Composer Heather Christian talks about scoring the Sundance film ‘Lemon,’ and the progression of her career in music
Although the music industry is sprinkled with talented composers, they are rarely given the recognition they deserve — despite being a critical part of the creative filmmaking process. We were recently given the opportunity to learn about Heather Christian, a composer and musician who has scored numerous short films and theater projects and recorded many albums with her band Heather Christian & the Arbornauts. Most recently, Heather composed the soundtrack to the feature film Lemon, which was a favorite from the Sundance Film Festival. Eager to learn more about how a composer works on their craft, we quizzed Heather on her process.
How did you get started in the music industry?
I was a performer who graduated from NYU with a major in musical theater. I desperately wanted to be on stage, but was told over and over again I was unable to be cast for one reason or another. I figured I wouldn’t work unless I started writing my own material for my own weird voice, so that’s what I did. I started writing songs, I asked friends who were not musicians to play with me, I started gigging; all a cheap ploy to get myself seen. At some point I stopped caring about being the guy on stage doing it, and started REALLY caring about writing. Once the writing became my primary obsession, musicians and producers and directors with similar interests and afflictions started showing up and blowing my mind.
I started a band with individuals who I have a reciprocal you-blow-my-mind-I’ll-blow-yours relationship. Making records led to writing a musical which led to scoring a film which led to making another record, etc. I was hungry to learn new things (I still am) so I just said “yes” to everything. I’m still not totally certain what industry I belong to. I’m part of a new generation of composers/performers/songwriters who have their hands in all the cookie jars at once (film, theater, music), I think “the industry” is still trying to figure out what exactly to do with us.
What or who are your musical influences?
I think this is likely a very long list. I’m a musical omnivore and I steal feeling or approach or color from EVERYONE. I grew up playing classical piano quite seriously and I loved the Romantics — so at my core, a classical sensibility stays. I was raised in Mississippi and surrounded by blues and gospel and soul music my whole life, and I am fairly certain you can hear that too. If I had to make a short list I’d say: Chopin, David Bowie, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, DeBussy, Emmylou Harris, Peter Gabriel, the Shirelles. But that’s just stabbing.
I’ve learned more from my teachers — Nora York, Alvin Shelby, Lisa Sokolov, Jonathan Hart. I’ve learned a lot from my students, too.
Can you walk us through your composing process?
My process is very different from project to project. Usually I start with a piano and a microphone and coffee and a pencil — in a downright prehistoric way. Before I start writing a thing, rather than make a decision about how it should sound, or what it wants to feel like, or what kind of instruments I’ll use, I start with a game I make up for myself that will determine how I’ll write the thing. It’s a very geeky thinking exercise that USUALLY will get the ball rolling.
In the case of Lemon, I decided to take all the major monologues from The Seagull (which is a play the protagonist in our film is teaching in his acting class) and turn them into a vocal oratorio for choir and pipe organ. Dramaturgically, it made sense that this is what would be on repeat in Isaac’s brain, and it lent him an air of pomposity and ridiculousness, which, thank God, ended up being funny.
I wrote a musical based on a Gertrude Stein children’s book called The World Is Round, where I was running experiments with repetition. Stein is one of history’s great repeaters, and I wanted to steal from other repeaters to house her (Michael Jackson, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Prince, Busta Rhymes) and see what THAT did. Our protagonist is a 9-year-old girl trying to figure out who she wants to be so trying on different musical hats made sense there in multiple ways.
I’m writing music for a play NOW where I write songs based on verbatim childhood memories and run them through rudimentary mathematical algorithms to screw up the meter to replicate what our brains do to memory as we get older.
Does ANYONE get any of these ideas when they listen to the thing? I’m pretty sure the majority of people don’t. But it makes me feel like I’m writing something with a very clear objectives and gives me rules to follow and break, which I need. Once the thing is written, you can push and pull it to suit the piece. Then its two things that are in dialogue with each other rather than one thing with musical decoration.
What are your main compositional challenges?
Honestly, self-doubt. I have to sometimes play mind games with myself to make sure the enthusiasm and excitement about the new thing eclipses the feeling that there’s no way I’m qualified to do it.
Beyond that, it’s a real challenge for me to write for film or TV when the director has already fallen in love with their temp track. I hate replacing a temp, it feels like I am just trying to make the uglier, cheaper, knock off version of the Gucci Bag the director can’t afford, which, for me, is not a creative exercise and makes the self-doubt thing (see above paragraph) unnavigable.
Do you have a favorite piece of music — both that you have composed, and a piece by another musician?
Oh, how cheeky! I don’t really listen to my compositions after I make them. I love making them. I love recording them. I love rehearsing them. But once they are out there I don’t want to dwell on it, I want to move on to the next thing. My favorites change.
Right now my favorite is a record I made that I’m releasing this year (I think of records as “compositions” because I try to make my records like surrealistic radio plays). It’s called “House/Hymn,” and I wrote it after a period in my life where my house burned down and I went nuts and then came back from [being] nuts. The record (especially the second half) is a pop song acid trip homage to that. It’s taken me three years to finish, which is a very long time for me, and I’m still very proud of it.
My favorite composition by another musician ALSO changes seasonally. Here’s the ones that stay, despite: Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, Beethoven’s 7th Symphony - which I have been in a love affair with for decades, Carmina Burana (Orff) and The White Album. Recently I just added Beyonce’s Lemonade to that list. Because: COME ON.
Can you talk about your experience scoring Lemon?
Lemon was the first feature film I had ever scored. I had done quite a few short films for Janicza [Bravo, the director], and our process was almost always the same: she sends me a first edit — we start with a very basic idea which usually involves Janicza asking me to do something I didn’t previously know how to do like “make a heavy metal score” or “write an entire score for solo flute” — this sounds bonkers but this is actually how we work. She throws me a bone I don’t think I can run with, I spend some time studying heavy metal or learning how to play the flute and then I make something that feels like a concept album as an homage to the film that she starts to work with as a temp. Then I take that and massage it, and she takes the massaged thing and massages further etc, until we have a movie.
In the case of Lemon — Janicza gave me the rare gift of letting me do whatever I wanted. (Terrifying at the time, but it ended up being the most fun ever.) She didn’t have any prompts for me other than that she wanted it to sound grand.
I knew that one good idea wouldn’t cut it, so I decided to score in three directions simultaneously — to mimic what we saw as three different “acts” of the movie. The first was a vocal oratorio that I made from shards of text taken from The Seagull — which, if you see the movie, you’ll see what all that’s about. The second was a riff on that: bad radio music all written with text from Victorian poems about birds that could haunt the car radios and PA systems and boom boxes in the film, and finally, some silent movie vaudeville score for solo clarinet. Once these three pieces were complete, Janicza and Joy McMillon (the editor) and I started to use them all as patches to sew together one giant eclectic quilt.
I had no real idea how much music the film eventually wanted to hold so I tried to make too much. At some point, I looked up after a month of delirium generating and I had written close to 200 pieces, but that’s the only way I knew how to keep up and keep pace with those INCREDIBLY fierce women at the helm.
What do you recommend for other people wanting to get into composing?
When you say “get into composing” — I assume you want me to offer some kind of concrete advice about breaking into the industry, which, quite frankly, I don’t have. The industry changes every single day at this point, and as someone who sometimes catches its wave and sometimes doesn’t, I truly feel like the most important thing is being, and staying, totally in love with making noise. I can absolutely offer suggestions on how to do that. :)
Pick up a new instrument often. Let yourself be bad at it, when you’re no longer bad at it, pick up something else.
Take a ballet class or a salsa dancing class. Teach kids how to write songs, teach old folks how to write songs, teach non-singers how to sing and non-players how to play. Listen to everything. Listen to every single thing George Harrison wrote but also every single thing Puccini wrote and also listen to the garbage truck. Write down your dreams.
Somehow that’s been a winning combo for me that keeps me writing constantly. I’m sure there’s something to be said about keeping alive all sides of your relationship with music — physical, intellectual, emotional, conscious and unconscious, but it makes a lot more sense just to say “hey, go take a ballet class and teach something.”
The visibility of female composers is very low; do you have an idea of why that is, and what can we do to help?
I think visibility of composers and editors and lighting designers and sound designers and costume designers and anyone who is working behind the scenes is low in general to begin with — and then there is the added issue that these are positions we commonly associate with men. (White men, in particular.) It’s not accurate — but that’s what most people’s brains do when you tell them to picture a composer. Or a lighting designer, or an editor or a director. I am not sure how much we make up the work force at this point and if it’s even still true that we are in the minority — but that’s certainly how it still feels.
I’m more of the mind that creative generatives are different animals, period, regardless of gender. I’d love to see a world where we’re doing more deliberate hiring; where directors are seeking out different animals rather than the animal who is convenient or visible. I’d like people to think of me as a composer, not a female composer. I think we still have a ways to go before that happens — I think we have to spend some time hiring outside our comfortable circle until it feels like it’s not even worth commenting that a woman should be any of these things.
I think if you’re going to be a person who encourages a diverse industry, you have to have a diverse work force in every department and look beyond your usual suspects. I think that THAT’s where things get gloriously messy and glorious, period, and I’m all in for that.
If you’re interested in learning more about Heather and her work, be sure to check out Heather & the Arbornauts and keep an eye out for her album House/Hymn which releases on June 1st!
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