“The Testament of Ann Lee” Composer Daniel Blumberg on Collaborating with Amanda Seyfried for a Transcendent Score
On a Sunday afternoon in October, two months before the theatrical release of The Testament of Ann Lee, composer Daniel Blumberg and Amanda Seyfried performed renditions of its soundtrack inside a packed cafe in London. It would be another month until Searchlight, which scooped up distribution rights following its festival run, released an official teaser for writer-director Mona Fastvold’s interpretation of the life of Ann Lee (Seyfried), the religious leader of the Shaker movement during 18th-century America. The unconventional marketing approach (deliberate or not) earmarked the score as essential listening.
“I worked on this music and had been recording with Amanda for ages, and it felt natural to do a live show,” Blumberg tells The Credits. “So we sort of performed these songs improvising around the structure, so it was a bit more freeing.”
Blumberg got involved with Ann Lee while on The Brutalist, the indie darling that Fastvold produced and co-wrote with her partner and director, Brady Corbet. Its stark, minimalist score, industrial textures, and restrained emotion reflect themes of ambition, isolation, and modernism, which earned Blumberg an Academy Award. “This was different from The Brutalist because I had to be there the whole time. I was with Mona before preproduction, then on the shoot, but I was also trying to schedule recording sessions. It was really an independent film,” he says.
Fastvold’s retelling of Lee’s story is charted in three parts: her harsh childhood in Manchester, her journey to America, and the growth of her Christian sect, where she would go on to become “Mother Ann” until her death. The score, songs, and sound in each chapter intertwine in a type of rhythmic dance where one cannot live without the other. Inspiration derived from researching Shaker hymns and adapting traditional melodies for a contemporary voice. The composer also wrote original songs, including “Clothed by the Sun,” a duet from Blumberg and Seyfried heard during the end credits. Shakers often spoke in tongues, trembling, and falling to the floor. To capture the intensity, Blumberg tapped dozens of background singers and vocal improvisers, Maggie Nicols and Shelley Hirsch (as well as his sister), to create an energetic palette.
Movement influenced his work, as he collaborated with choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall to define moments of Shaker worship. “Initially, I had to write demos for Celia so she could start building the dance sequences. Then I would go to the dance rehearsal and get excited about how she was using shapes from drawings or images of the Shakers,” Blumberg notes. “It sort of freed me up because we were finding the balance of how much to draw upon from the Shakers material, but also knowing that it’s not a documentary about the Shakers.”
Instrument choice was guided by the era, but with an added twist. “Shaker settlements had bells, so I started with those sounds. But because I write on the keyboard a lot, there’s an instrument known as the bell piano or a celeste, where the hammers hit these metal plates, essentially like a whole keyboard of bells. So it was always like, how do we push these ideas?” says the composer, who incorporated hand bells, church bells, and electric guitar as part of the score. Songs with Seyfried were prerecorded with the actor performing live on set. “We really wanted it to be in the room, like raw, so you could hear the live quality of the voice,” says Blumberg. “’Hunger and Thirst’ is a song that felt like she was just having some amazing epiphany, so we used that more ethereal vocal sound.”
The production’s independent spirit allowed Blumberg to tweak things through the final mix with sound supervisor Steve Single and sound designer Andy Neil. “Mona kept it really open till the end, so I had a double bassist come in and do some last-minute double bass stuff, my sister came and did backing vocals on the last day. It was always open so that if something changed with the sound, we could always keep it really integrated,” he says. “I sort of keep saying it was the most experimental project I’ve ever done. And I mean that in the essence of the word, we were literally experimenting.”
The Testament of Ann Lee is in theaters now.
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Featured image: Amanda Seyfried in THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE. Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2025 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
