Many acclaimed artists featured as part of the 2024–25 Great Performances at Mason season at the Center for the Arts have graced the soundtracks of famous movies. You might have already enjoyed their musical talents without even realizing it was them... Below experience how just some of our upcoming artists have worked their magic on movie soundtracks.
ARTURO SANDOVAL
(performing November 10, 2024)
A 2024 Kennedy Center honoree, composer and 10-time GRAMMY Award winner Arturo Sandoval is an acknowledged virtuoso of jazz trumpet and flugelhorn, who is just as dynamic and vivacious on the piano, timbales, vocals, and keyboard. Having been seen by millions performing live at the Oscars, the GRAMMYs, the White House, and the industry’s most esteemed performing arts centers and festivals, Sandoval has also received six Billboard Awards, an Emmy, the Hispanic Heritage Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama. He was recently honored with a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award. You can hear his virtuosic skills in his following film score work:
Mambo Kings (1992)
Arturo Sandoval's GRAMMY-nominated composition “Mambo Caliente” from the soundtrack of the movie Mambo Kings, features the legend himself on solo trumpet.
For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000)
Sandoval was awarded an Emmy Award for composing the entire score of the HBO movie based on his life,
Sandoval's film score compositions can also be heard in movies including the 25th James Bond flick No Time to Die (in collaboration with Hans Zimmer); Clint Eastwood’s films, The Mule, starring Eastwood and Bradley Cooper; Richard Jewell: 1001 to 1 starring Beau Bridges; and At Middleton starring Andy Garcia and Vera Farmiga. His work can also be heard on Dave Grusin’s soundtracks for Havana and Random Heart; the soundtracks of The Perez Family, 61, Mr. Wrong, the documentary Oscar, and The Family Fuentes, among others.
TAKE 6
(performing December 1, 2024)
The most awarded a cappella group in history—with 10 GRAMMY Awards, 10 Dove Awards, 2 NAACP Image Awards, a Soul Train Award, and membership in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame—Take 6 has won praise from such luminaries as Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald and Whitney Houston. The group's film credits include the following:
Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989)
"Don't Shoot Me"
Dick Tracy (1990)
"Ridin' The Rails" with Take 6 and k.d. lang:
This Christmas (2007)
including Moody's Mood For Love (as performed here on The Oprah Winfrey Show: featuring Take 6 with Brian McKnight and Patti Austin):
Boyz n the Hood (1991)
"Setembro" (Brazilian Wedding Song)
BRANFORD MARSALIS
(performing February 1 with the Metropolitan Jazz Orchestra)
A National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, three-time GRAMMY winner, and Tony Award-nominated composer for his work on Broadway, Marsalis has also composed extensively for movies, with screen credits including the following:
Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues (1990)
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman. The critically acclaimed Ma Rainey is the Netflix film adaptation of two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson’s play, produced by Denzel Washington.In reviewing the score, Vanity Fair proclaimed “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a story in which the music has to be authentic and the details need to be correct. It requires the musical oversight of someone who has this history in his blood. It requires Branford Marsalis.”
The Guardian also noted “Marsalis’s work, both recreation and original composition, is as close to perfection as I could imagine.”:
Rustin (2023)
Additional film work includes Netflix's Rustin starring Colman Domingo. Since its release in November 2023, Rustin has garnered attention and praise, with critics calling the score scintillating, kinetic, vibrant, maintaining the “buoyancy of a man who refused to be kept down.
Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre (2021)
Marsalis also received a 2021 EMMY nomination for the original music he composed and produced for the History Channel’s documentary Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, in the Outstanding Music Composition for a Documentary Series or Special (Original Dramatic Score) category.
LES ARTS FLORISSANTS
(performing March 30, 2025)
One of the foremost Baroque music groups in the world, the period-instrument ensemble from France, Les Arts Florissants, has "revolutionized the way baroque music is presented" (Opera News). It can be heard performing on the soundtracks of the following:
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)
Don't miss these incredible artists live at the Center for the Arts! More information about their respective programs at left.