Thanks to the joys of DVD boxsets, I’ve been catching up on loads of great TV shows over the last six months: Battlestar Galactica, House, The Wire. They’re all amazing shows, the cream of modern TV, but they all make me realise I still haven’t seen anything to top what is (for me) the greatest TV series of all time.

I watched The Sopranos all the way through during its run on TV, and then watched the whole thing again when it came out on DVD. Apart from having the sharpest writing and dialogue of any TV show I’ve ever seen, one thing that really stuck out through the whole series was the use of music.

There’s no score, just songs, but they fit so perfectly it’s hard to imagine anything else working as well. The music supervisors did such an amazing job, some of the tracks feel like they were written just for the show.  Some of the music highlights for me were:

I could only find a few examples on Youtube, but the John Cooper Clarke track is one of my favourites. Sublime. Ever since watching the show, I started wondering what songs I might have picked if I’d had the dream job of The Sopranos music supervisor. These would be a few on my list:

Man, I miss that show…

Here’s a brief excerpt from artists Wyllie O’Hagan’s short film: Still Life: London featuring my piano music soundtrack Leaving Paris.

Wyllie O’Hagan: “The moving image artwork, explores a quest for stillness in a hectic world. Two screens project moving images with piano soundtrack. One screen shows a personal collection of still, quiet life objects, beautifully considered and composed, revealed at a reflective pace. The second screen shows abstract energetic lines wildly drawn with light.”

Still Life: London has already had highly praised screenings at Toronto and London film festivals and has now been accepted in two more international festivals in Mexico and Melbourne:

Mexico’s Expresión en Corto International Film Festival
Melbourne International Animation Festival

More info:

Leaving Paris (buy the instrumental piano music from my mp3 shop):
http://www.thebluemask.com/shop/leaving-paris/

Wyllie O’Hagan:
http://www.wyllieohagan.com/