Known for his versatility and willingness to experiment with styles, instrumentation and genre, US composer Elliot Goldenthal has enjoyed a long and fruitful career in opera, theatre and film. He picked up an Oscar, Golden Globe and World Soundtrack Award in 2003 for Frida, but the 70-year-old musician has his sights set firmly on the future. “I tend to look back and regret, because I want to change things,” reflects Goldenthal, who will receive a lifetime achievement award at the World Soundtrack Awards on October 16. “Hope springs up when it comes to future projects and what I’m working on.” Born in Brooklyn in 1954, Goldenthal was exposed to a variety of musical styles at a young age thanks to his older brother. “I remember going [with him] to the Five Spot, a wonderful jazz club in New York City, as a child of seven, eight or nine, hearing [Charles] Mingus, Miles Davis and [John] Coltrane.” Aged 15, his brother took him to the seminal Woodstock music festival in 1969. “He was friendly with Janis Joplin, and she called and said, ‘Elliot, I have a concert, can you come?’ I had no idea what I was in for… it was a magical experience.” After studying music, Goldenthal made a name for himself in New York theatre, collaborating with his partner Julie Taymor, before scoring two films for German director Ulli Lommel: 1979’s rock ’n’ roll western “Cocaine Cowboys” and 1980’s “Blank Generation” about New York’s punk scene. He spent much of the 1980s working in theatre, winning an Obie for his and Taymor’s musical Juan Darién, a version of a Requiem Mass sung in Latin and Spanish that proved to be his route into Hollywood after his agent sent a tape of the work to Gus Van Sant, who was looking for a composer on “Drugstore Cowboy”. “He didn’t like my orchestral music at all,” remembers Goldenthal, but, fortuitously, the film’s editor chanced upon the unmarked tape and used his Juan Darién score as temp music. Van Sant loved it and Goldenthal got the job. “It was a very unusual experience because he wanted to watch me create the music in real time, so I improvised the entire score, layer upon layer, electronically, until he liked it.” The same year in 1989, Goldenthal provided the music for the Stephen King adaptation “Pet Sematary”, following it with scores for “Alien 3”, “Demolition Man” and Neil Jordan’s “Interview with the Vampire”. For the latter, Goldenthal had three weeks to write a soundtrack inspired by European church music, boy sopranos and Latin. “[Producer] David Geffen wanted to have a rock element, and I said, ‘No, I think it should sound like the 12th century.’ Neil loved the idea from the beginning.” “Interview” started a working relationship with Jordan that spanned five films. “Neil is a great collaborator because he lets the composer in on the script very early.” Another meaningful partnership was formed with Joel Schumacher, for whom Goldenthal scored “Batman Forever”, “Batman & Robin”, and “A Time To Kill”. “I have nothing but praise and fond memories of working with him. His sense of theatrics, his sense of humour, his adventure, he was always fighting the studios as well as inviting the composer into his vision,” he recounts. “[He wanted the ‘Batman’ films] to be very colourful. ‘Batman Forever’ was a huge palette. ‘Batman & Robin’ was less successful as a movie, but he was wonderful to work with.” In comparison, Goldenthal found working for Michael Mann, for whom he scored “Heat” and “Public Enemies”, to be more of a “challenge”. “He is a gentleman, personally, but you have to be malleable.” Goldenthal’s longest collaboration has been with Taymor, for whom he scored “Titus”, “The Tempest”, “Across the Universe”, “The Glorias”, and “Frida”. “It’s a guitar-based score, very intimate,” he recalls of the latter, a biopic of artist Frida Kahlo. “She [Kahlo] spent a lot of time alone in bed, so I wanted something metaphorically that could be small enough to fit into her bed, that she could hold. It was strongly influenced by Latin America, not only Mexico. It’s always a joy to write melodies.” In addition to distilling his near 50-year film career into 20 minutes of music to be played at the WSA lifetime achievement tribute, Goldenthal is working with Taymor on a musical theatre project based on Thomas Mann’s novella ‘The Transposed Heads’. “I’ve lived with it for a long time and I was never satisfied, so we started again, completely new songs, completely new settings,” he says. “I’ve just got back from London where we were doing a three-week workshop, auditioning a cast. We hope to open in London, probably a year from now.” Goldenthal will give a Composer’s Talk in Ghent on Thursday, October 17, followed by a Creative Partnership discussion with director Julie Taymor.