When I saw “Batman Forever” this summer I heard this great sound. A sound with thousands of tiny, delicate attacks careening from the rear of the theater towards the front. My first thought was, “Wow, Elliot Goldenthal really got a decent dub in this scene. I wonder what he sampled for that.” I then noticed my feet were being bombarded by thousands of tiny, delicate projectiles. The sound was some kid dropping his box of M&Ms in the back of the theater, but it went to prove a point: when you see the words “music by Elliot Goldenthal” be prepared for anything. In a world of studio-enforced temp-track clones his music and willingness to break with tradition is a breath of fresh air. While other composers are hard at work becoming the next Composer X, Elliot is hard at work becoming the first Elliot Goldenthal. I knew through reputation that he was a consummate musician, but I was happy to find that he’s also a very clever and funny person to spend an hour with and I’d like to thank him for his time. (Also, thanks to the people at Ronni Chasen’s office for putting up with my sometimes bewildering phone demeanor.)
First, just let me congratulate you on having a really terrific year. A lot of great stuff has happened.
It’s exhausting.
Well, I guess that’s the price. How has your career or even your attitude changed over the last couple of years now that you’ve become one of the better known figures in film music?
I don’t think it has. I stay within myself, I don’t really reflect on anything beyond the job that I need to accomplish. Oddly enough, I’ve had very good luck in terms of working with collaborates (meaning directors) that I have good synergy with. From Gus Van Sant [whom] I had a great time working with on through Ron Shelton, etc., etc. In general a lot of support. And also in general you’re never happy about what happens in the final dub so it never really changes.
That’s too bad. When you starting working on a film, what kinds of things do you originally look for to get your approach? Some of your works like “Batman” this summer seem very character-based. Something like “Alien 3” seemed very atmosphere-based.
Well, in “Alien 3”, that was something that David Fincher and I had many conversations about – almost a year before the movie – about trying to create, as you would say the word, atmosphere. Trying to create a musical sound world where you never knew what was going to happen next in terms of a sense of surprise and uneasiness prevailing wherever you are. That took tons and tons of preparation: creating homemade samples and combining them with large orchestras and a lot of alternative quote un-quote orchestration.
And in something like “Interview with the Vampire” it was very fortuitous that there was an organic content in the movie to start a score. For example, the ages: going back for or five hundred years I, very simply, took almost the history of instrument building – the chronological development of musical instruments starting with the human voice singing liturgical stuff (which I changed the language on), to the viola de gamba, through the harpsichord, through the piano, through the conventional modern symphony orchestra. So, if you look for little organic things in a movie it really, really helps.
In “Batman” I wanted a contrast between the large, gothic, orchestral heroic-type stuff one expects for a superhero. In contrast I used a lot of 1950s and ’60s electronic instruments for the Nygma character. From the theremin to old Farfisa keyboards and very, very old electronic organs and things like that, to try to create a 1950s, ’60s electronic sounds for him. I also used a lot of film noiry chords that sort of reflected the cinematography for the Jim Carrey character.
Now, in the past year you’ve done a film about vampires, a biography of a baseball hero, a summer blockbuster comic book film…
… And a schizophrenic composer in a movie called “Voices” that I just finished in England. We recorded that at Abbey Road [for a] Sony Classical release, so you can throw a schizophrenic composer in.
That leads me to my next question: do you look for these varied films that allow you to try all these different approaches?
Yes, yes. Between myself and my agent, they look out and I look out for subject matters that allow me to not just be mundane – that offer me other levels of reality so that, specifically, in the realm of orchestration and in the realm of thematic development you can get beyond what a studio would expect to be a normal-sounding film score.
So, it’s a very conscious choice.
Very conscious. There are many, many types of films that I just say no to.
Your music always seems to say something about the nature of the film; it’s never just there playing along. The ‘Libera Me’ summed up the entire story in “Interview”.
The ‘Libera Me’ – it’s interesting, I actually changed the words in Latin. No one ever got the joke, but the original Latin was “libera me, Domine de morte aeterna” which is “save me from everlasting death,” and I changed it to “vita aeterna” which is “save me from everlasting life.” Plus I had the Latin “lux aeterna” which is “eternal light,” which is another thing that pisses off vampires. No one got the references, but at least it was fun for me. [laughs]
I guess I’ve got to brush up on my Latin. Well, you’ve got that in “Interview”, you had the theme of precision versus chaos in “Cobb”. Like I said, the music always sums up the nature of the film. What do you see as the purpose of your music in a film? Is that what you’re aiming at?
I think that it depends on the movie. I definitely want to enhance or create this tactile quality in the music that the audiences go at. Music does something to them. In “Drugstore Cowboy” I based the music on different drug states and the kinetic movement that I’ve watched in seeing different kinds of dope fiends move. A heroin addict moves completely different than a speed freak, obviously. And someone who’s addicted to marijuana and smokes every day has a different movement than someone who’s on LSD. It was almost composing ballets to different types of drug states. In different films you look and you search for that type of thing that will make the music a heightened character in the movie. In “Cobb”, I think the key word is ‘collision’. Everything I tried in this score was having colliding ideas to get a sense of the way Cobb lived.
Right. One of the more interesting things I noticed in “Cobb” was during one of the baseball flashbacks. I think it was when he was watching the retrospective film, it seemed like you scored the flashback backwards. Whenever he was being an ornery S.O.B. you played the cheerful piano rag, whenever he was doing anything heroic you got the low brass and all that.
Yeah. That was a very difficult thing to score. First of all, it was really difficult for me to composer a rag that really sounded like something that was from 1905. And I definitely was not after the up-tempo, barrel-house kind of rag that one would expect. I wanted to composer a very, very sunny, simple halycon-days-of-1905 feel. That was the way baseball was played, as opposed to this growling, snarling, combative, threatening way that Cobb played. So, there’s the orchestral growls and snarls and low brass and things representing the fire in the belly of Cobb and his warlock way he approached baseball as opposed to the sun (which is the rag) that kept coming out which represented the atmosphere [from], let’s say 1905 to 1910.
“Cobb” is one of my lost children. I worked so hard on that score and really, I think it’s one of the better scores in my recent output. It’s kind of a shame that the film didn’t get as much exposure as it should have.
Would you rather have seen that score nominated for the Oscar than “Interview”?
Yes. Although I also liked the “Interview” score, but I felt bad. Not about lack of attention for my music, but lack of attention for the movie. I felt that Tommy Lee Jones’s performance was really great.
Yeah, I happened to see it and thought it was very powerful.
Just look at what’s out there in terms of movies. And you think about “Cobb” – I mean, it’s so much better than what’s out there.
It had a problem finding an audience, I guess.
Exactly right!
Okay, well, on to “Batman”. First of all, how did you get hired for that project?
I was the first one to get hired on “Batman”, before the actors, before the script.
That’s pretty good.
Joel Schumacher went to one of my sessions during “Demolition Man”. Actually, no – Gary LeMel over at Warner gave Joel a tape to listen to. And this is Joel speaking: Joel said that he listened to it for five minutes and then called me up. This is quoting Joel. This would have been a year before “Interview with the Vampire”.
Was Schumacher shopping around for composers at the time, or did he just hear and that was –
That was it. He just heard it and that was it. He was shopping around I guess.
Wasn’t he originally going to have you go with the Danny Elfman theme?
Yes.
How was the decision made to go with your original theme?
I didn’t want to use the Danny Elfman theme because I felt that everything else in the movie was kind of new, kind of different. It had a new look, a new Batmobile, a new Batman, a new director. I just felt that having just one element from the other films where there was no element from the other films in the other aspects – I felt it was kind of wrong. Also for me, it’s very difficult to have a theme without developing that theme throughout the movie. See, if I were to use Danny’s theme in the title I’d want to develop that music throughout. So, it put me at an artistic disadvantage and although I like the [Elfman] theme a lot I told Joel, “Listen, I’ll write my own theme and then you decide immediately on the set.” So he heard my theme and he said, “That’s fine,” and there was no more talk about it.
He was so strong with going with the new approach, I saw him mention that in the news a lot; why would he want to bring back an element of the first two films?
I think it had to do with pressure from marketing at Warner Bros. There are a lot of people like McDonald’s wanting to sell “Batman” glasses and all of this. So, after hearing two movies in a row that had Danny’s theme in them, plus a “Batman” cartoon, they started to associate Batman with that theme. But Joel was consistent to what he said, kept an open mind, and was totally open. I used to play with him. I’d say, “Joel, that might not be true [that people associated “Batman” with the Elfman theme]”. I said, “Let’s poll people. Let’s go to a diner. Let’s go anywhere you want – into any office and walk in and say, ‘What’s the “Batman” theme?’ and someone will sing [sings the “Batman” TV theme]. Nine out of ten people you ask what the theme to “Batman” is, they sing the TV theme.” And then you realize that’s the truth. I mean, that is the truth! Most people think of that as the “Batman” theme and not Danny’s theme or my theme. So I said, “If you really want to go with marketing [laughs] use the TV theme!”
That would have been an odd combination. What kinds of things was Schumacher after in terms of music? Not just the main theme, but the ambiance of the whole picture.
I think he wanted a lot of sexy music between – a lot of sensuality between Batman and Nicole’s part. And I think he wanted Jim Carrey’s music to be just as – there was a lot more written than got into the film, they chose a lot of sound effects – but, I think he wanted a certain sunny… there’s a word like “camp”, but it’s not “camp”. And I found using a lot of dance themes for him (tangos and fox trots and things like that) really helped his character.
Obviously, for Batman they wanted heroic. Make no mistake about it, it has to be heroic and it has to get the kids going and in many respects it has to be march-like. Martial. And that’s what it was.
I know they had the first CD that came out with all the pop tunes on it. Was there ever a problem worrying that that was going to end up in the film and not your score?
That was a constant discussion. Joel didn’t want to be influenced by the pressure of the pop songs. And he felt he was going to go his own way. At one point there was another pop song that he had pressure on putting in and someone mixed it in and he got furious. And then he put my music back in. He didn’t really want to relent to that kind of marketing nonsense. I think [the pop CD is] a terribly damaging thing for me because people don’t think of the soundtrack as the soundtrack. It’s total lies and misinformation that people think that these pop songs, 90% of which don’t appear in the movie, have anything to do with the movie. If they really wanted to call the soundtrack album what it was, they should have called it [laughs]: Songs Inspired by the Deals Made by Record Companies for the Up and Coming Batman Movie.
That would sell pretty well. Was there a problem with getting your music released on CD? Did they just want to do the one?
Yes, there was a problem because they spent so much money on the pop song album they wanted to limit my album to only a half hour. And there was a lot of back and forth discussion until finally they agreed to have it 45 minutes and actually there’s two hours of my music in the movie. So, I had to cut out, as you can see, an hour and 15 minutes of music.
Was it hard to make the cuts then?
Extremely hard because there’s tons and tons and tons of action sequences and you don’t want to put them back to back on a CD, but I had to because I’ve only got 45 minutes. If I had, let’s say an hour and a half, or an hour and even 15 minutes, I could space the album out a little more like I did on “Vampire”. I love what came out. I don’t feel bad, I just wish they would have tried to market a score as oppose to what they call a “soundtrack”.
Well, let’s get into the meat of the score, specifically your “Batman” theme. Like we talked about, the character’s had so many thematic presentations; was it difficult to find an original theme and still give people the sound they expected to go with the film?
Yeah, it’s a challenge because you realize what you’re dealing with is a franchise. When they flash that McDonald’s is selling the “Batman” glasses you hear and theme and it immediately has to sound like you want to go to a “Batman” movie. And I think that what I did was, instead of trying to work out stuff meticulously at the keyboard, I just made believe I was a kid again playing with soldiers and [used] what comes out of your mouth when you score your own cowboys and Indians when you’re two years old. Every kid can score. Every kid scores their own army games – listen to them. They’ll go: [sings a series of fanfares and gun shots], you know? So, it’s taking the most basic approach like that and then finding a theme that sounded to me like what every kid would think of as a “Batman”-heroic theme [sings his “Batman” theme] and then going to the piano and working out the harmonic details.
What do you think it is about this character that always suggests these darkly operatic sounds?
[Laughs] The fact that he’s wearing black and that he’s a bat and bats live in caves! And he has a double life and that’s the stuff that does not want to suggest anything but opera and darkness. That’s what the appeal is in that hero. It’s that he’s masked and that he’s caped and that he’s wearing black and all of that and his roots are in a cave.
You also threw in a lot of physically oriented music: the jazz and the dance music. Was that your reaction to an extremely physical film?
I wanted to lighten it up. I wanted people to smile. There were depictions of dances in the movie, but I think that one of my first impressions of this “Batman” was [that] the city was one of that characters. And if you think about Gotham City you think about America, probably New York or Chicago. And those cities are synonymous with jazz and dance rhythms specifically found in the ’40s and ’50s. ’20s, ’30s, ’40s, ’50s: you can’t help but think of America without thinking of jazz. And I thought it was very important not only to have sort of post-Wagnerian orchestral music, but a very American Gotham City sound.
We talked about the “Batman” theme; how did you go about finding your themes for the other characters?
In terms of Jim Carrey I just did a portrait of what I thought a lot of music sounded like in the film noir period and then I just took it to the left. If you listen to the album the thing called the ‘Nygma Variations (An Ode to Science)’ there’s a lot of really ‘out’ stuff there. I just watched the character. I think Jim Carrey does it all in his super-charged, kinetic, physical comedy. I think it really almost composes itself.
How about for Tommy Lee Jones’s character?
Tommy Lee Jones – I didn’t mine it or try to disguise it in any way: he was a villain! And I wanted the darkest, meanest, villainest stuff that you associate with that. I kept a lot of the orchestration in the low, low brass and strings and tried to create a very menacing slow march for him.
For Robin, a lot of his character has to do with the reaction to the death of his family and to the sadness which accompanies that, which, in many respects, unites him with Bruce Wayne because Bruce Wayne also lost his parents tragically. That sense of tragedy and dark clouds that follow people, that sadness and remorse, I think it’s what was very important and essential for me to make it believable that Batman and Robin were made for each other – that they had this background in tragedy.
You mentioned a little bit about Jim Carrey’s theme and how it was pretty much trying all those wild approaches at one time. But, it seems like he has that little four-note motif that goes with him a lot.
Yeah, [sings it], on the theremin.
Did you keep that purposely short so that you could use all the different variations?
Yeah. If you think about another four-note theme [sings the opening to Beethoven’s fifth symphony], usually when one has a little motivic icon or something that’s very recognizable, it then becomes easy for you to pick up if you do many, many different variations on it.
Okay, interesting. It seems like besides their own theme everyone seems to get a little pool of motivic material to use. Were you setting up everybody with their own texture in the film?
Oh, absolutely. I wanted to bring the good old piano in for Nicole, just a sense of carefree and sensual pleasure. And also, again, something that was very jazzy and, oddly enough, a tango. It’s a veiled tango. Look at the scene on the roof, it almost looks like they’re doing a tango, but they’re not dancing, they’re posturing, vying for power and sexual dominance and I wanted to reflect that in the music with a very sensual tango.
Did you find it easier to write for a very visual film like “Batman Forever” or would you prefer something that’s more story driven?
It’s harder when you’re writing for something like “Cobb” because unless there are long stretches without dialogue it becomes difficult to composer because you don’t want to fight with the words. Thankfully there were long stretches where the music could just suggest the psychological states of the character. “Interview with the Vampire” was a strongly visual film, but it also had tons and tons of dialogue, usually whispering dialogue. So, that would be a type of movie that’s both visually oriented and very, very book oriented. It doesn’t matter to me really.
“Batman” was obviously Warner Bros.’ big summer money-making film. You talked about how that affected the behind-the-scenes workings in getting your music heard at all. Did it affect your output as far as composing? Obviously there had to be a considerable amount of pressure.
No, there’s always pressure. I don’t find one pressure different than another pressure. I just composed an oratorio based on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War – a thing called ‘Fire, Water, Paper’ that I composed right before “Batman”. That was a kind of international pressure where you’re dealing with people’s lives whose legs got blown off, whose husbands never came home, whose houses were napalmed and they’re coming to the theater to hear what you have to compose based on an experience that happened to them 20 or 30 years ago and is continuing to try to destroy their lives. That’s real pressure because it’s real. [On] “Batman” I just took the approach that it’s a comic book film and I’m going to have fun with it. Basically, that’s what I did; I just enjoyed myself. It was pressure because there was very little time. They cut the film down from two hours and a half to, like, two hours and five minutes or something like that. I think at most I had a month to do it.
The last time you talked with Film Score Monthly you said, “I like to use the orchestra in exciting, alternative ways in terms of orchestration.” Could you discuss some of the things that made this score exciting to you – some of the techniques that you used?
In this it was basically straight ahead. The supervising orchestrator that I’ve worked with a number of times, his name is Robert Elhai. In a film like this I wanted to stay away from extremely complicated late 20th-century orchestrational techniques. But, where I had the most fun was the combination of the jazz-oriented stuff and the orchestra with Jim Carrey’s stuff. And also the Gotham boogie woogie which is almost a weird amalgam of ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ in 7/4 time, boogie woogie, and 1950s and ’60s big band jazz/spy movie type music. I think in using those kinds of retro elements and deconstructing some of the type of music that you expected out of the 1960s I had great fun with it. I had great fun using outdated and outmoded electronic instruments in conjunction with the orchestra for Jim Carrey’s stuff. And I used some harmonic voices. We had a few sessions with a harmonic choir for some of the flashback sequences. But, in general, the orchestration in “Batman” was pretty straight ahead with the exception of Jim Carrey’s.
Also, I think in all of my scores combined at least in the past few years I’ve never used a piatti – a crash cymbal. In “Batman” there must be two hundred.
You listed a lot more orchestrators this time on the CD. Was that just because of the time problems at the end?
That was just time problems. I used to orchestrate primarily myself. Then the time got less and less and then I found [myself] working with Bob Elhai. Basically, he understands my orchestrations to such an incredible degree that he just saves my life because I could never get it done all by myself. In terms of time it [on “Batman”] it was just impossible. It was a month in which two and a half hours had to be composed. Typically, a day of work went like: I compose from six o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning, in between Bob and I did the orchestration and got that together, the copyist picked it up at ten o’clock in the morning, and the sessions were that same day. Every single day it went on like this for over three weeks. It was just an unbelievable amount of exhausting work. One of the delightful days was my work with Shirley Walker who worked on all the “Batmans”, I think, including the cartoons. Shirley was wonderful. She conducted one session and also was tremendously good-spirited and it was nice working with her. But, if I had my way, if we had the time, I think it would just be myself and Bob doing all the orchestration. But, we’d need more time.
You said the score to “Batman”uses, obviously, fewer late 20th century orchestration techniques as opposed to something like “Alien3”, but compared to the first two “Batman” scores you do use more modern techniques. Do you ever have problems with the studio people? When they hear minimalism, or quarter notes, or aleatoric music, or any of that do they want you to play to the lowest common denominator of the audience? Do they get nervous when they hear things they don’t understand?
No. I think in and of themselves they get nervous, but when they see how [the music] works in a scene – I mean it’s composed to reaction and I am a man of the theatre mainly, I came out of the theater. How it works dramatically is the most important thing to me – when they see it fits the action very well it doesn’t bother them. It gets them scared when they hear it without seeing it to picture.
As far as your electronic score in “Batman”, I know you used some of the older instruments – the theremin and that. For some of the sounds that you created: when you go to do something like that do you have a specific sound in your mind, then get Richard Martinez to sample that for you, or do the two of you have a library of sounds that you search through?
Yeah, both Richard Martinez, Matthias Gohl, and myself. We’ve done 15, 16 projects together so we’ve amassed a huge library. Most of those samples are home-made. There are two reasons I work with Richard. One of which is to organize and program very, very standard orchestral stuff in the sequences so that the studio guys and the director can hear the approach of the orchestration. That’s A, and B, more important, is to creatively build and create textures and sounds that have never been used – combinations that are completely original. Like for example, in one project I had Richard sample low moaning wind and combine the moaning wind sound with a didgeridoo and the low double basses all as one sound – finding the central pitch of the wind being a low, low F and then having a range of maybe four or five notes where it sounds really natural. Creating those types of textures can be very rewarding in terms of the work that I do with Richard Martinez. He has a tremendous amount of skill and patience in terms of sampling.
What are some of the samples that appear in “Batman”? They’re kind of hard to place just listening to them.
In “Batman”? Not many.
Some of the jazz tracks used them, didn’t they? During the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ part as you called it there was something going on electronic.
Oh, there was electronic at the bottom – a sort of burbling kind of thing. For the New York session which is on the back of the U2 album there’s a lot of sampled hip hop sounds. But, in the session in California all we had was an old-time Moog that played in the bass. There was very, very little sampling in “Batman”, as opposed to “Alien3” with tons and tons and tons.
There are some really complex sounds in there – they’re great. What do you see as the fundamental differences, musically, between composing concert works, something like your Vietnam Oratorio, and film scores?
The fundamental difference is that on the concert stage you have a chance to develop a theme for as long as you want. In the Vietnam work, for example, the first movement was 30 minutes. The next two movements were – well, it equaled up to an hour and 20 minutes for three movements. In a film if it’s an hour and 20 minutes that might be 50 and 60 different cues. So, the art of filmmaking if often stating your case clearly and getting the arc of the drama right within 30 seconds, or within a minute and a half, or even within five seconds. You have to be able to compose and get to the point and not develop your themes very, very quickly. I mean, there’s a lot of undeveloped material in movies. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just the nature of it. If you think about “The Third Man” it’s not totally developed. It’s basically one theme throughout the whole movie.
How do you feel about separating the music from the movie – should it only exist with the movie? Andre Previn said something recently where he felt film music has absolutely no place in the concert world. Do you like to make this delineation between the two also?
I think he’s really wrong. If you think about what’s the closest thing to film music that you can pick out of the 19th century it is the incidental music. Beethoven wrote, for example, Egmont”. We all know the Egmont Overture, but he wrote a lot of music for Egmont the play, some of which has the same kind of problem, which is it only goes two minutes at a time, or a minute and a half, or etc., etc. But, it’s really great listening. And you listen to it with different ears; you’re not listening to it like you’re listening to a concerto, you’re listening to it as incidental music. I find it just as delightful to hear works like “The Red Pony” of Aaron Copland, “Lieutenant Kije”, the master works for film on the concert stage. I don’t see the problem. Mr. Previn must realize that in every period and in any type of music, 90% of all the music is garbage – mediocre – and out of that the cream that rises to the top is what we hear when we listen to the 19th-, 18th-, 17th- century music on the concert stage. We’re not hearing the garbage that was written. There’s so much mediocre music that was written in the 19th century that we never hear because it just disappears. You know, we’re really hearing the most rarified stuff. I hate to sound preachy, but I really believe in this. After the 20th century is over I think we’re going to have a pretty damn good accounting of, it must be 25 hours of brilliant film music. Just think about it. There must be at least two concerts filled with brilliant Bernard Herrmann music. Leonard Bernstein wrote one great film score and certainly Copland, certainly Prokofiev. Shostakovich wrote over 20 film scores if not 80 film scores. We’ll never really know. Philip Glass did some great work in films. It’s just an unfair and stupid, boneheaded thing to say that it doesn’t belong on the concert stage. It’s difficult, yes, to have any old film music performed. The great stuff belongs anywhere.
So, do you think we’ll have that much great music when we look back at the 20th-century concert work?
I think the same proportion: 10, 15% of all the stuff. Certainly we’re lucky that Igor Stravinsky lived in this century and Shostakovich and Prokofiev and jazz: Louie Armstrong and John Coltrane. I think this was an incredibly rich century in terms of music.
So, then it doesn’t bother you when something like your ‘Vietnam Oratorio’ comes out and many people will perceive this as a concert work by a film composer?
That’s only because the butt-brains that do the criticizing read it in the program. If they didn’t know, if it wasn’t in the program, they wouldn’t mention it – they wouldn’t say that. Someone once said to me they don’t call them enthusiasts, they call them critics! [laughs] It bothers me, of course it bothers me, because the stupidity is almost unbelievable. If you’re going to criticize a work, criticize a work on its own merit, but don’t compare it to another medium. I couldn’t get away with that kind of music in a film. I couldn’t imagine the music from the oratorio being in a movie.
The oratorio is due to be released on CD, isn’t it?
Yeah, on Sony Classical.
Okay, could you discuss a little bit what people will be hearing when this comes out?
Well, they’ll be hearing an oratorio. It’s a choral work with two soloists, Yo Yo Ma playing cello obligati in the first movement. It’s a work in multi-languages: in English, in Vietnamese, in Latin, and in French. It’s a very solemn work that I’m very proud of and that was probably the highlight of my life in terms of the concerts of California: 2,000 people not leaving the theater for at least 45 minutes after the concert, half the orchestra in tears, the audience not wanting to leave, a standing ovation for 15 minutes. It was a tremendously emotional moment, people coming up saying I’ve changed their lives, I’ve healed them, etc., etc. You never expect that, you expect to come out of it alive. But, there will be other performances, this is just the first. There’s a lot of talk of it going to Washington, D.C., to Vietnam, to Carnegie Hall, etc.
So, out of all your compositional output so far, would you say the Vietnam work best represents you as a composer – what you aspire to?
I think it’s my best work so far. Yeah, I would say that. There’s another theatrical work, a piece called Juan Darien, an opera Grendel. Yeah, I think so far. I’m certainly proud of the film music as well. I don’t shy away from that stuff. I don’t look down upon the medium of film. I think there’s a lot of snobbery in the world.
Yeah, definitely. What can you tell us about any upcoming projects now, both in film and concert music?
In terms of concert music there’s a trumpet and piano concerto that Sony Classical is asking me to write. There’s a film coming up called “Voices” about a schizophrenic composer – an English film that I just composed in Abbey Road and that will be coming out on Sony Classical, then there’s a movie that I’m doing with Neil Jordan – “Michael Collins” – that’s going to be in January. I’m scoring that, and then there’s the next picture with Jiel Schumacher – “A Time To Kill” – probably next year, and an opera Grendel, and a musical called Liberty’s Taken, and stuff like that.
Sounds like you’re keeping busy.
Very busy.