An Affair of the Heart -- Interview: Toronto Film Magazine

 TFM:  How did you start making films and what was the first film project you worked on?

 DH: Several years ago, I was diagnosed with a congenital, degenerative heart defect. I began looking for a story to tell in which I could explore reconciling my own mortality: what issues run through the mind of a fully expressed artist conversant with the relationship between art and life seriously facing the prospect of death? I chose Welles as my subject because he was an artistic polymath—writer, visual artist, actor, director, filmmaker—and a deeply-committed social activist who also strove to live a complete and fulfilling personal life. I have always believed as a theater person that (as architect Louis Sullivan posited) “form follows function.” 

 Consequently, it seemed obvious to me that Welles’ ebullient creative generosity and aesthetic range, intellect, and art required a many-layered dramatic treatment—one that fused images and sound on a deeper than usual level, wedded electro-acoustic and live music, live performance and film, opera and music theater, and jubilantly mashed-up musical and visual languages. I determined to build a multi-media piece that used the “bardo odyssey” of the great filmmaker Orson Welles (the film takes place as he lay dying of a heart attack) to do this.

 I knew that this deep dive was going to require more than a love of movies, an acquaintance with the writings of André Bazin, and access to some video equipment. The editing process is so important to any life, but it is central to a writer, composer, or filmmaker. I had scored some films, so I was conversant with that end of things; but my subject in Orson demanded that I not just imagine but feelhow it feels to edit film month after month. I had directed my operas professionally, conducted them, written their libretti, knew the ropes of live theater; but I had never directed a film, or managed a film production team. It turns out that the opera and film worlds are astonishingly similar. That’s how I came to start making films, beginning with Orson Rehearsed.

 TFM: Which musical genre and which genre of filmmaking fascinates you as an artist and why? 

 DH: I feel most comprehensively expressed as a composer of music interwoven with some sort of dramaturgical narrative. I’ve written eleven operas, yes, but I’ve written an awful lot of music for the concert hall—five symphonies, a dozen concerti, reams of chamber music and hundreds of art songs. Although I am a passionate collaborative artist, I admit to really liking the highly centralized and subjective control of the auteur model as defined by François Truffaut in his essays because it comes closest to the way that composers used to function in the opera world.

 TFM:  How does it feel to write, direct and then compose music for a personal style of indie film?

 DH: Absolutely wonderful. I have savored every second of the Process of making Orson Rehearsed: from discovery with the actors during the rehearsal and staging of the live component of the film, to learning how to live the life rhythm of a film editor; from the familiar process of scoring to film, to the unfamiliar process of shooting film myself to music already scored and seamlessly switching alternating between the two. My goal was not to document a live performance, make a music video, or an Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but to create a pathway toward a new genre which is not a hybrid but something more personal, more resistant to categorization—a film about opera, an opera about film.

 TFM:  What is the most challenging aspect of being an independent filmmaker in the film industry?

 DH: I don’t have an answer for that yet. My process as an artist is driven forward by continual reinvention and discovery, and I am just now learning the challenges of being an independent filmmaker. 

 TFM: How difficult is it to fund indie films?

 DH: To the extent that the world of an opera composer is similar to that of an independent filmmaker, I am familiar with the process of bringing producers and presenters to the table, hearing their vision, collaborating, making art with the artists and resources in the room instead of the ones in my head, and letting projects either unfold or evaporate, depending on things I can’t control. Funding is always a problem, of course. On the other hand, technology has made it cheaper to make films; so long as you have access to the tools and the skills to wear a bunch of different hats, you can arrive at the end with something that looks and sounds pretty good.

 In the case of Orson Rehearsed, the Chicago College of the Performing Arts served as a production partner in exchange for their students shadowing me as composer, director, and independent artist, as well as being cast in productions that combined both seasoned professionals and emerging artists. They shared costs with my New Mercury Collective, which is basically my sandbox, or, as Welles would say, train set, in which I build little sandcastles and operatic locomotives. I have more creative control than I do when I work with an opera company, but less money. 

“These films would, in effect, show us what was going on in the minds of the avatars in Welles’ mind—films within an opera that would become a film.” Daron’s editing notes detailing the synchronization of images in the three simultaneously-projected films-within-the-opera-within-the film for the “Everybody’s Shakespeare” sequence. At this stage, these took the place of storyboards.

TFM:  Tell us about the process of the production for Orson Rehearsed? 

 DH: First, I threw spaghetti at the wall for six months in Logic Pro. I created about twenty 3-6 minute long “think pieces” about specific events and elements in Welles’ life that he might think about while dying. These dramatic beats combined manipulated snatches of recordings of my own acoustic works stretching back to the 80s, sound effects, brief snatches of Welles interviews, loops, and newly-composed vocal lines—most performed by my wife, vocalist/composer Gilda Lyons, and some by me—and mockups of what would become acoustic instrumental lines.

 I chose to divide the character of Welles into three avatars: one young, one middle-aged, one dying. This allowed for ensembles and multiple points of view. They sang a libretto that combined newly-written material by me with words drawn from public domain sources and repurposed—Shakespeare, Welles himself, Emma Lazarus, and others. Gradually, these spaghetti-throwing sessions generated a core of about a dozen musical ideas that held the entire piece together.

 Simultaneously, I filmed dozens of high-def video scenelets that would serve as visual equivalents to the musical motives being tossed up during the work in Logic—a man’s hands typing on a manual keyboard in New Haven; a woman’s hands gliding over piano keys in New York City; a child blowing out candles on a birthday cake, or tracing the letters carved into tombstones in a graveyard; hail falling in Paris; waves breaking and the sun setting in Nicaragua; an elevated train passing by overhead in Chicago; the desert outside of Albuquerque, and on and on. These images ended up unifying the films projected onstage during the live production component of production, and also served as raw material to be edited into the final film.

 During the next six months, since the film was taking place in someone’s mind and would unspool in real time in the theater, I gradually arranged the essays into a sequence, dropping some, adding others, in order to create a psychological and emotional narrative that would take the place of physical action. I edited together all the footage into three sixty-minute films that would accompany the three Orsons in live performance. These films would, in effect, show us what was going on in the minds of the avatars in Welles’ mind—films within an opera that would become a film. I edited into this mix some licensed stock footage of a red silk scarf, film leader, the Statue of Liberty at sunset, some protestors, and a poignant skein of footage culled from a 40s newsreel of a boy walking away from the camera on a country road. This boy ultimately became a rather important “ghost character.”

 Once I had synchronized the electro-acoustic soundtrack to these films, I composed the acoustic chamber orchestra component that would be performed live by the Fifth House Ensemble at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in conjunction with the electro-acoustic score, conducted by Roger Zahab. A trusted and admired colleague who generously (and bravely) agreed to my request that we eschew the standard “film to image” gear that is used for screenings of Hollywood films when orchestras show them, Roger (who had access only to a click track) marvelously coordinated live singers, an orchestra, and pre-recorded sounds in a theater entirely by ear. I asked him to do this because I wanted the risk, the excitement, and the flexibility of live execution that I have grown to feel as a conductor myself is the secret ingredient to great opera performance.

 Next, I stage directed the show with the immensely gifted and creative cast. Their performances were captured visually over two shows and a dress rehearsal by three stationary cameras and one roving closeup camera—sort of one step up from the usual archival video. The soundtrack audio was recorded in the house. I wanted the soundtrack to sound captured live in order to advance the dialectic of “live” versus “canned” and the combination of the two. Post-production, and live concert mixing can make everything sound so homogenous that nothing sounds “real” anymore.

 I left Chicago with about ten hours of audio and video and let it sit for nearly a year before diving back in. First, I ever-so-gently massaged the soundtrack and had it mastered. Then, I cut the performance film to the soundtrack. Next, I intercut the pre-shot films and the live performance footage (which I washed out into black and white to differentiate it from the pre-shot films) before adding a third layer of semi-opaque “ghost” images screened in red and blue that carried forward elements of both. I received important feedback from colleagues at this stage about what was and was not “landing”—Rabab Haj Yahya, H. Paul Moon, John Corigliano, and Todd Vunderink, among others. This last stage of the process slowly brought the film’s messages into clearer relief and allowed me to discover what the rhythm of the recurring images and music were trying to express. 

 TFM: What inspires you to work as an artist in society and what kind of impact would you like to have on your audience as a filmmaker and composer? 

 DH: Artists of conscience can speak truth to power and make a difference (for the better) by reminding people of their humanity and interconnectedness, the responsibility we have to one another. I try to do that. I am proud to serve on the faculty of the Chicago College of the Performing Arts of Roosevelt University because the institution’s values match my own. That generous, staunch support helps me to amplify my citizenship and hone my craft while sharing it with students.

 TFM: What is your next artistic project? 

 DH: I am directing a staged production of my opera New York Stories for Florida Grand Opera in the spring, and then directing a filmed version of my opera Shining Brow in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Westcott House with the Springfield Symphony and Think TV (the Dayton PBS affiliate).

 TFM: What do you think about the distribution of indie films and what do you recommend to emerging artists? 

 DH: I don’t know enough about distribution to make any recommendations. At present I am submitting Orson Rehearsed to festivals and learning about distributors. It is an art film for which there is a minuscule market; I never expected it to be commercially viable or “popular.” Still, it is garnering laurels (for which I am grateful and honored), and it might get some legs, however humble. After it has been shown at festivals, who knows?

TFM: Why do you make films? 

 DH: Really, it circles back to process for me. I’m just feeling my way forward as an artist and as a human, learning, going deeper into truths, and working to connect, and to make the bit of difference I can, as I am able. I’m very lucky to have landed in a place where I can discover and reinvent while collaborating with extraordinary artists.  

 This interview originally appeared in Toronto Film Magazine on 23 November 2020 when Orson Rehearsed was awarded the “Best Composer” laurel at the Montreal Independent Film Festival. You can read it there by clicking here.

Pomodoro: Singing a Librettist's Praises

So moved was I by it that I posted a picture of a dazzling late November tomato from my garden on my Facebook feed in November 2018. Within moments, Christopher Rouse (Godspeed, Chris!) posted, “Better eat it soon!” To which I immediately replied, “Oh, it was et mere seconds after I snapped the pic!” A few beats later, Mark Campbell posted, “There is a song in this, Daron,” to which I replied, “If you pen the lyric, I will set it!” “I just might,” Mark responded, “But it’s not a comic song, as much as tomato is usually a comic word.” “Agreed,” I typed, and forgot about it.

A few days later, Mark sent me one of the finest, most “settable” lyrics I’ve ever read. Thanking him, I resolved to put it aside until I had a project in hand that was worthy of its excellence. A year later, Lyric Fest of Philadelphia and the Brooklyn Art Song Society co-commissioned me to create a sixty-minute song cycle for six solo voices and piano four-hands. On my birthday this past November, the resulting valedictory cycle, which I titled The Art of Song, was premiered by its commissioners at the Church of the Holy Trinity on Rittenhouse Square. Mark’s poem joined a big garland of poems, and figured prominently as one of the emotional and musical anchors of the piece as a whole.

I realized, as I walked into the church for the concert, that I had last been there during an era now almost entirely lost: November 1982. With me was my then teacher Ned Rorem—the Curtis Institute of Music being just across Rittenhouse Square—and my benefactor at the time, curator and chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Henry McIlhenny—whose townhouse stood also on the square, next door to the Ethical Culture Society and its pretty little performance hall. (Although the romantic in me would have preferred that Henry’s fortune derived from tabasco sauce, it in fact grew out of his grandfather’s invention and development of gas meters.) Ned had invited Henry to the recital in order that he might hear some of the music that had derived from his financial generosity. Several classmates were about to premiere on a concert series sponsored by the church a sonata for cello and piano that I had penned for the occasion. (The music is in a box unopened since the 80s now somewhere in my in-laws’ attic—proof that, while I rarely withdraw something I’ve written, pieces tend to withdraw themselves.) On the same program, my fellow art song swashbuckler, soprano Karen Hale (then Noteboom) and I were set to perform a slew of brand new songs—all of which ended up in the first song cycles of mine that E.C. Schirmer published—Echo’s Songs and Love Songs.

If my last visit to the church had taken place during my life’s April, then surely my return celebrated it’s November. Here I was, myself now, like the “funny word” tomato in my garden—the pomodoro in Mark’s lyric— “a flashing ember in the ashen garden;” here to celebrate my 58th birthday with the premiere of a new work after the “end of summer had long passed, / to shine the last,” and—as he cannily repeated the line, “to shine the last and brightest.”

Harmony drives emotion in the instrumental component of vocal music the way that lyrics drive the tune. I’ve long composed autobiographical songs in G major. “Pomodoro’s” harmonic “reality” is C major; but it harmonically aspires to be in G major. A stubborn tritone (or raised fourth scale degree; the third of C’s secondary dominant—which injects a great deal of harmonic “lift” into a chord progression) F# keeps edging the music into the key of G (the dominant) when the emotion intensifies.

Mark’s poem begins, as a character sketch number should, conversationally.

When I first saw the thing,

I thought it was a hoax.

The cruelest of jokes.

Had to be store-bought, I thought,

Tied to the vine with a string.

Split neatly up into short digestible bits that the composer can deal out like cards in a light parlando style—think old-time recitative but a little more elevated, like contemporary popera—not actually tuneful, but agreeable, bougeoir, and disarming—his tone evokes Billy Bigelow from Carousel; he’s knowing, wry, an affectionate trickster. But beneath the chit-chat, Mark is keeping the construction tight by internally rhyming hoax / jokes, and bought / thought and then literally tying up the stanza with thing / string. It requires music that disarms the listener and draws them in—a Sondheim-like musical theater vamp, perhaps; but something that, like the words, has the craft to conceal its craft, and the humility not to broadcast how clever it is.

A tomato in my garden

In November.

Late in November.

Mark sits on the delicious, warm “r” sound in garden and November, and—knowing that most composers (certainly me) will want to linger there—repeats the word. This invites the composer to warm up the music, too, to turn up the emotional heat a tad. The lyric provides a neat transition to the next lines, which ably continue ramping up the emotional heat.

A flashing ember in the ashen garden,

Before skies darken,

Before the ground begins to harden,

A bit of (welcome) purple in the fire imagery, which he blows on with a triple rhyme—garden / darken / harden—all those juicy, fruity “r’s” to sing and use to “feel” as a singer. The composer’s job here is obvious: the rhymes are quickening, so the harmonic and rhythmic pulse should, too. In this case, I broke from groups of four eighths into groups of three—an intentional little stretto effect, a little heartbeat gallop, gentle and virile.

Long after we’ve counted our losses

And tossed them into sauces.

An agreeable climax to the parlando arc of the first third of the song—a self-deprecatory bit of practicality: losses become sauces the way that life gives us lemons and we make lemonade.

But there it was,

Round and ripe and real,

With no autumnal flaws.

Bigelow is back, rolling in those delicious “r’s” (round / ripe / real) and pulling us back to the opening conversational parlando—as though to say, “don’t worry, I won’t be highfallutin’."

And then Mark does something elegant because it is prosaic, but sincere, not overly-clever:

I felt compelled to kneel,

And sigh, sigh, sigh:

This is Monteverdi—like me, a November-born Scorpio: Lasciatemi morire, or “let me die.” —But not 20th century death of course, but 16th century death as orgasm. In this case, a spiritual orgasm, more a metaphysical naturalism—the kind of lyric that simply must be attached to falling 2-3 suspensions (returned are the tender triplets of a quickening heart) because, well, that’s what Mark knows composers have done in the west with this gesture for four centuries. It is a delight to set these words chastely to music, and to be able to use them to prepare the singer’s delivery of the central image of the lyric, which calls for intense musical lyricism:

“Pomodoro.”

The Calaf yearning to burst out from within the self-effacement of our Bigelow does so and we’re charmed. He’s a dear, this one, and by nature feels compelled to immediately give us a nice big explanatory Protestant parenthetical that undercuts the Italianate grandiosity of his expression:

(Forgetting I’m not Italian,

Nor much of a gardener,

Though through the years I had acquitted myself,

Adequately enough.)

Mark ends with a little touch of Voltaire’s gardener’s humble pride, like another Billy knuckling his forehead to Vere. As though nodding in agreement, the music bridges with two little repetitions of the fragment of melody to which the words “adequately enough” were just sung. And with those excellent progenitors standing in the wings, the lyric deserves to soar.

Pomodoro.

Pomodoro.

Mark gives us two iterations of the word pomodoro, allowing the composer to climax (as one may and does in Italian) first on the first “ah-o” syllable in the word, and then on the “or” third syllable, a terrific set of mouth shapes (which Mark obviously knows) and also a nod to Italian opera, with which our Bigelow has evidently gotten away from Carousel long enough to develop more than a passing acquaintance. At this point, it becomes not just a lyric and a song about aging, but —poignantly—how singers are often at their best just as their voices are leaving them; about the difference between music theater and opera.

For “tomato” was too mundane, too common,

For this rare phenomenon.

So now we know that the first time the singer sings the word earlier in the song he has to saw “to-may-to” and this time “to-mah-to” because we’re going to go there, too, as Americans who write songs and are about to call the whole thing off. Look at all the “mm’s” there—tommmmato, mmmundane, common, and then a feint to the yummy “r” sound again (“rare”) and a payoff in the delicious word “phenomenon.” Sexy, sensual, and smart. And now, for this sort of song, convention calls for the revelation of a secret, and Mark does not disappoint. It is the composer’s honor to step aside, to provide some simple background chords, to let the lyric speak—with the greatest intimacy and simplicity in the song, since it is the singer’s truth—for itself:

For it had waited,

Until the end of summer had long passed,

To shine the last.

Mark repeats the point, as a lyricist must—

To shine the last and brightest…

…Where he gives the composer an ellipsis because he knows that the syllable “bright” is a gorgeous one to loft high, softly for a male voice, and he is making that possible for the composer without having been asked. Repetition as a device (and punning, since the second and third syllables of the title sound like “adore”) having been established in the lyric, Mark gives two final iterations of the delicious word in question, which provided the climax of the song, and now provides its tender, wistful release.

It’s the difference between lyrics and poetry, lyric theater and a straight play. A great librettist like Mark Campbell knows how to show his hand without committing “hand of author;” knows what kind of words a composer needs to make the combination of the two the only thing that matters. There’s profound poetry and dignity in that.

Pomodoro.

Pomodoro.

POMODORO

When I first saw the thing,
I thought it was a hoax,
The cruelest of jokes.
Had to be store-bought, I thought,

Tied to the vine with string.

A tomato in my garden
In November,
Late in November,
A flashing ember in the ashen garden,

Before skies darken,

Before the ground begins to harden,

Long after we’ve counted our losses

And tossed them into sauces.
But there it was,

Round and ripe and real,

With no autumnal flaws.

I felt compelled to kneel,

And sigh, sigh, sigh:

“Pomodoro”

(Forgetting I’m not Italian,
Nor much of a gardener,
Though through the years I had acquit myself,

Adequately enough.)
Pomodoro.
Pomodoro.
For “tomato” was too mundane, too common,

For this rare phenomenon.
For it had waited,
Until the end of summer had long passed,
To shine the last,
To shine the last and brightest...
Pomodoro,
Pomodoro.

—Mark Campbell (2018)