Interview with Stephen Coleman

We've heard that you have composed film music.

- Yeah, I’ve done small films. A lot of times I would like to start composing for big films, but I work for a lot of composers who compose music for films. I tend to do a lot of conducting for films scores. I just finished Miami Vice by Michael Mann. I’m lucky to work on big films when I’m working for other composers. But I haven’t managed to be the main composer myself on the big films yet. So there was Miami Vice and then Basic Instinct 2, with Sharon Stone. And there was a comedy called Wedding Crashers, and we did Sideways, which is a “wine-drinking movie”. And there was About Schmidt and Legally Blonde ... I did a lot of comedies!

Do you feel that conducting is your main work?

- It seems to be now. I like writing songs also. So that’s what I like to do more than anything. Rock songs in movies, that would be nice!

Would you like to conduct more game music concerts?

- Game music is very nice, the game music concert tonight ... there seems to be quite a lot of fans. I heard there was the one that was at the Hollywood Bowl (Video Games Live) and one in Stockholm (PLAY! A Video Game Symphony). I didn’t get to see it but it would be interesting. You know, we do a lot of film music concerts now where they show clips of the movies, like they did in Stockholm. It’s a nice idea doing that kind of thing.

- Lots of good composers are working on game music now. Good film composers writing for games. There used to be “Oh, you can’t do anything good for games”, but now good composers are really writing for it.

And game music composers are composing film music, like Michael Giacchino!

- Yeah, Michael Giacchino. He’s very good, he did Medal of Honor. And he’s doing lots of television shows in the United States. Very popular new composer.

Did you recognize any of the songs you are conducting today?

- Well, certainly Super Mario Bros. The Commodore 64 ones seemed strangely very familiar. The first time I really noticed music in video games was Myst. I thought it had really interesting sound design and music. You go to a certain room and it’d be very interesting. I liked that a lot.

The music of Myst is not really melodic...

- No, more atmosphere I guess. But it would be where I would play Myst so many hours so in the middle of the night I would be dreaming the music! I couldn’t get away from Myst - I couldn’t get off the island!

We guess that Spider-Man 3 is your favorite, but except that one, which piece is your favorite on the concert?

- I quite like the “Helghast March”. That’s quite good. And I like Medal of Honor - very nice. Kind of “Aaron Copland” American style, with military trumpets. I was surprised, some of the music is really very good, and it probably gets even better in the future!

Interview Conducted by David Wallgren & Johan Köhn [2006-10-02]