Dallas Chamber Symphony flows through film about Texas rivers, narrated by Ethan Hawke

Dallas Chamber Symphony opens its new season with the world premiere movie-in-concert event of "Deep in the Heart II: Texas Rivers" on Sept. 22.

Texas filmmaker and writer Ben Masters dreamed of finding a Texas orchestra to play the score of his latest wildlife documentary film, Deep in the Heart II: Texas Rivers, but he didn’t think it was possible. And then he learned about the Dallas Chamber Symphony.

“It was one of our fans that made that initial connection, got on the call and made it all happen and she was there during those days where we played the music and I'm so grateful,” Masters said. “I think this is the best score that we've done yet.”

The world premiere of the new documentary film opens Dallas Chamber Symphony’s 2026-2027 season as a movie-in-concert event on Sept. 22 at Moody Performance Hall in the Dallas Arts District. Richard McKay, the orchestra’s music and artistic director, will conduct the orchestra as it performs the soundtrack live with the film. The film opens in theaters throughout the state on Sept. 25. Deep in the Heart II: Texas Rivers, narrated by Academy Award-nominated Texas native Ethan Hawke and featuring an original score by Noah Sorota, celebrates the Lone Star State’s rivers, waterways and its distinctive ecosystem.

Masters is a native Texan, best known for directing Deep in the Heart: A Texas Wildlife Story, The River and The Wall and for producing Unbranded. The founder of Fin and Fur Films uses movies to highlight the importance of conserving a homeland he loves. For this film, he focused on an element that runs throughout his life.

“I grew up on the Canadian, went to college on the Brazos, went to high school on the Concho, live on the Colorado,  go on river trips on the Rio Grande, chase mountain lions on the Pecos, took my daughter to the Devils. I just love rivers. Rivers are where all of our cities are, they're where all of our best wildlife habitat is, and I thought that it made sense to make our next big wildlife film focused on rivers and how they work here in Texas,” Masters said.

Sorota is based in Los Angeles, but has become an honorary Texan through his work on Fin and Fur Films’ other projects, including The American Southwest, Deep in the Heart, The River and the Wall, and Unbranded. His film and television projects include Resident Alien (SyFy), Tommy (CBS), Amazing Stories (AppleTV), Reverie, and Falling Skies. Composing for Fin and Fur Films’ projects is different from his other film and television contributions.

“I feel like it started out really nice, and it's gotten only better. Our first project was Unbranded and in those days, the cinematography was still great because it's these amazing shots of the West. There's drone shots, there's this expanse so it's always a great canvas. And then as we've gone on, Ben will give me even more. He'll give me a big frame and be like, ‘We're not going to have anything here for like 30 seconds, go for it.’ You know, which is pretty rare. If you're lucky in dramatic storytelling to get even a few seconds at the end of the scene before  robots come in and start smashing things again. These nature films and documentary in general do lend themselves to a nice canvas to hold music. And Ben does even more than is necessary,” Sorota said.

Throughout the film, Sorota pulls in the refrain from a song familiar to anyone who grew up in the Lone Star State, “Deep in the Heart of Texas.”

“We did use the song theme, and we used the song theme in the first Deep in the Heart film, too. And that was Ben's brilliant idea. He's like, ’You know, every Texan knows this thing,’” Sorota said. “You hear that song and you instantly have this time and this place in mind.”

Sorota layers liquid elements into the score.

“What I tried to do, since the whole film was basically about all the rivers in Texas, was to have more of a suite, like a more overarching piece that, when you hear it, it sounds a bit like water, even if you don't see a picture of water. So even if you're not seeing a bubbling brook or a river or something like that, the music itself is very flowing. It feels wet. It feels a little bit like water, so then when that is married with a picture that is a stream or a large river or a trickle, depending on how we treat that piece of music, it's already enhancing the picture by hearing something kind of watery,” Sorota said.

Sorota thought recording the score with a Texas orchestra in Texas was a fantasy. Many film scores are recorded in Los Angeles, Nashville, London, or Eastern Europe. Logistics for recording a film score are complex. Producers need to find the right orchestra and the right space at the right price. Dallas Chamber Symphony recorded the score over a few days in Arlington in June, just before the FIFA World Cup Finals began.

“It's about Texas. It's filmed in Texas. I think there's a special connection that's there because the players all live there and work there and raise their families there. I remember in the session, some of the players stopping and looking at the picture that was playing. They were like, ‘This is Texas?’ They're like, ‘Where is that?’ You know, just seeing their state in a way they hadn't seen it before, but knowing it's there and they were like, ‘Golly, I've got to go see that’. I think a real special thing that happened because it's everyone's backyard, essentially,” Sorota said.

For Masters, having Texas musicians play the score added another emotional layer to the film.

“These are musicians that were scoring the music and playing the music a half a mile away from the river that we filmed on. They had so much love and so much passion that they poured into those days of playing the music that I just don't think you can get anywhere else,” Masters said.

Masters hopes the film inspires Texans to ask questions about the rivers that shape their state.

“Where does my river come from? Where does my river go? What is my relationship to the river? How can we conserve the healthy rivers that we have? How can we restore our damaged rivers? And to start thinking long into the future about how we can set up Texas for success with having, you know, clean, abundant rivers, clean, abundant water, and managing our rivers better,” Masters said.

Learn more: Dallas Chamber Symphony