A Cincinnati musician who plays crystal and Tibetan singing bowls has a musical presence in the latest Nicolas Cage movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. (It’s only a few seconds but we’ll get to that.)
For years, former WVXU radio personality Ron Esposito was a professional bassist in a blues band. But for the last decade, he's been playing singing bowls while working as a certified life coach. This mellow music is quite a change from some of the other jobs he’s held, including assistant manager of a Boston jazz club, road manager for a record company and owner of an Athens, Ohio, used book and record store.
How and why did he make the switch to crystal and Tibetan singing bowls?
“You know how you see cartoon characters with a bubble over their head? I got a bubble over my head, metaphorically speaking, and it said, ‘singing bowls,’ " remembers Esposito.
Eventually, he did six singing bowls recordings and a former WVXU intern who runs Crucial Music, a Hollywood licensing company, pitched the music to network TV and cable shows. After dozens of musical appearances on those programs, Ron finally landed a big screen movie.
“She sent me an email and said, ‘Hey, we’ve licensed two tracks to be in the new Nicolas Cage movie, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.’ I emailed her back and said Hollywood here I come!”
“Unfolding,” a track from the Soul Burst album, is used to set up a spa scene in the movie. Esposito said he went to see the movie and they only used a few seconds. That makes sense to him since films have their own composers and only use snippets of other music to transition.
Here is the entire “Unfolding” track:
Esposito is also getting royalties from “Breathe,” also from Soul Burst. It is supposed to be in the movie, but he didn’t hear it.
Ron is not always as mellow as his music now that his royalty checks are rolling in, telling WVXU, “Thank you mailbox money!”
