Film Music Reporter

Trevor Morris has been hired to score the new ABC mystery series 666 Park Avenue. The show is created by David Wilcox (Fringe) is based on a novel by Gabriella Pierce and follows a couple who learns that the Manhattan building complex that they just moved into, including its upscale tenants, might be possessed by a mysterious demonic force. The series stars Rachael Taylor, Dave Annable, Vanessa Williams, Terry O’Quinn, Mercedes Masöhn, Robert Buckley, Helena Mattsson, Erik Palladino and Samantha Logan. Graves is also executive producing the Warner Bros. Television production with Matthew Miller (Chuck), Leslie Morgenstein (Gossip Girl, The Vampire Diaries), Gina Girolamo (The Secret Circle) and Alex Graves (Fringe) who also directed the pilot episode. Morris got involved in the project at the 11th hour in the pilot phase and was under enormous time pressure to deliver on the score. “The approach was all about the story, finding that synergy between character and music,” Morris says. “Manhattan has many sides to itself…this one leaned to the high society angle, almost the deep seeded desire we all have to be a part of the rare air up there.” 666 Park Avenue is set to premiere on September 30, 2012 and will be airing every Sunday night on ABC. For updates on the series, visit the official show website.

The composer who recently received his fourth Emmy Award nomination for his music for the second season of the Showtime hit series The Borgias is also scoring the second season of the Syfy show Alphas. The show created by Zak Penn and Michael Karnow and starring Azita Ghanizada, David Strathairn, Laura Mennell, Malik Yoba, Ryan Cartwright, Warren Christie and Valerie Cruz recently entered its second season. Morris has taken over scoring duties from composer Edward Rogers who scored last year’s first season. Morris was brought in fresh to bring his own perspective and point of view to the show and the score.  “The musical vocabulary was 100% new and in no way beholden to season one,” he says. “The challenge was also the most exciting part for me, creating a new musical “language” from scratch for Alphas. Discovering what works and for me creating an ancient quality to these guys at times, while at the same time making sure to be as contemporary as possible.” The second season of Alphas currently airs every Monday night on Syfy. Visit the official show website to learn more about the project.

Morris whose upcoming projects also include the Bruce Willis- and Josh Duhamel-starring drama Fire with Fire has also recently scored Death Race 3: Inferno, the third film in the Death Race series. The movie is directed by Roel Reine and stars Luke Goss as Frankenstein who has to race his fellow prisoners in all newly designed and newly build ‘Death Race Cars’. Danny Trejo, Ving Rhames, Tanit Phoenix and Dougray Scott are co-starring and Paul W.S. Anderson, Jeremy Bolt and Mike Elliott are producing the Universal Pictures project. Morris follows composer Paul Haslinger who scored the previous two parts in the series. His approach was to preserve the spirit of his previous scores, but to bring his own point of view to the table as well. “Roel kept saying “grittier grittier” to me, so there are lots of compressors and distortion plug ins called into duty.” he recalls. “This is the first death race to leave the island and go exterior, in this case the desert of South Africa. So that cinematically needed to be addressed in the music as well. It was huge fun to score. I had just finished The Borgias when I started on Death Race, so it was down with the dulcimers and pick up the electric bass.” Death Race 3: Inferno is set to be released on Blu-Ray and DVD this fall.