You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
The film Moonlight tells the story of its main character, Chiron, in three chapters.
When Chiron's a young boy nicknamed Little,
when he's a teenager and goes by Chiron, and when he's an adult nicknamed Black.
For each chapter of the film, composer Nicholas Bertel created a theme, and in this episode,
Nicholas takes those themes apart, revealing how they all evolved out of a single piece of music.
The score for Moonlight was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe,
and the film itself won the Golden Globe for Best Drama.
This episode is part of a series I'm doing in conjunction with New York magazine site Vulture,
looking at awards-worthy film music from this season.
The first was with Johan Johansson on the score for Arrival.
The second was with Justin Hurwitz on La La Land.
And now, Nicholas Bertel on the score for Moonlight.
For more, visit vulture.com slash awards.
My name's Nicholas Bertel, and I'm the composer of Moonlight.
When I first read it, I was just overwhelmed by this feeling of beauty and poetry.
That was really the starting point for my personal experience with the film.
There was just this incredible sense of...