish TV's drama series House of Shadows - and the score for Evil.

Evil will be released in DVD in the USA on June 27, co-inciding with the online release of the Evil: Original Motion Picture Score album on iTunes.

Evil: Original Motion Picture Score will be available exclusively from iTunes on June 27, 2006, with wider digital distribution to follow.