It was fascinating and fun to catch up with NY based composer / music producer Jay Wadley. Some of his upcoming releases include; Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, an Untitled Documentary Series from Roger Ross Williams (Life Animated, Apollo), and the Sundance NEXT Audience and Innovation award winning I Carry You with Me directed by Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp, Detropia).

His score for James Schamus' critically acclaimed directorial debut, Indignation (Lionsgate), was featured in IndieWire's "10 Best Scores of 2016", received a Billboard premiere and a concert performance by the Winnipeg Symphony for Soundtracks Live.

In addition to being a guest lecturer at Yale, The Peabody Institute, NYU, OCU, and Kennesaw State Univ., his arrangements and orchestrations for Rufus Wainwright, Mark Ronson and Calexico have been performed by The San Francisco Symphony, New York City Opera, The Royal Ballet and the Louisville Symphony Orchestra, among others. 

Below is a fascinating look into his background and creative process.

CineConcerts (CC): Thank you so much for speaking with us today, firstly we wanted to get some background. How did you initially get into film composing? 

Jay Wadley (JW): I have been involved with music since I was a little kid, initially with piano lessons and choir, but in middle school I actually started my own punk rock band. In high school I started writing music for my band, but also for the choir I was in at school. I have always been interested in lots of genres of music, but I didn’t know that film scoring was a thing. 

However, once I got into the all-state choir I started getting exposed to some more interesting choral work it really served to expand my understanding of what classical music, and specifically choral music could be. Around the same time, I heard some Hans Zimmer scores and that really peaked my interest, I found myself really drawn to the idea that writing music for movies was a possibility, that composing was something someone did. 

I grew up in Edmond Oklahoma and there weren't a lot of other kids my age interested in writing classical music. At the time, everyone was into emo, punk, and rock, but because I was in the choir at school I started writing my first pieces for them. That’s really how I initially got into composition, hearing the experimental choir music at all-state competitions. When I was 17, I brought the first piece I composed to my choir and about 30 of my friends performed it at the school talent show. I was lucky to be at a school with a big music program like that. That was a transformative moment for me, I felt like I found something that was at the core of who I was as a person, a unique talent that I didn’t know of anyone else exploring. It gave me so much joy and sense of identity, I really learned what I could offer the world.  

CC: Was there someone guiding you, like a teacher, or was it organic, something you discovered on your own? 

JW: As far as composing, it was something I discovered on my own. I was lucky to have a great choral, theater and musical theater program in my high school so I was very involved in that. But all the other work I did, with the punk rock bands, I really just learned on my own how to play drums, how to play guitar. My brothers were in bands so I learned from them. I would actually sneek into the garage when their band left their instruments there and teach myself. I got in a lot of trouble for that!  

And funnily enough, a few years later, I was recording and producing their band. I wasn’t the little kid who couldn’t play with their toys anymore.  

CC: You work primarily in independent film; how did you get started in that world? And how is it different from working on a studio feature? 

JW: I went to Oklahoma City College after high school and studied classical music composition with Edward Knight, I would say he was one of the most influential people in my life, at least as a composer. He helped me understand my individual composition voice, and taught me to write music that could stand on its own. 

I went to Yale for grad school from 2005-2008, and that was where I met my business partner Trevor Gureckis, who is also a composer, and we put together our company where we built an infrastructure for us to launch our careers in film and TV. I learned so much about the process from him, he was working for Phillip Glass as a music assistant, and I was able to do some copy editing and clean-up work for some of the films he was working on at the time. All that time I was trying to develop my own voice too, I was still writing concert music as I dipped my toes in the film and TV world, taking time to develop those relationships. 

CC: What was your first job composing for visual media? 

JW: My first scoring job was as an additional composer for a Fox TV show, Lie to Me, back in 2008. I was a composer assistant, but by episode 2 or 3 I was writing about a third of the music as an additional composer with my boss. From there I went on to my first film project with Jeremy Teicher. We have actually continued to work together, but the first film was called Tall as the Baobab Tree. It was shot in Senegal and the score is all west-African kora and percussion, really specific sounds. 

I was working on that, and lots of shorts and other films, when I got a call out of the blue from a producer who was working with (producer/writer/director) James Schamus. He was working on a short documentary project with Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) called We the Economy. They were partnering with a bunch of different directors, and I started working with them. About six months after that James called me again and told me he was directing his first feature and asked for samples from me. He played those for Anthony Bergman, the producer, and that film turned out to be Indignation.That film got into Sundance, and some other festivals. I kept working with both James and Anthony on various projects. It was actually Anthony who called me and put me up for the Charlie Kaufman movie I just finished scoring.

CC: How do you find collaborating with the same filmmakers over again? 

JW: It takes time to develop strong relationships and strong partnerships.  People are looking for partners that:

1. Inspire them and
2. Who do good work and can be good collaborators 

I think that’s one thing about independent film that is so great, you don’t have a whole lot of cooks in the kitchen, and there is a certain amount of purity to the creative vision when you have a smaller team. I am drawn to directors and producers who put out content that has a very strong individual voice. It’s what inspires me the most and what gets me the most excited about composing music.  

CC: When you are writing the music do you tend to get a lot of inspiration from your collaboration with the director and possibly the producers, or the script or early footage? 

JW: I think that you can get some of that from the script, but for me, I start getting really inspired when I see what the cinematography looks like, what the production design looks like, what the tone and the mood and the feel of the film is. That’s what really draws me in. Even in early footage you can start to see that glimpse of what the film could become, and you can let your imagination go wild from there.

It’s funny sometimes, you don’t always know how the script is going to translate to the screen. Some scripts are more verbose, although not all the dialogue makes it into the movie. Then there are movies that don’t have a lot of dialogue but the visual quality, the cinematography is what drives it. I think that each film has its own qualities that become central anchors for the creative forces around them. 

CC: When you are selecting a project to work on is there anything in particular you look for? 

JW: In the beginning you are really just looking for opportunity, it’s hard to be picky when you haven’t really composed for movies before! Now I approach it more as “how can I work myself into this world and understand it and help tell a narrative?” 

Indignation was one of those projects, it was the first opportunity that came to me that was very much in the wheelhouse of my education, background and my interests. Now I feel like I can look for project where I add the most value and be my strongest self. I like to work on character driven movies with lots of style and mood. I find myself drawn to filmmakers who push the envelope a little bit. 

CC: Once you have been hired and you have discussed the concepts and direction with the creative team, what is your next step? 

JW: While I am starting to dive in, I create a mood-board of music that inspires me around that film. Nothing that would necessarily be “temped” into the movie, but pieces that help shed some light onto the sonic palate, this experience that I am about to embark on. I ruminate on that and think through all the different perspectives. Then I whittle it down until I understand where I am headed.  All through that process I am experimenting on the piano to help me find my way in. I am pretty protective when I am first experimenting and I try not to latch onto anything too quickly.  I also don’t present anything until I feel I’ve identified what my perspective is on this movie and where I feel like I can take it.

CC: Do you have a dream project or maybe a dream collaborator? 

JW: I will very gratefully say that Charlie Kaufman was one of them and I got to work with him this year. He has such a unique perspective and I never thought in a million years that that call was coming for me, my jaw was on the floor, and what happened after that was this amazing feeling of responsibility to do it right. I feel very lucky to say that it happened. 

I also love Paul Thomas Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos. I would love to work with both of them one day. I know that Yorgos usually uses music supervision, but the deep cuts they find are things I studied in grad school, it’s just really cool to realize that someone else has similar passion for modern concert music. 

And Paul Thomas Anderson, but I have so much respect for (composer) Johnny Greenwood that one is kind of hard to say. 

CC: Have you ever been to a film concert before? 

JW: I have! I saw Punch Drunk Love, a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I would want to see There Will be Blood with a live orchestra. 

CC: You are the biggest Johnny Greenwood fan! 

JW: I am, I think he’s done something really special with film scores. I have immense respect for him, with Radiohead, and all his other projects but I really appreciate what he has done with film scores.

CC: Are there any misconceptions about writing music for films that you would like to clear up? 

JW: I just think there is an art form to film scores that’s unique. You don’t necessarily need to be a big name or have a career as a musician before you work in film music, you just need to be an artist in and of yourself.