Although it is difficult to believe “Dr. Frankenstein, ”James Whale's 1931 film that is part of the personal iconography of many of us, does not have a soundtrack. It was one of the first big talkies premieres and it surprised many by the impact of its sound effects, but the superb expressiveness of its images worked by itself, without the help of music to sustain it. Perhaps that is precisely why in our memory we find it strange to recreate it without music.
During the confinement of 2020 Pedro Cortejosa decides to compose this soundtrack. An exercise in freedom around a figure capable of symbolizing much of what was happening at that precise moment. The great human predator had become so dissociated from nature, so alien to it, that the surprising natural explosion that caused his seclusion was completely unexpected. Death and uncertainty ravaged the world as animals roamed empty streets and herbs grew in unusual places. Death and life, over and over again, when they certainly cannot be understood without each other. And there was the story: the arrogance of a creator of life who denies his work, and the innocence of a creature that only needs a reason to live, possibly love. Love that is denied out of fear, the worst of our enemies to face these new times.
At the end of the film, Frankenstein, who has no name and is named after his father or his creator, dies, and so the suite ends. But Cortejosa adds an epilogue, an ending of light to give a new opportunity to the monster, to nature, to life! And also to ourselves, who may someday be capable of truly learning to love.
Created at the beginning of 2011 at the initiative of the musicians who compose it and managed directly by them, the Andalucía Big Band was born with the aim of being a stable orchestra that serves to bring jazz to the general public, making known both the traditional repertoire for big band as, above all, the works of current composers.