DIANE WARREN, ALEXANDRE DESPLAT, BRYCE DESSNER & MORE CELEBRATE THEIR OSCAR MUSIC NOMINATIONS: ‘I’M NOT GONNA LIE & SAY I WOULDN’T LIKE TO WIN’
The nominees -- also including Nicholas Pike and Max Richter -- share their reactions to being nominated with Billboard.
"Nicholas Pike, “Sweet Dreams of Joy,” Viva Verdi! (original song)
Writing an aria for the closing of Viva Verdi!, an independent documentary that shines a light on the elderly opera singers and musicians who live in Milan’s Casa Verdi retirement home (built by the composer in 1896) and mentor young music students, opened up a whole new path for Pike. “I can’t say I was a huge opera fan or going to the opera all the time,” he says before writing the song, but he found the process so enjoyable, he has written more arias for upcoming films and is now entertaining the idea of writing an opera that could hopefully appeal to a younger audience to “This is a passion of mine at the moment,” he says, adding the film “really brought all that to life. Ideally, I would get a commission of some sort.”
Pike, who also scored the documentary, wrote “Sweet Dreams of Joy” based on a 12-minute snippet of the film sent to him by producer Christine La Monte. “It was so inspiring, it was so full of humanity and music and energy, that I literally walked over to the piano and wrote the piece without any thought of would it end up in the film,” he says. “It was just so moving I had to write the piece. The lyrics took me a little longer to finesse them, but, really, it was just pure inspiration.”