Arlington will have some representation at the Oscars this weekend after a film scored by a local resident was nominated for “Best Animated Short.”
Composer Isaac Wardell, who lives in the Westover area, will be donning a tux and heading to the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15, for his work on the film “Forevergreen” — a 13-minute short about an orphaned bear cub and a fatherly evergreen tree.
This was Wardell’s first time scoring a film, though the 46-year-old has been writing and recording music for the last 25 years. Together with singer-songwriter Josh Garrels on vocals and a 16-piece string orchestra, Wardell pulled together a gentle, folksy score that matches with the film’s heartfelt themes.
“[Garrels’] musicianship is kind of like the soul of the soundtrack, and I feel like I’m the architect of the soundtrack,” Wardell told ARLnow. “I have the technical background, and really spent time with creating the, kind of, infrastructure and the melodies.”
Wardell’s work on the film began during the pandemic, when a team from Pixar approached Garrels with some charcoal sketches of the film they wanted to produce. Garrels and Wardell have collaborated on projects before, and they began the composition process.
While many short films don’t get a soundtrack until the final stages of their production, Wardell said the team loved his early draft of the score and began using its musical cues to guide parts of the animation.
“In that very first iteration, they really felt like we had a great, sort of sympathetic creative collaboration going on,” he said. “They loved that first version of the music.”
Wardell spent several years fleshing out the score, ultimately recording at Spacebomb Studio in Richmond before the film finished production in 2024 and began a film festival circuit last year. He said getting nominated for an Oscar caught the whole team by surprise.
“We were truly, truly shocked a few weeks ago, when they came out and they announced the Oscar nominations, and we made that list,” he said.
Wardell grew up listening to gospel and bluegrass music in Austin, Texas and Memphis, Tenn. He estimates that he has produced between 100 and 150 albums over the years in Los Angeles, Nashville and New York City before he settled down with his family in Arlington.
“We wanted to be somewhere that felt like a good place to raise kids — kind of a global city [with] great education,” he said.
In addition to writing and composing, Wardell serves as director of worship arts at Restoration Anglican Church in Cherrydale and runs a sacred music collective called The Porter’s Gate. That project recently raised about $100,000 for a fundraiser concert for Restoration Immigration Legal Aid at Westover Baptist Church.
Wardell is a fan of the D.C. area’s brass and orchestral scene, as well as its gospel music and, further out in Virginia, Appalachian folk music.
Wardell also enjoys how close Reagan National Airport is. This helps when he has to travel out-of-state — like attending a certain awards show in California.
“No matter what industry you’re in, there’s almost no better city you can live in than Arlington, if your job involves a lot of national travel,” he said.
