I came from a musical family to start with. My father, a musician and music teacher, was my first inspiration and teacher. I started taking piano lessons when I was about six. I hated it. Well, I hated the practicing part. One day my father brought home a clarinet and said, “Here, try this.” So I started playing clarinet. As junior high school came around, I really became interested in jazz and saxophone. So I added saxophone to my repertoire. Fast-forward to high school: A counselor at school, who used to write for name big bands, taught a jazz arranging class. I took his class and fell in love with writing music for jazz bands. I soon learned that was a fairly unrealistic thing. But that never stopped me, so that’s what I did. I grew up in the Los Angeles area, but went back east for college. After college, I spent a year teaching at Western Michigan University. Along the way, I learned how to copy music – making the parts for the individual player – and found out that I could make some money doing that. I was lucky in that some of my father’s friends shepherded me and mentored me into that. So I came back to Los Angeles, where I played jazz and did whatever sort of jobs I could do, and copying music became my main source of income. Stan Sheldon, a great teacher mentor friend, was the source of most of my music-copying gigs. Some composers for whom he worked occasionally needed a big band arrangement or a redo of a chart for a new instrumentation or a sound-alike [a re-creation of some piece of recorded music]. At one point, Stan asked if I could and would like to do some of that. And I said, “Sure, of course!” It all blossomed from there. It was serendipitous. I had taken orchestration classes in college and played clarinet in classical orchestras as well as doing the jazz thing, so I had a lot of broad knowledge, thanks to my father, mainly. When the opportunities came along to do some of these simpler types of writing and orchestrating jobs, I grabbed them and, frankly, I learned on the job. I had good ears and I knew what was needed and I knew how to get it done. I learned a lot in those beginning years. Then recommendations came and it sort of blossomed. I would say that me real entrée into my major career as an orchestrator started with a couple people: number one, Lee Holdridge, who was one of the fellows I did some of this preliminary work with. Then, he recommended me to a then-new composer, James Newton Howard, who was looking for somebody to redo some arrangements for Elton John, of all things, for a concert tour in Australia. That’s when I hooked up with James and I guess you could say that the rest is history. Where did you go to school back east? I went to Yale as an undergraduate, and I also did my master’s degree work there. I got a degree in saxophone, but I was very active in the composition department there and the new music that was going on. How did your James Newton Howard/Elton John work eventually change into the film-music work? James and I got along famously at the beginning with the Elton John things, and then James started coming into his own as a film composer. Up to the time when I met him, he had done one or two, primarily synthesizer, scores. Then he got the opportunity to use a live orchestra. And I became his orchestrator. That’s how I developed me reputation as a film-music orchestrator. Then, from there, people heard of me. John Debney, who has also been one of my major colleagues for over a dozen years now, called me up one day because he had heard of me. He similarly wanted me to just do an arrangement for some Disneyland project. And when he started doing films, I became his orchestrator. So that’s what happened. All of the other things that I’ve done were just through word-of-mouth – people heard of me and called me up. You were the only orchestrator for James Newton Howard’s early scores, such as “The Man in the Moon” and “Dying Young”. When and why did he started adding other orchestrators? I was his only orchestrator to begin with. Adding orchestrators really had to do with the time and ability to get the job done. A short schedule would dictate that I couldn’t do it all. There were also times when he wanted to have another point of view from the orchestrating end. So, due to a combination of time and styles, it has evolved into me and Jeff Atmajian now. Jeff came on a few years ago. Once again, for the most part, there isn’t time anymore for any one person to do a whole score in the time given. Occasionally, yes, but most of the time, no. So that is a huge consideration. But the other consideration is that James really appreciated the different creative input. James Newton Howard’s scores have grown from intimate scores such as “Dying Young” or “The Man in the Moon” to scores such as “Dinosaur” or “Treasure Planet”. Does this have any sort of impact on your side of the production? James is such a complete musician, and he has the ability to orchestrate if he wants to – and he has. He just doesn’t have the time to do that. But he creates everything in his own studio, especially with the synths. Then he’ll add the orchestral element when that happens. So, whenever there is a project like that, he simply gives me or any of the other orchestrators a demonstration CD or MP3s on the internet. That gives us his rendition of the score, which he obviously has been playing for the director and getting approvals for. Then we just orchestrate accordingly. I did most of “The Prince of Tides”, a pure orchestral score, myself. Right around the same time, we did the movie “Grand Canyon”, which was one of his brilliant scores that had a fabulous mixture of synthesizers. I took what he intended for the live orchestra and just orchestrated accordingly. To me, the synthesizers are just another element that I hear on the demo. It suggests drama and style, but it doesn’t really change how I do things. If anything, James will say, “That sound is covered by the synthesizer. You don’t have to orchestrate it. That’s a very particular synthesizer sound.” He will be very specific that way, sometimes, in that he has some exotic ethnic flute, for instance, which is really a synthesizer sound. So I won’t deal with that. His sound, though uniquely his own, is always evolving. Like you said, “Grand Canyon” is very different from “The Prince of Tides”, so this doesn’t allow you to fall into any sort of patterns, I presume. James is, to me, as good of a film composer as there has ever been. Based upon his obvious absolute master of music in many idioms, he has the great ability to create music for a movie, not impose music on a movie. In other words, James really creates something unique for a film; it’s not just James Howard doing a film score. He has a style. He has, in fact, many styles, in a way. I can recognize many aspects of his work throughout very disparate types of scores, because they all still have a thread of James that goes through them. But he adapts himself to the movie, and he realizes that he is serving the drama of the film. That’s his job. That’s how I would categorize his chameleon-like abilities. He never fails to amaze me. In every single picture I’ve worked on with him, he has come up with something new and interesting that is not only wonderful musically but perfect for the film from my point of view and, apparently, the point of view of many directors and producers, because he certainly has been successful. I think that’s probably a great part of his success, not to mention that he’s a very charming and affable person who is not only nice to be around but also makes everyone feel that he’s very with them in spirit and heart on a project, because he is. All of that being said, he also has that great ability to write music that stands alone without the film. That is a great composer. “The Prince of Tides”, to me, is a prime example of a perfect film score, if there is such a thing. That’s probably my favorite that I’ve worked on. I think that was a turning point for both of us – for him as a composer and for me as an orchestrator. I learned so much because of the scope of the film and working with Barbra Streisand, which was a remarkable experience. Because of the way that particular process worked, I developed a great affinity for the musicians in the room. There was a lot of alteration and reworking of the original parts because of Barbra’s needs and requirements, but it was a whole step up in another world for me, and for James, too, I think. You worked with Trevor Jones on “Cliffhanger” and “The Last of the Mohicans”. Jones most often uses orchestrators Geoff Alexander and Julian Kershaw. Why did Trevor bring you onto these projects? I’m not really sure how that all worked, to be honest with you. I know that, though he lives in England, he was spending a lot of time out here, and I believe I was recommended for these films, which were done in the States. What was interesting with “Last of the Mohicans” was that Trevor ended up doing only half of the score, and Randy Edelman did the other half of the score, which was a mixture of many different musical ideas. Then Trevor started staying in England and, for obvious reasons, he used guys over there who were recommended to him, including Geoff, whom I’ve met and talked to. He’s a very nice guy and a wonderful orchestrator. Coincidentally though, Trevor is actually over here doing a film now. He just called me up, and I will likely work on his next film, so I think that I tend to work with him on his “in the States” projects. I have to tell you a funny, human-interest story that happened during “Last of the Mohicans”. If you recall, it was in the early nineties when we in Los Angeles had the so-called “Rodney King rioting” – a horrible few days of rioting and curfew and all that. We were in the middle of recording one of the sessions for “Last of the Mohicans” at Fox Studios’ scoring stage. I recall that it had just gotten halfway through the afternoon session when some people of authority came in and said, “We have to close this session down now because the National Guard is using Fox Studios as a home base for this situation. So you all have to leave.” What an amazing experience – that certainly colored my whole feeling about the film. That was quite a tumultuous film in many ways, including this odd situation. You know, we all relate experiences we have with current experiences, positively and negatively. If a horrible thing happens on a birthday or a holiday, people will often recall that holiday or anniversary with the same feelings of the negative thing that happens. That’s sort of an interesting memory I have. Nevertheless, I was just so fortunate to be a part of that score because I think it was a monumental work, and that theme especially was one of those moments of music that not many people ever get to. That's such a memorable theme, and it just was remarkable. Do you have other favorite scores and/or memorable work experiences that stand out? Absolutely. “The Prince of Tides”, as I mentioned before, was definitely one of my favorites, and so was “The Man in the Moon”. I happened to have watched this movie a couple of times in the last couple of months when it was on some cable channel. I absolutely love that film. There’s a movie called “Some Girls”, which also has an alternate title, “Sisters”. It was one of the very first films James and I did together. I just love that score. I don’t know why except that it just makes me feel good. There’ve been some great ones with John Debney. I have to say John Debney, though he is starting to gain recognition, is almost a secret in movies. I know that a lot of movie-music buffs are certainly aware of him. But I think that John is probably as fine a composer as there is in the style of John Williams, in that he just has a command of the orchestra and the depth of music. Almost every project I’ve worked on with John has been an absolute joy because he makes it so easy for us to do our work, number one, but the outcome of the music is just always so wonderful and just feels so good. There was one movie in particular – one of the very first ones we did “Hocus Pocus”, which was a Disney kid-oriented film with Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker. I tell you, the score John did on that was just priceless, and I absolutely adored working on that one. So what becomes challenging for you? The worst challenges I’ve had in any score have had to do with the clock, not the music. As I said, I tend to view each project as almost starting over in music. I don’t just rely upon, “Okay, I’ve done this before,” and scribble it out. I really think about what I’m doing. The hardest part is when there is not enough time to do it all. And, subsequently, as we spoke about before, we often have to engage other orchestrators to assist. That has been the case on virtually every picture in the last six or seven years at least. With John, it’s a little bit of a different relationship than with James, in that James has a particular way of working and he hands out the cues to each orchestrator, whom he handpicks. John leaves a lot of that up to me. So I become the principal orchestrator, and it has fallen upon me to distribute the cues to other orchestrators whom we may need for any given project. So I spend a good deal of my time with John listening and going through all of the music, deciding who should get what. When the clock bears down upon me, trying to do my own work and to supervise other people becomes an interesting challenge. But, once again, musically, I never really find anything that is particularly more challenging than any other. It’s all just something fun to work on, and I think how lucky I am to be making music for a living. I am not being patronizing here, but I sincerely feel the absolute genius and creativity and completeness of the two main guys I work with, James and John. Their music is very clear and very defined by the time I or my colleagues get it. So the creative input we have is often minimal to the point where the real challenge becomes knowing when to be creative, when to add something or when not to. The music is all there. I would say that only five percent of the time do I really need to do something. I think that my particular talent is knowing when to do it. I know when to leave the rest alone. I mean, we still have to configure ranges of instruments and coloring and know that the trumpet players have to take a breath once in a while – otherwise their lips will fall off – and all of these aspects of orchestration that are important and that go beyond just knowing about chords and how to write out rhythms. But beyond that, it’s just knowing when to do something and when not to. I’d say, once again, that we all have to have a very good knowledge of music – harmony, orchestration, et cetera. But that being a given, the real key to being a successful orchestrator in the film business, working with a composer, is to know when to do and when not to do. That’s the real ticket. Although I am not stating that film composers can’t or don’t usually do their own work with their own creativity, there must be times when orchestrators lend their own brush strokes. Can you shed some light on this? I think that really varies by picture. It depends on what the style of music is. You mentioned about James and synthesizers. When he has a synthesizer-heavy score, I think that the orchestral colors would tend to be less noticeable. Of course, you know, orchestration really consists of many elements. And, of course, James and John contribute most of the orchestration ideas. I am taking what they are doing and, number one, cleaning it up, and, as I said before, adding my five percent. Now that’s not to say that I don’t have creative input at times. Sometimes I figure it out myself, or occasionally John or James will say, “Fill this section out for me.” Those are rare moments, I have to say. I’ll get an emotional direction on occasion. They’ll say, ‘Here’s the drama, here’s what’s going on in the film, make it bigger or smaller or more poignant or sadder or whatever.” I will certainly add my own voicing or counterpoint if it’s appropriate. But, in terms of me having a style, I’ve heard people say that they recognize my style, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my style is really more defined by James Newton Howard’s writing. I guess all of this is really a collaborative effort, and it’s really hard to pick out a very specific thing that’s an orchestrator’s input. It does happen, but I’m working to try and make the composer’s music on which he’s worked so hard to be dramatically correct. I’m trying to make it even better than his demo is. That’s really what it comes down to. I think it’s my job to working the whole style and approach that the composer is using in a film. I really feel like I’m more of a chameleon than a creative voice when I’m doing film orchestration. Have you ever considered composing yourself? Oh, of course I have. I’ve shot it down immediately because I don’t feel I have the personality or strength or character to be able to deal with the extra pressures – dealing with directors, producers, and studios, and agents, and a lot of issues like that – that come with being a composer. Those are very real issues, and not everybody is suited to that. I know that there are some great composers in the world and there are some great orchestrators who are also great composers, and not everybody is suited to the business of being a film composer. I think that is a real key, and I think that’s why James and John are equally successful at that aspect of it as they are as musicians. That’s why they are so good and at the top of their game. For me, I don’t really feel like that’s something I have the time or stomach for, to be quite honest. If there were a small film that was maybe a jazz-idiomatic thing, because that’s really what I love the most, and if I didn’t have to do it in one week, I think I would enjoy doing that at some point. But as a career goal, no, it’s not something I’d like to do. I’m much happier being creative doing arrangements, and I like doing that a lot. My wife’s a great singer and I do a lot with her. I have a jazz octet that I work with occasionally and write for and lead in the Los Angeles area. That’s where I find my creative input. I think that it’s important to understand what orchestration really is. This is a little history lesson, I suppose. Composition and orchestration really go hand in hand and, initially, the art of orchestration, especially in the nineteenth century, was part of the composer’s venue. However each composer would construct a big orchestral piece of music, the orchestration was a natural outgrowth of that. In other words, composition and orchestration were inextricably linked and, for the most part, orchestration was not a separate entity for a composer. As time has gone on, the art of orchestration has evolved, just as music has evolved and gotten more complex, with the different instruments, the different capabilities. And, as film music has evolved, the big issue that I mentioned before – time – has a lot to do with the reason why I have a job as an orchestrator. The composer, especially today, generally doesn’t have the time, even if he could or wanted to orchestrate. Another reason my profession as film orchestrator has come into being is that some people just don’t have the ability to do all that may be required on any particular project. There are people who are wonderful composers with a wonderful sense of drama and music and that ability to work with the director and the producers and all of these people, but may not have complete knowledge of the orchestra and the ability to do a full orchestration. And I say that with no disrespect; it’s just the way it is. In the early days of film, most of the composers could do all of it, but they would run out of time and hire people to help them do some of the work – and that was called “ghostwriting”. So somebody may have done some of the work for the composer and not really gotten credit for it. That happened, and probably still does to a certain extent. Once again, I say this without any animosity or judgment. It’s just the nature of the beast. So the good composers were smart and hired good orchestrators, some of whom were fabulous composers in their own rights; and that’s how it has evolved. I just think it’s important to understand that composition and orchestration are really one, but, by the nature of the business, have evolved into two distinct professions that are totally linked together. You can’t have one without the other. In terms of approach, what is your point of attack, and does this vary from a team of orchestrators on a project? I try to always make each part make sense in that the notes are not just thrown in – this note’s a part of this chord, and this note’s a part of that. I try to make everybody’s part flow; make musical sense. As a general way of approach, that’s what I do. But I really have to come back to the composer. He’s the one who sets the tone for the people whom I work with. I really just go with that, and I think that’s why we gel so much. Yes, I guess we all have a style. If you sat me in a room and Jeff [Atmajian] in a room and said, “Do an arrangement of this,” I’m sure we’d come up with something different. But I still think we all have in mind the goal that the composer dictates. It’s hard for me to go beyond that. I don’t really believe that my style as an orchestrator is as important as the job I do as an orchestrator to support the composer. That’s what I want to be clear on. I don’t sit down and say, “I’m Brad Dechter trying to figure out how to make a Brad Dechter sound in this film score.” I would only do that if I were the composer. What have you gained most from your career? The knowledge that there’s a big difference between music and the music business. In other words, I grew up loving music. I wanted to be a part of music. I have learned that the making of music does not require making money at music and, conversely, making money at music doesn’t mean you’re making the music you want to make. Now, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen the other way. I’ve plenty of times made money at music I loved to do or been given assignments that I would like to do. The music business has taken me places I never would have dreamed of or never would have thought of or never would’ve had the opportunity to go on my own. I’ve been to Australia with Elton John. I’ve been to London with Elton John. I’ve been in movie-score recording situations, sat next to Barbra Streisand, and met people like Jerry Goldsmith; I once worked with John Williams on the Olympics music. I’ve done arrangements for Johnny Mathis and Jack Jones and Bette Midler. I’ve just had a wonderful blend of musical experiences that I never would have gotten had I not become a professional musician. On the other hand, I have to say that some of the most satisfying music I have ever done is the music I have created on my own for me, my family, and my friends. I’ve recently taken the time to try to take control of my own musical destiny. It’s not always easy! I don’t want to just be somebody who works for somebody else. As much as I love that, I think it’s important for our souls to create something that comes from within us. I’ve done this for over twenty years. I’ve worked really hard and had a lot of time taken up from my family and my friends and from my life in general because of these crazy deadlines, and they will still continue to happen. But I realized there was a point when I needed to take control and either say to or limit my involvement in a project so that I can do things that I want to do, whether they be with my family, or my own music, or with friends, or whatever it is. That’s what my career has done for me. It’s taught me a lot about priorities.
Every project is unique – and that’s probably more telling than the use of synthesizers. I really have to look at each project as its own entity. It’s not like the last one. It’s not like the next one. It’s not like anything else I’ve ever done. I just come in with fresh ears. What is this about? What is it I need to do? Then, looking at the clock, I realize that I’d better get going because there’s usually only that much time to think about it.