ASCAP HENRY MANCINI AWARD

Presented to Mark Isham in recognition of his Outstanding Achievements and Contributions to the Music of Film and Television

Tonight's Henry Mancini Award for Lifetime Achievement honoree, Mark Isham, says that his very first Hollywood movie score "fell into my lap" in the early 1980s. Maybe so, but it is Isham's distinctive talent and tenacity that have made him one of the most prolific and in-demand film composers of our time. New York-born and San Francisco-raised, Mark Isham was a rising jazz trumpet star when he burst upon the movie music scene with his score for Never Cry Wolf in 1983. Since then, he has compiled a most distinguished and varied filmography that includes scores to documentaries (The Times of Harvey Milk), suspense (The Hitcher), science fiction (Blade), comedies (In Her Shoes), dramas (Nell), and war movies (Rules of Engagement). His sprawling score for A River Runs Through It was nominated for an Oscar.

Isham has also cultivated a celebrated and ongoing collaboration with several directors including, Alan Rudolph, Robert Redford, Jodie Foster, and Paul Haggis. His recent projects include Crash, this past year's Academy Award winner for Best Film; Eight Below and the upcoming The Black Dahlia. His television work includes the themes for Chicago Hope, Family Law, and the Emmy Award-winning theme to EZ Streets.

Isham is a full-time movie composer, but that has not prevented him from garnering Grammy Awards as a recording artist, concertizing, and working as a sideman on other artists' releases. He has performed with Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Lyle Lovett, the Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen. Recently, Isham spoke with ASCAP about his multi-faceted life in music and provided an insightful look into what makes a film composer tick.

As a person who has achieved success as a film composer, bandleader and instrumentalist - what do you see as your primary musical role?
I started off as a trumpet player and very easily made my way into composition. But the first number of years as a writer was writing for myself as a trumpet player and the bands that I had. Film composing came later down the line. One of the reasons I love film composing is being able to create many different musical styles that I wouldn't necessarily write for myself. As a composer I've had the wonderful opportunity to write for 100-piece orchestras. However, I still love recording my own music and performing with other artists. It's a path and a balance that has naturally evolved.

Both of your parents were involved in music; it was all around you as a child. Yet, your background at home was certainly steeped in concert music. How did you move into jazz?
My mother is a professional violinist and my father has a masters in both music and history, and a doctorate in the humanities. I was encouraged and supported in music from day one. Jazz was my discovery. With my parents both in the classical world, I grew up playing piano and violin, and listened to classical music around the house. As any young person does, I discovered pop music in my own way. But pop never grabbed me until much later. Believe it or not, it was actually Henry Mancini who introduced me to music that was not classical - in the sense that I heard his film scores and thought, this is not the same as most orchestral music. What is this influence? When I came upon Miles Davis and sounds of cool jazz, I realized that was the influence in Mancini's music - the jazz bass, the rhythms. When I was in junior high, I heard jazz radio for the first time. I thought this is something I'm really interested in. Let's find out all about this. It was my own discovery, not something I learned in the household.

Was it Miles Davis who inspired you to pick up the trumpet?
Actually, I was inspired through classical music. I loved the sound of Baroque music and the Baroque trumpet, especially the music of Bach. In fact, I spent a number of years, well into my twenties, studying that and entertained the idea of becoming a Baroque trumpet specialist. By that time I had already discovered Miles. When I graduated high school, I was firmly entrenched in both worlds. I loved Baroque trumpet, but I already knew I wanted to own a Martin trumpet (the horn played by Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie) and be cool.

Did the idea of film music cross your mind at that point?
It crossed my mind. I was aware of John Williams and others writing for film, and I appreciated and was intrigued by a lot of what they were doing. In fact, I wrote a little bit of music for an experimental dance film. It was interesting because I was hired to write a piece of music and someone paid to have it recorded. But it wasn't enough to kick me over the edge into pursuing this as a career. It was another experiment that I did. I was writing some music for electronic instruments and traditional Chinese instruments. A good friend was very proficient in all the bamboo flutes and had access to some great percussion instruments from a Chinese music ensemble in San Francisco. So we did a demo of some music like this. One smart thing I did was send out my music, even though I had yet to be introduced to the Hollywood system and the notion of constantly promoting oneself. I sort of did it naturally and sent it around to friends and others I thought might be interested. It made its way into the hands of a filmmaker, and that, basically, is how this whole career got started.

It was sort of a "Cinderella" story. Looking back over twenty years in the film business, I realize that things like this very seldom happen. The music fell into the hands of Carroll Ballard, who was making a Disney film, Never Cry Wolf in 1983. I will always thank and admire him for his faith and creative interest in me!

What did you know about film composing at that time?
I knew absolutely nothing, but Carroll was very smart. He had two fantastic music editors working to try and cut the previous score into shape; temping new music for the film and they were composers in their own right. Carroll said to them, "I want Mark to write this, but I need you guys to be his left and right hand here." One of them became the music's producer and the other, the arranger and orchestrator. They basically walked me through the whole thing and made it work. These were two more people who were instrumental in my career - Todd Boekelheide and Mark Adler.

What resulted from the success of Never Cry Wolf?
The film did well. Afterward, I heard from a young agent at ICM's new film music division. He said he saw the film and asked if he could represent me. I said, "Why not?" So, two of the major problems a young film composer might have - getting an agent and getting a first film - fell in my lap. I was spared a lot of the hard knocks many people go through.

As my agent was procuring my next feature film, my solo career was also starting to take off and I had made my first solo album for Windham Hill. After the first three film scores had been completed, I went to Windham Hill and said, "I would like to release these as a record." They were fantastic and pulled off putting three soundtracks on a single CD.

One of the directors you've collaborated with was Alan Rudolph. What is it about you and Rudolph that has made this a fortuitous collaboration?
Alan, for lack of a better word, is a "jazz" filmmaker. He likes spontaneity, a certain looseness and freshness in his filmmaking. He's of that Robert Altman school - create a universe, put talented actors in that universe, give them just enough instruction but not too much, let things happen and then capture that. That's a very "jazz" point of view. Whatever jazz does stylistically, what you're doing is giving talented improvisers a universe - a song - and just enough of a song to start with, but then saying, "Go! Do something new, and do it spontaneously, together and in front of an audience." I think that sensibility in Alan Rudolph and myself attracted us to each other; it made the music, especially in those early days, fit his films quite well.

To me, the culmination of my work with Alan was Afterglow. Not that some of the early ones weren't superb - The Moderns (1988) was a turning point in my career. But Afterglow (1997) defined the relationship I had with Alan in the way we had been thinking about doing things coming into its own. The fact that I did a jazz score but did not write anything out, which is what you'd do for a jazz record, would make a nervous wreck of 99% of film directors and 150% of studios. If you walk in with a 16-bar lead sheet and say, "This is the score," studios wouldn't give you a cent. The truth of the matter is we meticulously planned this performance of the score, the way Altman or Rudolph plan a film scene, so that when the cameras roll, you catch gold. We hired world-class jazz musicians, gave them the compositions that I was confident would express what needed to be expressed, but no click tracks, and recorded for two days. Then, of course, we went into the editing room and cut for three weeks. It was one of the most successful musical experiences of my career. It truly is a jazz score and, truly, a film score at the same time.

"The fact that I did a jazz score but did not write anything out, which is what you'd do for a jazz record, would make a nervous wreck of 99% of film directors and 150% of studios."

You've scored movies with many other acclaimed directors, many of them more straightforward and structured in their approach. One of the major ones was Robert Redford on A River Runs Through It. Was that a different kind of experience?
Very different. It was exceedingly challenging for me at that time, because I had never before written a completely acoustic, orchestral, and, what a lot of people would consider a very traditional, film score. I remember, after working with Redford for a couple of weeks, turning to him and asking, "I'm curious as to why you picked me for this." He said, "Years ago, I saw Never Cry Wolf, and I made a note of your name with the idea of working with you at some point because I thought you have something that would be the right sensibility for me."

Somehow the music captured that quality of man's relationship to nature, and he responded to that. Ultimately, that's a big part of what A River Runs Through It is about, and even though the vocabulary could not be more different between the two scores, there was still a quality of the communication and emotion that Redford wanted me to create for him. My challenge was to do it in a vocabulary that I had not been working in for a number of years, and not that knowledgeable or confident about. For me, it was a stretch to be traditional! It was also a replacement score, so there was a time factor. I now think that it was a good thing that I didn't have months to agonize about whether I knew how to do it. I had just five weeks and I knew I had to deliver - in this case, that was an advantage.

MARK ISHAM Filmography
FILMS
2006	Eight Below Running Scared
2005	In Her Shoes Kicking and Screaming Racing Stripes
2004	Crash Twisted Miracle Spartan
2003	The Cooler
2002	Moonlight Mile Impostor
2001	The Majestic Don't Say A Word Hardball Life As A House Save the Last Dance
2000	Men of Honor Where the Money Is Rules of Engagement
1999	Galapagos Body Shots October Sky Breakfast of Champions Varsity Blues At First Sight
1998	Free Money Blade * The Gingerbread Man
1997	The Education of Little Tree Kiss the Girls Afterglow Night Falls on Manhattan
1996	Fly Away Home Last Dance
1995	Home for the Holiday The Net Losing Isaiah Miami Rhapsody
1994	Safe Passage Nell (GG) Timecop Quiz Show Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle The Browning Version The Getaway
1993	Short Cuts Romeo Is Bleeding Made in America Fire in the Sky Nowhere to Run Hidden Hawaii
1992	Of Mice and Men Public Eye A River Runs Through It (†, GN) Cool World Midnight Clear
1991	Billy Bathgate Little Man Tate Point Break Crooked Hearts Mortal Thoughts
1990	Reversal of Fortune Love at Large Everybody Wins
1988	The Moderns
1987	Made in Heaven
1986	The Hitcher
1985	Trouble in Mind
1984	Mrs. Soffel The Times of Harvey Milk
1983	Never Cry Wolf
TELEVISION
1999	Family Law *
1998	The Defenders From the Earth to the Moon
1997	Nothing Sacred (EN) Michael Hayes
1996	EZ Streets (E) Gotti
1994	Chicago Hope (EN) Sketch Artist
	† - Academy Award Nomination
	GG - Golden Globe Nomination
	GN - Grammy Nomination
	E - Emmy Award
	EN - Emmy Award Nomination
	* - ASCAP Award

You've done many period films - what comes to mind are October Sky, The Moderns and Quiz Show. Do you find that these require a lot of research in order to evoke the setting, or is it enough to just watch the film?
I do some research. Certainly, Quiz Show was easy for me, because I'm familiar with the evolution of American music, especially with the way that Big Band Jazz came into the Fifties and influenced pop music and the way pop took off from there. That was the feel of that era, and what we wanted. The performance of "Mack the Knife" with Lyle Lovett was an opportunity to completely recreate the song much as Bobby Darin's rendition took it from the macabre to the "hip and fun". We brought back much of the original Kurt Weil influence, and Lyle's unique voice made it a compelling version.

With The Moderns, which took place during turn of the century Paris, I was aware of Stravinsky, of course, but did more research on composers of that era. On films such as October Sky, set in a coal mining town in West Virginia in 1957,and Nell set in the backwoods of North Carolina, I definitely researched the music of these locales. Jodie's character of Nell needed a unique vocabulary that could be pulled from Appalachian music. And October Sky benefited from the fabulous Sid Page on violin, who can bring a country feel to any notes I write.

I find it interesting that you can move between the cool, detached films and a family movie like Eight Below, which is sentimental, without being cloying. You really must make what you do fit.
Right. The job of the film composer is to really duplicate what the film is — the emotions of the film, the amplitude of the particular emotions, and the way the filmmaker is expressing things — and gauge the score accordingly. Jodie Foster as a director for instance will express things much differently than say Billy Friedkin. Jodie has an elegant actor's perception for drama, whereas Billy, with whom I worked on Rules of Engagement, has a very flamboyant intense approach. Then there's someone like Brian DePalma who has a very unique style, larger than life and willing to shock the audience. I love working with artists as talented and diverse as this because they inspire me to explore many styles of music.

One thing I do is work with the director to find the correct pacing and balance of the score. The music can run away with a scene or can make a scene perfect. I love to find a particular voice for each score and make it a character as much as anything else in the film; and then that theme or themes have their own emotional arcs.

That must have been one of the interesting challenges in scoring Crash. Paul Haggis combined some very hard-edged scenes and some searingly emotional ones, particularly the aftermath of the car crash.
Again, you don't want to get too "on the nose" with these things. If the relationship with the director is good and you are duplicating each other well, and communication between the two of you is of high caliber - all of these things do come together and in a fun way. That is certainly the way it worked with Paul on Crash. We felt the score needed to become a character unto itself that helped narrate, underline the emotions, and "hold the audience's hand" as they experienced the film. In a sense, it needed to exist "above the film", not too directly connected to any one specific character or emotion, but establish an emotional counterpoint and its own unique voice. One of the great things about Paul as a director is he loves and respects music as much as any written word or character, and he allows music to take over a scene and offer a contribution far beyond what a lot of scores are allowed to do.

Unlike some film composers, you don't seem to be boxed into doing a particular sort of movie — looking at your credits, you've done the widest range of projects.
Along the path I have traveled, I have always pushed to expand what I do. This business does tend to stereotype one. A lot of people find themselves being offered only certain types of films because they've shown that they're good at that. I've taken steps to not get caught in that. For example, I wanted to do some movies where I could bring my kids to the scoring session and the premiere; to let them see and be a part of Dad's life. I've now done a few of those, like Miracle. The one I am most proud of and happiest about right now is Eight Below, by director Frank Marshall. Frank has created a wonderful movie which tells an inspiring story to people of all ages. It gave me the opportunity to write a big orchestral score, and my kids were able to be part of the whole thing. There it was an expansion of genre, this time for personal reasons.

Do you find yourself playing on many of your soundtracks?
I like to write for myself. I take a fairly hard line with deciding whether my style of trumpet playing is a good choice or not for the film. I've been fortunate in that for several films it has been the right choice - a number of Alan Rudolph films, and Quiz Show. I'm doing a film right now that I'm writing for myself - Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia, which is going to be really exciting with a big 1940s film noir orchestra. I am having to push myself back in time, because this is not the cool Miles Davis sound, but a wider, broader sound and it's a lot of fun.

You spoke earlier about Henry Mancini being an inspiration. Here you are getting an award named for him.
Believe me - the connection is not lost on me. It was quite a number of years into my film-scoring career that I looked back and realized that hearing a Mancini score was the crucial turning point for me. I'm not sure whether it was The Pink Panther, but it most certainly played a part, along with Arabesque, Charade and other great scores I remember as a child that stayed with me long before I entertained the notion of becoming a film composer. I believe what it was that attracted me was that he fused together different types of music - classical, jazz and 60s popular music - and he would make this wonderful soup out of it that was beautiful, emotional and tremendously effective music. I love the connection - that he introduced me to this whole world.

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