Can you remember the first time a film score made a big impact on you?

Yes, I remember being very taken with Shirley Walker’s score for Mask of the Phantasm (1993) as a child. That was probably the first time I became aware of the idea of scoring for film as a career path. There is so much nuance to that score, and I remember watching that movie over and over again with the main theme stuck in my head for weeks.

How would you describe your style of composition in three words?

String chamber electronica.

How do you balance your own musical voice with the director’s vision for the film?

When I’m talking with a new client, we need to have a long conversation about musical imagination. We have to establish the bounds of a score and its instrumentation, and find out what that client’s expectations are. It’s my job to create sandcastles within the sandbox we build together, and the client’s job is to inspect the structural integrity of those sandcastles.

Do you write to picture immediately, or do you compose thematic material before seeing the edit?

This depends on the timeline, format, and overall needs of a project. I’ve written cues for podcasts (particularly The Deprogram (2021–2025)), which require key material composed before anything else for the project is produced. I’ve also written feature film scores, which typically need picture lock or at least a solid cut before scoring. One exception was for a montage scene in a feature I scored, Conception (2022), which needed to be cut specifically to the rhythm of music, so I had to write the cue for that particular scene before the rest of the score and even before there was a rough cut delivered to me. So this varies, and is one of the first things I discuss with a client.

What non-musical sources (literature, art, nature, etc.) inspire your compositions? 

I find a great deal of influence comes from walking around the city I live in, as well as reading the news. Buildings, landscapes, and current events feel enmeshed with music in my mind – I feel scoring is the same as architecture or landscaping, the way the pieces come together. The whole of a piece of music doesn’t work without any one of its instruments or notes, and yet it’s always greater than the sum of its parts!

Top three film scores and why:

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) scored by Angelo Badalementi. This is a heart wrenching soundtrack. I love how all-over-the-place it is in its instrumentation. It is definitely an artifact of its time, but the sincerity helps it hold up well.

Taal (1998) scored by A. R. Rahman. I love the way Rahman mixes synths with live instrumentation and vocals. I especially love the percussion in this score. It’s playful but also romantic.

Broadchurch (2013-2017) scored by Ólafur Arnolds. This soundtrack is instrumentally stripped down, but it packs a gut punch with every scene because Arnalds really knows how to wrangle deep feelings out of a small group of string instruments.