Past Columns 2007 • 2008 • 2009 • 2010 • 2011• 2012 • 2013 Soundtrax: Episode 2013-10 December 8th, 2013 By Randall D. Larson ----------------------------------------------------------------- Alex Heffes – Scoring the Journey of Nelson Mandela British composer Alex Heffes has written a score full of passion and perseverance for Justin Chadwick’s MANDELA – LONG WALK TO FREEDOM; in this interview he explains how the score came together and what evoked his inspiration. Composer to Watch: Bartosz Chajdecki – Scoring Modern Films in Poland Best known for his eloquent scoring of the Polish WW2 TV series, TIME OF HONOR, Bartosz describes his approach to scoring and the difference between composing films in Hollywood and Poland. Soundtrack reviews this month include: John Williams’ elegant THE BOOK THIEF, Henry Jackman’s propulsive CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, Mark Kilian’s fun romcom score EXPECTING, James Gelfand’s cool music for cheesy sci-fi, EXPLODING SUN, Benjamin Wallfisch’s psychological portrait HOURS, Ludek Drizhall’s delineation of disillusionment BADLAND, plus preserved and expanded Italian scores from Cipriani and Morricone, classic 50’s B-movie music from Paul Dunlap, music for animated YOUNG JUSTICE, and the poignant music of THE BUTTERFLY’S DREAM. R.I.P. Nelson Mandela. Your like may not be seen on this earth again for a long time. British composer Alex Heffes has written a score full of passion and perseverance for Justin Chadwick’s MANDELA – LONG WALK TO FREEDOM; in this interview he explains how the score came together and what evoked his inspiration. British composer Alex Heffes has written a score full of passion and perseverance for Justin Chadwick’s MANDELA – LONG WALK TO FREEDOM, which opened with a limited engagement on November 29, with its wider opening scheduled for Christmas Day. Largely influenced by the striking performance of Idris Elba (PACIFIC RIM, THOR) in the title role, Heffes wrote over 90 minutes of original music for the movie. Traveling to South Africa, Heffes recorded choir vocals and South African singing legend Caiphus Semenya’s own voice to depict Mandela’s passing into manhood as a young boy and ultimately reprising this theme for his inauguration as South Africa’s first black president. Heffes also recorded driving African percussion to underscore the years of activism and Mandela’s years on the run in the movie. He used South African percussion and vocals for the early years, and then moved into developing more orchestral themes as way of telling the human story. The orchestral score was recorded score at London’s Abbey Road with a 65-piece orchestra that included South African violinist David Juritz. Heffes also performed piano on the film’s score. Heffes’ goal in scoring this film is for the audience to come away having truly felt something – to feel the love of family, to try to convey despair and loss – the darkness and emotional emptiness when home seems lost and ultimately to feel uplifted. His aim was for the music to guide the audience through this emotional journey and come away with a joy for what this story can inspire in us. Interviewed while he was in Los Angeles on Nov. 25, Heffes described his approach to scoring this film, as well as another recent historical drama, EMPEROR. Q: When you first got involved with MANDELA, what was your thought process as far as what it needed musically? Alex Heffes: The love story at the center of the film between Nelson Mandela and his second wife Winnie was very core of the music, which got me to thinking about how I should navigate through the film. Obviously there’s the apartheid and the struggle and the reparation of the country – that’s the backdrop against which the family life and the personal life of the man and the people close to him are played out. The music is quite intimate in places, as I was trying to score that relationship and how the incredible events of the politics swirling around them actually influenced the private life of the people involved. That was my starting point. Q: How do you plan to integrate the different elements in the score, the African and the orchestral music, to create a truly emotional background for the picture? Alex Heffes: It took a bit of planning. I had many conversations with a wonderful artist and singer, Caiphus Semenya, in South Africa, and as I was writing the music and I would call him and tell him I wanted to put some percussion and some vocals into some scenes, and asked him to prepare some people in South Africa for that. So when I arrived there we had a whole pool of incredibly talented performers to draw upon. I already had a very clear idea of what I wanted to try, and when he brought the people in we experimented. We recorded South African percussion and Caiphus himself did the vocal on the opening and the end of the film as well. Then I went to Abbey Road after that and did the orchestra. It was a wonderful experience, being in Johannesburg and being able to call in real genuine South African talent and make it a really unique combination of those two approaches. Q: The film also takes place over a long period of time. How did these historical aspects of Nelson Mandela’s life, from youth to incarceration to becoming the country’s president, affect the thrust of the score and its musical journey? Alex Heffes: That was something I thought about. The music starts off using tribal instruments and sounding very ethnic and progressive; then the orchestra creeps in and we underscore the love story and the family scenes, and then we begin adding synth as time progresses and then electric guitar and percussion, so by the time you’re up to the 80s and the early 90s the music palette has progressed along with the time frame of the picture, so that the audience feels like they’ve been taken on a musical journey through that. Q: Something that struck me listening to the score is how you are able to bring out in the music the psychological perspective of Nelson Mandela, enhancing the actor’s performance as he grows and changes through the experiences he has faced. Alex Heffes: The performances are so astounding, it’s a joy to work with them. I just can’t imagine anyone else doing it now, when you see Idris [Elba] and Naomi Harris and the way they transform over those years, they start off being good and they just get better. It’s a wonderful thing to work with as a springboard, musically, to draw out those emotions. Q: Did the fact that the film is a true story, as opposed to a fictional adventure, did that affect your Q: Did the fact that the film is a true story, as opposed to a fictional adventure, did that affect your musical approach at all? Alex Heffes: I think it adds an extra layer of sensitivity that you need to have, in terms of perhaps being restrained in places, and showing respect. At the same time it’s also a movie and it has to work as a movie, so you’re walking a delicate line, always hoping to engage the audience as they’re watching the movie and being respectful of these are real lives playing out. You don’t want to make it into a melodrama or over dramatize things that are already larger than life. Q: Did you do any research into Nelson Mandela’s life and the times in which this is happening in order to properly enhance what you’re creating, musically? Alex Heffes: Yeah, I did read a lot about Mandela, and I also talked to a lot of South Africans and musicians while I was there in South Africa. I listened to a lot of source music… A lot of the street music and the protest songs, the music of the struggle, appear on camera and I was sent a lot of that material early on. When I was scoring scenes that needed score in combination with that music, it was important for me to make sure that the two things worked together, so that it becomes an organic whole. Q: In addition to your primary thematic material, which is centered on this very passionate, sublime, eloquently beautiful music, you’ve also got in contrast this striking tension-building music in cues like “Civil Disobedience,” “Bomb Making,” and “Solitary Confinement.” How did you determine the sound palette for those more suspenseful moments of the score? Alex Heffes: The astounding thing about the story of Nelson Mandela’s life is that it is full of sublime, transformative emotion, and it’s full of action. He lived an extraordinarily fast-paced life when he was a young man. There is a thriller aspect to this film and to his life. He was on the run, he was a wanted man. I talked with Justin, the director, and the producers about how far they wanted to bring out that thriller aspect, and it’s certainly there in his story, so it’s getting a sense of pace and propulsion in the music in those sequences. We talked about that being very important to keep the story moving forward. Someone said to me that Mandela’s life has been described like a piece of jazz, constantly moving and riffing and vamping, you know, just having that feel of jazz. Every day was different, every day was exciting, and then he was put on ice for 27 years. It was almost literally as though he was put into a freeze-frame, and then they came out of prison and it started again, bang, bang, bang! It was incredibly fast and before you knew it, within three or four years, he was president of his own country.