Emotions, Passion and Creative Audacity: Conversation with Mychael Danna

Interview with one of the most profilic and intriguing contemporary film music personalities.

Canadian composer Mychael Danna has provided to the screen a wide and excellent musical production, which includes several efforts of independent film makers, as well as some very popular Hollywood feature films. The very first significant tribute of the musician to cinema dates back to The Family Viewing, prime considerable cinematographic debut of director Atom Egoyan. This project crowned a period during which Mychael wrote for theatre, stood out as a musician for McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto, and achieved a prestigious award from the music faculty at the university he was attending at the time. The career of the artist from Winnipeg is rich with original and genuine musical collaborations. Not only a wide and successful association with Egoyan, but he also signed film scores of Ang Lee, Mira Nair, Deepa Metha and the legendary Hungarian author and director, István Szabó. Style, technical knowledge of modal harmonies, instrumentation and ethnic sonorities,  his research spirit and creative enthusiasm he employs while facing the difficult task on offering the picture with a noteworthy musical comment are the main traits which state the music personality of the Canadian artist, and allow his voice to stand out among the others, and to meet the film drama requirements.
Mychael was very kind and available despite being very busy, and we are glad to offer our readers a long interesting interview, during which Danna talks on some of his main works for the big screen.

ColonneSonore: Dear Mr. Danna, let’s talk a bit about what was your musical background before you entered in the film music business.
For instance, at the beginning of your career you worked at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto composing music from 1987 to 1992. How did you spend those years? What other experiences did you make that strongly improved your musical development?

Mychael Danna: Toronto at that time was really exploding as a diverse multicultural city. There was a great deal of interplay between the various cultural arts and I spent a lot of time listening to and working with musicians from other cultures.

CS: How and when did you start composing for motion pictures?

MD: I was born into a musical family. Both my parents were singers so I began by singing in choirs and studying piano.When I was a bit older I started playing in bands with my friends and through that  discovered electronic music. After a bad accident to my hand when I was fifteen, I really couldn’t play very well anymore, so I put more of my energy into composing. While I was at university studying composition, I met Atom Egoyan, who was doing a degree in Internaional Relations, but writing plays that were produced on campus.  I was writing music for theatre on campus, and we met in this way. He was just about to make his first feature and this is how I accidentally ended up writing film music.

CS: Monsoon Wedding is a film by director Mira Nair, whom you previously worked with. The movie tells the story surrounding an Indian arranged marriage, focusing on the clash between modern sensibilities and traditional customs, as well as portaying a stunning depiction of Indian modern life and culture. What was you approach to the film scoring? As the families involved in the marriage are from different ethnic origins, did you musically reflect somehow the interaction between the Western and Eastern elements within the story?

MD: My approach to this score was really a very simple one. Though the film certainly covers a lot of ground and does concern itself with the clash between home grown Indian culture and the influx from outside (which by the way has really been a constant part of Indian history), I wanted to make the score very simple and clean and really help to link together the characters. And the various story lines. The simple theme of the film is love. Therefore I just wrote a very simple straightforward theme to reflect this idea and it gets repeated in many ways but it is a constant thread throughout the film. Alongside this theme of course there are a great many songs and dances, as a contrast to the score music. I recorded the Indian instruments in Mumbai as well as the wonderful filmi singer Suhkvinder Singh.

CS: Among the various films in your collaboration with director Atom Egoyan, we find the very interesting and impressive score for Ararat, a film about the Armenian genocide in 1915.
 A huge orchestra joined by some soloists, as well as several authentic folk musicians and an Armenian choir, lends to the score a strong Armenian musical heritage.
The tone of the musical accompainment is mostly tragic and melancholic, as the story requires. How did you manage to accomplish the task of providing the film such a rich and authentic musical tapestry, which had also to be blended with the traditional orchestral soundscape? What was, in your opinion,  the main challenge during the scoring of this film?

MD: My method for scoring this film was the same one that I would use for any film. If I am going to use music from another culture than my own I spend a great deal of time and effort in researching this music and getting to know it as well as I possibly can. In fact on this film I studied with Eve Egoyan, Atom’s sister and a very accomplished pianist whom I have work with before, to help me get to know the sources of Armenian folk and liturgical music.
Then it was a matter of selecting folk and liturgivcal melodies which would best reflect the themes that Atom was working with in his film. Those melodies and instruments very beautifuly combined with larger scale symphonic music. Atom and I went to Armenia to record the folk musicians and choir there which was a wonderful experience. There’s no better way to understand a character of a people than by being in the country and working with their master musicians.  The greatest compliment I was paid when the film was released was by numerous people of Armenian descent who couldn’t believe a “non-Armenian” wrote the score.

CS: Surf ‘s Up is a CGI animated film, directed by Ash Brannon (Pixar‘s Toy Story 2) and Chris Buck (Disney’s Tarzan), which tells the adventures of a penguin with a passion for surfing, and his friends, in the attempt to win a Surf Competition named ”The BIG Z Memorial Surf Off”. Shot in a mock-documentary style, this animated comedy features a gorgeous musical background which you’ ve composed as accompainment. The score seems mostly to focus on developing a heartfelt piano/strings driven theme, (which is heard for example in the track “The Board Shack”). There are some “beach-flavoured” cues as well, some perky moments.  This project was one of your first efforts in the genre of animation. How did you feel getting this project - which elements of the film did you focus on to find the musical inspiration in composing the main thematic ideas?

MD: When my agent first told me that these filmmakers were interested in talking to me about the music of Surf’s Up, I was sure there was some mistake. I had become more known for darker film material involving things like school bus crashes! However I’ve always really wanted to work with animation so I tried not to get too excited. When I met the filmmakers they simply said that they liked my music. Even though I had never done this exact thing before they believed that I was the right person to shine a light on the more emotional parts of the film. It was a brilliant experience. The process is quite different from film but it is a much gentler and gradual way of working. The film takes shape before your eyes over a two year period as the animation gets more and more developed.

CS: Director Mira Nair with Vanity Fair offers a new take on a classic novel that recalls the settings of the 19th century English period, when the story takes place.
The film score you’ve written for this motion picture is mainly symphonic and romantic, evoking a touch of class and elegance, with a basic theme stated since the beginning with a very classical feel, and frequently hinted at throughout the picture. 
What was the idea behind this kind of approach?

MD: The film centres on Becky Sharp and her voyage through many experiences and guises over many years. I felt that the music could help keep foremost the idea of the unchanging part of her character. So I wrote a theme that tried to embody her innermost essence.

CS: Although some scenes involve a few Indian locations, on this occasion you did not employ any ethnic instruments. It’ s quite an unexpected choice given your background and your vast knowledge and mastery in creating original and amazing ethnic cues. What was the reason for this move?

MD: The most important thing in film music is that the score does the best thing for the story; serving the film as best that it can. It shouldn’t be a concern of the composer to force his or her own whims upon the work. And ironically, even though I’m best known for using non-western music within film scores, my own background is completely western and classical. So certainly it is an area that I’m very comfortable with and it was one that I felt was right for the story.

CS: Little Miss Sunshine, a film directed by husband-wife team Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, is a heart-warming comedy, about the journey of a unique and very special family across the North American continent in a yellow Volkswagen bus to bring their little daughter to the “California Little Miss Sunshine” beauty pageant. There’s more than simple funny stuff, but also some emotional depth within this movie which makes it a truly pleasant experience. This score is a really captivating and riveting journey through the successful musical collaboration between you and Denver’s indie/rock band DeVotchKa. Can you tell us something about this collaboration and the making of this project?

MD: When I was first asked to meet with the directors they felt torn between having a score and having songs as the music for their film. They played me some songs by DeVotchKa which they felt worked very well in their film but they also wanted to have someone who was experienced with film scoring to help musically tell their story. I agreed with them that DeVothcKa was a perfect band for the film. The film is about a dysfunctional family that somehow pulls together and DeVotchKa (although they are lovely people and work together beautifully!), the instrumental make-up in the band is very unusual and at first glance one could say dysfunctional: trumpet, double bass, violin, drums, tuba and guitar. So I suggested that we use their songs in two or three places where the directors had placed them and that I write the rest of the score, which would be played entirely by DeVotchKa.

CS: Girl, Interrupted is a drama by Jim Mangold, starring Winona Rider and Angelina Jolie, which recounts the story of a troubled young woman, Susan, and her 18-month stay at a mental institution after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. During this time she develops a relationship with fellow patient Lisa and this rapport become a main topic of the picture. Regarding the music you wrote for the movie, it surely deserves a mention your choice to employ an unusual soundscape, performed by The Glass Orchestra. These musicians use only shards of glass, crystal goblets, glass flutes and harmonicas to make a haunting series of chimes. Director Jim Mangold describes them as “the rusted chimes of broken toys”. What was the concept behind this score? What role has been given to the Glass Orchestra performance?

MD: The analogy of glass seemed to be a very illuminating one for this story of these young women set apart from society. Glass is beautiful, fragile and also can be somewhat dangerous. Glass can also be a barrier and yet a barrier that is transparent. The Glass Orchestra, who are friends of mine in Toronto, seemed like a perfect ensemble to feature in telling this story.

CS: You first collaborated with director Catherine Hardwicke in the making of The Nativity Story, which narrates Jesus’ birth and all the events which took place around this time during the life of Mary and Joseph, as we read in the Bible. The wonderful imagery and historical settings of this film are enhanced by your musical score which features an original thematic material, as well as some arrangements of ancient melodies performed by vocal soloists, orchestra and a vast array of ethnic instruments such as the Persian and Turkish ney, Renaissance’s   tone colours like the viola da gamba and the medieval sound of a vielle. What ‘s the main idea behind the choice of instrumentation? Where did you look for those cues that helped you to find out how to score this project?

MD: I think that when you watch this film, you are struck by the realistic style in which it is shot. You realise that these were real people living real lives. At the same time, you are conscious of these iconic moments whether it is the birth in a manger or the three Magi on camels; images that have far transcended the immediacy of their time. So I wanted the music to comment on both these facets to remind the viewer that this story has been told for two thousand years, by recalling instruments that were involved in music portraying this story a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago. I wanted to help draw a continuous line between when this story happened and our present day.

CS: We‘ve heard rumours saying you came to Italy and recorded some tracks with Walter Maiolli and his team of musicians called “Synaulia”. What has brought you to work alongside these artists?

MD: Mr. Maiolli is an extraordinary artist. In my search for authenticity I found a kindred spirit in him. Someone who understands that technical authenticity and the spirit of authenticity must go hand in hand. Very simply there is no other group on earth that is as experienced in this kind of music as he is, so it was an honour to work with he and his ensemble in the recording of instruments from this ancient time period.

CS: Your brother Jeff Danna, who is a film composer as well, wrote an impressive score for The Gospel Of John, a drama directed by Philip Saville based on the New Testament, which depicts a historically focused recreation of John’s Gospel. Was his effort in that project in some way useful during the scoring of The Nativity Story?

MD: Yes, I think The Gospel of John is a very beautiful score. It is funny that we both ended up writing music for this same story although I guess every composer for the last two thousand years could say the same thing. We certainly talked about it but of course every film is very different even if it is a similar story, and the approaches are always different.

Many thanks to Mychael for his kindness and availability, Lyn Dennerstein for correction/supervision of the questions, Eliza Zajkowska for english supervision of the introduction of this interview.