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Former Prince divas Wendy & Lisa score the soundtrack for Heroes
You can hear an audio version of this blog with music here.
The theme to the TV series, Heroes might be the shortest title music on television right now. It was created by Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, and if you yawn, you might miss it.
Wendy Melvoin: You know what? We were absolutely blown away when they said they wanted 10 seconds. And how were we going to make something memorable at 10 seconds?
The theme to Heroes may fly by quicker than Hiro jumps through time, but the rest of that show is a non-stop cinematic swirl that ranges from the orchestral to ambient, east to west, poignancy to rage.
You might remember Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin as Wendy & Lisa, the vamped up guitarist and keyboardist for Prince and the Revolution in the 1980s. Prince fired them in 1986 and after a few CDs that received mixed reception, the duo found themselves creating TV soundtracks and film scores. They can be heard on Showtimes Nurse Jackie, Foxes Virtuality and most notably, NBC‘s Heroes.
A sonic signature to their score is the voice of Indian musician Shenkar, formerly known as violinist L. Shankar from the group Shakti.
Lisa Coleman: It’s when somebody’s power actually happens or when somebody discovers they have a power or when somebody will be running and then all of sudden, they can run really fast, like, “Whoa! What just happened?” We’ll do a Shenkar voice.
They recently released their own album, White Flags of Winter Chimneys and you can hear the influence of soundtracks in their own music.
Wendy Melvoin: It’s just a huge influence now on when we write a pop song. We were able to really pick apart each song like little mini-movies.
Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin’s soundtrack to Heroes has just been released and the latest CD by Wendy & Lisa is White Flags of Winter Chimneys. This has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music.
You can hear an audio version of this blog with music here.
Look for a more extensive interview with Wendy & Lisa on Monday, May 11 on Echoes.
John Diliberto ((( echoes )))