Meet the composer

What a fun topic Alan - and a great story!

What's the Troy debacle, Pawel? I know his score was rejected and James Horner came in, but I don't know the background. If you shared it already, I can go and search the past posts.

I don't mean for this to be chronological. And my own experiences will mainly be restricted to the few festivals I have been to but I thought that it would be nice to hear some stories people have.

Me neither! I don't think that I could come up with interesting enough questions to make an interesting interview.

And what a shame you didn't get a good photo memento of your Silvestri encounter!

Actually, that's a pretty good picture. Not THAT dark and blurry.

I've always been very envious of you who managed to attend the Spanish festivals (I think there were three at one point -- only Tenerife remains, sort of). I never did. But then I've attended others, like Ghent, Krakow, Vienna and Berlin. I think the real "revolution" for me was from 2010 onwards. I can't really recall a lot of composer meets in the 2000s. There were no doubts some (especially Norwegian), but I can't remember much other than the previously mentioned Bjerknes.

Ghent in 2010 was really great. As it happens, my first trip to the WSA coincided with their anniversary, so a lot of great composers present: Angelo Badalamenti, Elliot Goldenthal, Howard Shore, Stephen Warbeck, Bruno Coulais, Frederic Devreese, Gustavo Santaolalla, Nico Muhly, Abel Korzeniowski, Alexandre Desplat. Probably a few more I've forgotten.

There are two meets that were particularly great during that event:

The first was meeting my third favourite composer of all time, Elliot Goldenthal, for the first time. We chatted a bit at a reception. I would later interview him (twice) during other festivals. By the 4th or 5th time I ran into him at these events, he started recognizing me. That was great.

Here's a pic of that.

The other was meeting Angelo Badalementi after the concert. I've told you this story before. TWIN PEAKS (and its music) inspired me to write a novel as a teenager. I told this story to Angelo, and he said "you should make a film out of it and give me a call". That made my day.

Here's a pic of that.

But even more important than these composer meetings was meeting the Maintitles crowd "in the flesh" for the first time. We hung out a lot, drank loads of beer and had a great time. I think I slept one night on the couch in Thomas' small apartment.

These days, yes. But if I had bumped into him in the 90s or early 2000s, it would have been awkward, because I didn't like his music much at the time. Fortunately, I've come around on him. Never met him, but I've met his brother Rupert.

That reminds me of another story -- in Krakow a few years ago, I was a 'special guest' at the festival. One of the festival co-ordinators introduced me to a woman. She said her name was Maria Giacchino, and I immediately froze. I'm notorious for my dislike of her big brother, and I was worried that she had read some of my rants against his music on the boards. Fortunately, she had no idea who I was, so I got away clean. LOL!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll tone it down now, and get back with more stories later.

My second composer encounter, though still online and that led to a Skype interview? Jeff Danna!

Nice interview I had with him, with one hilarious experience: my computer was quite weak at the time and I had to use my parents' desktop to perform the interview (the first one to actually have an English version on the site, I hate to admit that posting both language version - the original English and my own translation into Polish was not my idea, oh well). For some reason a bowl of salad was still on the main table and somewhere mid-interview my dog decided to have some of it. I noticed it and excused Jeff mid-answer and started yelling (in Polish, of course!) at the dog to get off the table. Then, of course, I had to excuse myself to Jeff and explain what happened.

Good times.

That sort of anticipates the humorous 'children bombing*' episodes you see on the news sometimes where serious Zoom interviews are suddenly invaded by the family's young child and (sometimes) chaos ensues.

*children bombing may not be the best phrase but I can't come up with a better one at the moment!

He's right, though. Scottish is gorgeous. I love listening to both you and Graham Watt on the Zoom chats. And then we have Thomas' Irish to jigue it up!

I still stand by that! Major annoyance! There are only a very few composers - all Norwegian - that I would consider friends. A couple of international composers that I've met repeatedly, I would consider acquaintances at the most. But none would be 'friends'. That requires a whole other level of regular social interaction.

Yes, certainly. I consider all of you here friends, even though there are some - like you - I've never met in the flesh.

My second composer meeting was at the aforementioned UCLA concert. Michael Giacchino had debuted a suite from his new film The Incredibles and had conducted it on stage. After the concert, my husband and couple friends who'd attended the concert with me (we were waiting in the auditorium in hopes of meeting James Newton Howard). We were the only ones in the place, kind of blocking the aisle when Michael Giacchino came out on the stage to pick up his score sheet and then headed down the aisle to exit the theater. So we all congratulated him on the suite and I said hello and shook his hand. That evening was the first I had ever heard of him, and hadn't heard The Incredibles other than that live performance, so while he was a super kind and a really nice guy, I wish I'd known more of his work at the time because I didn't appreciate that meeting as much as some others. And I'd appreciate it so much more now that I've heard more of his stuff.

Unfortunately, I don't know who Carles Cases is, but that's super neat that you had a special connection over your heritage Alan!

One of the good things about film music festivals is the events organised alongside the festival talks. One of those events at the second SONCINEMAD was a big screen showing of THE DARK CRYSTAL (Trevor Jones was a guest at the festival, conducting a suite of his music).

Another event was an organised dinner at a local restaurant. We all had to be taken to the venue by bus and I was fortunate enough to end up sitting next to Jones. So I was able to have a chat with him for about 30 minutes.

I don't recall much of the content but we did chat about whisky. He is a huge fan of the stuff and I think that he was involved in an appreciation society in the UK for whisky.

He was a very approachable person to talk to. He invited me to visit his studio but, unfortunately, when I tried to organise it afterwards I couldn't get past his contact guy. For some reason, he just didn't seem to believe me when I explained things to him.