a central moment of musical ecstasy<\/a>. Emerging bluesman Sammie plays a song he wrote as a confession to his pastor father, a paean to the music he loves. As the juke joint crowd responds, he loses himself in the timeless transcendence artists hope for.<\/p>\nCo-writer Ludwig G\u00f6ransson says, \u201cIt doesn\u2019t happen very often, but you have those experiences when you really are getting into the music and time and space disappears. Ryan\u2019s not a musician, but it was written like he\u2019s been in that position.\u201d<\/p>\n
In cosmic communion, practitioners of Black music from many eras appear to Sammie, the joint\u2019s roof combusting in his mind. G\u00f6ransson assisted in the Dolby Atmos mix, moving the music and sound around spatially as the camera travels.<\/p>\n
Co-writer Raphael Saadiq says, \u201cSammie\u2019s father felt secular music was devil music. Even today, you have people who go to church who don\u2019t listen to the blues [for that reason], but deep down inside, they love it because it\u2019s something we inherited from our ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Sweet Dreams of Joy\u2019 from \u2018Viva Verdi!\u2019<\/p>\n
Music and lyrics by Nicholas Pike<\/p>\n
![\"Milan's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771932140_612_.jpeg\")
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Milan\u2019s Casa Verdi, a retirement home for musicians depicted in \u201cViva Verdi!\u201d<\/p>\n
(Viva Verdi! LLC)<\/p>\n
Even those who know little about opera have heard of Giuseppe Verdi. What many don\u2019t know is one of his most enduring accomplishments is Casa Verdi \u2014 a retirement home for musicians. Yvonne Russo\u2019s documentary \u201cViva Verdi!\u201d captures the vibrant life inside its walls, expressed in the aria \u201cSweet Dreams of Joy,\u201d sung by soprano Ana Mar\u00eda Mart\u00ednez and composed by Nicholas Pike.<\/p>\n
The filmmakers \u201csent me this 12-minute assembly, kind of like a teaser, and that\u2019s all I saw,\u201d says Pike. \u201cThe passion, the vitality of these residents, the mentoring of young, up-and-coming artists \u2026 I went over to the piano and wrote the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says the whole thing took about a day to craft, with its contemporary piano figures and classical vocals, imbued with the vivaciousness of Casa Verdi\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n
He wanted to capture the footage\u2019s \u201cenergy and life and hope. We\u2019ve all been to retirement homes; they can be pretty down places. This is 180 degrees from that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Train Dreams\u2019 from \u2018Train Dreams\u2019<\/p>\n
Music by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner; lyrics by Nick Cave<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771932140_645_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Joel Edgerton in \u201cTrain Dreams.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Netflix)<\/p>\n
When \u201cTrain Dreams\u201d star Joel Edgerton called Nick Cave to work with composer Bryce Dessner on a song for the film, the postpunk poet and art rocker was on holiday, avoiding the \u201cattendant agony\u201d of songwriting. But Denis Johnson\u2019s book happened to be a favorite of Cave\u2019s. <\/p>\n
Edgerton sent him the film. Cave says, \u201cI sat up in bed and watched it with Bryce\u2019s gorgeous score and fell asleep and had a kind of fever dream with all the images of this extraordinary film, and woke up with the lyrics fully formed, which is extremely unusual for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He went to the hotel\u2019s breakfast room, where there was a piano. \u201cIt all just sort of poured out of me. The melody and the lyrics fit perfectly to Bryce\u2019s score.\u201d<\/p>\n
The song expresses \u201cthe inarticulate wonder at the world that the lead character has. There\u2019s this chordal thing after the refrain, that rises up \u2014 an expression of that wonder, rising out of the grief.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018This has been going on for years \u2026 I can\u2019t begin to tell you how that feels.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 original song contenders come from deep inside the characters singing them: a simple man wistfully looking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[89732,89731,6193,41234,28729,1924,48,52,51,47,50,49,66541,330,21720,89730,89727,89728,72732,89729,10390],"class_list":["post-191313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bryce-dessner","tag-casa-verdi","tag-character","tag-diane-warren","tag-documentary","tag-film","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-lyric","tag-music","tag-musician","tag-nicholas-pike","tag-nick-cave","tag-ordinary-life","tag-raphael-saadiq","tag-retirement-home","tag-song"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Diane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771932139_198_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771932139_321_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Miles](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771932139_829_.jpeg\")
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