Music - The English : Music from the original series on prime video available digitally

By Mulder, 19 may 2023

It wouldn’t feel out of place in the classics of Hollywood past, yet Jusid’s work here feels inextricably linked to this different conception of what was lost in the West rather than won
Indiewire--#1 Best TV Score 2022

Music From The Original Series on Prime Video, the score to the internationally acclaimed series directed by Hugo Blick by Argentinian composer Federico Jusid (Watership Down) is receiving accolades since the Prime Video series debuted in November.  The vivid orchestratal score is reminiscent of classic Ennio Morricone and John Barry yet distinctively modern as it inhabits both the beauty and the brutality of the reimagined western. The soundtrack was nominated for the 2023 BAFTA award for “Best Score: Fiction,” a IFMCA nomination for “Best Series Original Score,” and Indiewire declared it the #1 “Best TV Score” of 2022. The album is available on Silva Screen Records. Upcoming for Jusid is legendary Spanish director Víctor Erice’s (The Spirit of the Beehive) long-awaited Close Your Eyes, premiering at Cannes Film Festival on May 22nd, 2023. Jusid scored another Spanish-language film, The Secret in Their Eyes, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Jusid explains the dichotomy of his score for The English: “On the one hand, the score is formally built in the fashion of the western soundtracks of the 1950s. Its structure is based on leitmotifs, very simple and symmetric in its original form but, in constant developments mirroring the protagonists’ journeys. Also, like in the classics often uses big orchestral sounds, exposing epic tunes, romantic themes. In this sense it has a fervent and (emotionally immodest) approach, trying to contribute to the story with consistent emotional articulation. 

On the other hand, it also has contemporary elements in its instrumentation, sound design, processed percussion and ethnic instruments, that blend in with the orchestral material.”

The English is an epic chase Western, from award-winning writer and director Hugo Blick. The series takes the core themes of identity and revenge to tell a uniquely compelling parable on race, power, and love. An aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Cornelia Locke (Emily Blunt), and a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout, Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), come together in 1890 middle America to cross a violent landscape built on dreams and blood. Both of them have a clear sense of their destiny, but neither is aware that it is rooted in a shared past. They must face increasingly terrifying obstacles that will test them to their limits, physically and psychologically. But as each obstacle is overcome, it draws them closer to their ultimate destination—the new town of Hoxem, Wyoming. It is here, after an investigation by the local sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rea) and young widow Martha Myers (Valerie Pachner) into a series of bizarre and macabre unsolved murders, that the full extent of their intertwined history will be truly understood, and they will come face-to-face with the future they must live. The series’ ensemble cast includes Rafe Spall, Tom Hughes, Toby Jones, and Ciarán Hinds.

Track List
01 - Opening Credits
02 - Tâtačiksta – I Cherish You” (Feat. Emily Blunt)
03 - A Chase Is On
04 - Cornelia and Eli
05 - Cheyenne Tree Burial
06 - Coming For Eli Whipp
07 - Crumbling Is Not An Instant’s Act
08 - That’s My Cattle!
09 - And Yet Here We Are
10 - Nothing Worth Dying For
11 - Powder River
12 - “Soon” Has Come (Feat. Chaske Spencer)

Award winning and Emmy and BAFTA nominee composer who combines his activity for the concert hall, with the composition for film and tv Federico Jusid has Spanish citizenship and resides between Los Angeles and Madrid. Born in Buenos Aires, as the son of the renowned Argentine film director Juan José Jusid and actress Luisina Brando, Federico grew up among stages and film sets. Soon his passion for music and cinema led him to develop his career as a film music composer. Nowadays he has scored more than sixty feature films and thirty television series.In the past year Federico developed the score for Hugo Blick’s The English (Amazon/BBC) an internationally acclaimed western drama starring Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer, for which he has been nominated to the IFMCA Award for Best Series’ Original Score and more recently for the 2023 BAFTA Award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, under the category of Best Score: Fiction. In addition, Indiewire has selected Federico’s score for The English as the best score of the year 2022.

Jusid scores Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes premiering at Cannes Film Festival May 22nd 2023

Among his original compositions for film, the score for the Award-winning film The Secret In Their Eyes stands out. Federico was nominated for this score for the Goya Award by the Spanish Film Academy and achieved several international recognitions. Other notable feature film scores are Federico’s compositions for Neruda; Loving Pablo; Misconduct; Kidnap and 7 years for which he was the executive producer and has recently premiered the theatrical version in Spain, France, Greece, Argentina and Mexico. He recently composed the score for the films Cross the Line, El verano que vivimos, Life Itself, A Twelve Year Night and the animated miniseries Watership Down, an ambitious BBC project for Netflix on the classic British tale by Richard Adams and for which score Federico has been nominated to an Emmy Award. Upcoming for Jusid is legendary Spanish director Víctor Erice’s (The Spirit of the Beehive) return to feature film direction, Close Your Eyes, which will premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. 

His most recognized concert hall compositions include Tango Rhapsody, a piece for two pianos and symphony orchestra commissioned by the Tiempo-Lechner duo for its premiere at the Martha Argerich Project, which has been programmed worldwide, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the Hollywood Bowl season ; Kinetic Overture, premiered by the RTVE Orchestra at the Monumental Theatre of Madrid; The Silence of Their Names, commissioned by Victims of Terrorism Foundation and premiered at the National Music Auditorium of Madrid in March 2021; Bidaia, an accordion concerto dedicated to Iñaki Alberdi, premiered at The Colon Theatre by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires in 2022;  Extimité, commissioned by the Spanish National Center of Music, premiered in 2018 at the Reina Sofía Art Center in Madrid; Enigmas, commissioned by the University of Alcalá de Henares in its V Centenary; Finding Sarasate, premiered at the Pablo Sarasate Centenary Tribute Concert; Danza de Aldeanos, commissioned by the National Center for Music Promotion (CNDM) to commemorate the bicentenary of Prado Museum; and La Librería del Ingenioso Hidalgo, commissioned for the celebrations of the IV Centenary of Don Quijote. 

Throughout his career Federico has been distinguished with more than twenty international awards and nominations for both his concert works and his film scores, such as the First Prize of the “Beethoven Piano Competition”, First Prize at the “A. Williams Piano Competition”, and the First Prize of the “Friends of Israel Philharmonic Orchestra”. Federico, is also three-time winner of the International Film Music Critics Awards (for Isabel and Carlos Emperor King); he’s got three Platinum Film Award nominations (for Neruda, Magallanes and A Twelve Year Night) and has been distinguished as “Composer of the Year 2016” by the Spanish Music Critics Association. His score for the film El verano que vivimos has been nominated to a Goya Award 2021 and he was also nominated by IFMCA as Composer of the Year 2020. The Secret in Their Eyes, Academy Award Winner for the best foreign film, achieved several international awards including the Havana Film Festival and the Argentinean Academy Awards, and the nomination from the Goya Awards from the Spanish Film Academy. He has been also nominated to an Emmy Award for his score for Watership Down and the BAFTA Award for the original music for The English.

As a pianist and conductor, Jusid has performed as a soloist in some of the most recognized halls in North America, Asia and Europe, including the Carnegie Weill Hall in New York; the Colon Theater in Buenos Aires; the Israel Philarmonic Orchestra House of Tel Aviv and the National Auditorium of Madrid. Since 2005 and for over ten years Federico has been resident composer and pianist of the Sonor Ensemble. During these years he has toured throughout Spain, Europe and Asia performing repertoire music as well as his own compositions. In addition, Jusid has performed with worldwide renowned leading orchestras such as the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra, the Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, the Tenerife Symphonic Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires, the Paris Sinfonietta, the Galician Symphony Orchestra, the Spanish National Radio Orchestra, to name a few.

(Source : press release)