How do you balance your time and work in between film scoring and your other theater projects?
It’s a third film scoring, a third theater, and a third concert hall. If you compose a minute of music a day, it usually works out for any project. Usually on a project like “Othello” it was roughly an hour and twenty minutes of music. If you figure that out, it’s about three or four months composing a minute a day. In films it’s different because there’s a lot of room for modified repetition.
What is the greatest number of projects you’ve worked on at once?
I would say the worst situation was finishing the Vietnam oratorio, “Fire Water Paper”, which really cut into my “Batman Forever” time. After the hurdle between the oratorio and “Batman Forever”, which took me about a month and a half to finish, I ended up almost on the floor, exhausted; I couldn’t even take a walk without feeling exhausted. At that point I made a promise to the head of Sony Classical, Peter Gelb, that I’d compose the music to his movie “Voices”. So the day after I finished “Batman Forever”, I had to take the Concorde to London to start scoring the next picture. After “Voices” I ended up with pneumonia; I was very sick and almost had a complete physical breakdown. So it was the stretch from March through August of working on an unbelievable schedule. My body just collapsed after that and I couldn’t work again for another couple of months.
Does scoring for symphony, opera, ballet, or chamber orchestra give you a certain freedom or emotional release that can’t be achieved by film scoring?
Yes, because it’s about the music and you’re telling your own story musically as opposed to supporting another story. In opera you’re supporting another story, but you’re telling it in your own way. It’s a totally different technique writing for non-film projects because, when you are writing for a film, number one, you have to absolutely support the film. You have more freedom when you’re not writing for film, but in certain cases you can mix media a lot more in film and it will feel right because you’re watching image.
So the freedom of film scoring exists within the approach of using different styles of music?
That’s right. You might want to compose in a Baroque style, a classical style, a jazz style, or this or that. In a concert hall you have to be extremely personal and you have to absolutely be as close to yourself as you can get.
Is there any non-film project you’ve done that stands out above the rest?
I think “Fire Water Paper”, the Vietnam oratorio, because it was such a traumatic thing for this country. It was such a traumatic thing to composer it and have the enormous reactions I’ve had from both veterans and Vietnamese people who lived through those agonizing days and continue to have trauma based on that period. I think if touching a nerve and healing the wounds even for one or twenty people – that’s a significant contribution to my lifetime.