In the midst of bleak economic times, some enterprising composers working in film and TV are finding innovative ways to battle the tides of increasingly popular canned music, a miserable retail environment, the collapse of old and well-trodden career paths, and the pressures of establishing themselves in an already overcrowded marketplace.
Today, the name of the game for such composers is marrying their artistic sensibilities with a seriously DIY entrepreneurship. For artists such as 26-year-old Nico Muhly, who is now grabbing Hollywood headlines with his score to Stephen Daldry's "The Reader," there's no compromise in the name of business.
"I'm not particularly interested in the traditional record business," Muhly asserts coolly. "It's not structured for someone like me, and that's not my problem -- it's theirs. I think I have a much more joyful approach than they do, and I have enormous freedom of access that I wouldn't have if I were tied to a more traditional way of doing business.
"I've worked for Philip Glass since I was in college, and worked a lot on his score for 'The Hours,' " adds Muhly, a graduate of Columbia U. and Juilliard who is also being commissioned to write concert works for classical artists all over the world. "So I got to know Stephen Daldry then, and later Scott Rudin when Philip was doing the score for 'Notes on a Scandal.' And they saw that I was very good working under pressure, and I think that got me invited to do 'The Reader' myself."
Muhly says he's managed to create the best of all business worlds in the process of making his own way. "My publisher is St. Rose, which is this tiny company started by Philip Glass, which is in turn handled by the larger Chester Novello, so I have the best combination of both nontraditional and traditional deals," he notes.
"On the other hand, my music isn't recorded for a label like Nonesuch (Glass' longtime label and a tastemaking powerhouse), I don't have a multinational publisher, and the only time I had a publicist was for like three weeks."
(Such voids don't seem to have hurt his career development: Along with such super high-profile commissions as "The Reader," Muhly has already been profiled by the likes of the New Yorker.)
For the husband-and-wife team of James Harrell and Ilyana Kadushin, dealing with industry evolution meant founding their own Lythion Music to meet demands for an ever-growing number of platforms. The creators of everything from original music for Nick Jr.'s "Blue's Clues" to the upcoming Shawn Wilson indie pic "Catskills '77" (in which Kadushin will also appear as an actor), the Lythion team scores and licenses music for film, TV and theater.
"It's all about staying in the game by ever expanding our community of artists and colleagues," says Kadushin, whose own diverse portfolio includes a thriving career as a voiceover actor, among other gigs (she narrated the audio book recordings of Stephanie Meyer's smash "Twilight" series).
While juggling several different career paths simultaneously creates its own sets of time hazards and internal pressures, such composers say that working on various projects keeps them both artistically fresh and financially solvent.
"Working in film and on TV scores gives me the opportunity to do music that I'd never think about doing on my own," Harrell observes. "I have to really work outside of my own frame of experience and reference, which is really energizing."
What these composers know is that their business fundamentals mean not just reaching out on as many channels as possible, but also abandoning the traditional brass-ring goal of getting a traditional record deal with a major label. Says Harrell: "Out of necessity, musicians are focusing on sync deals rather than on signing a traditional record label deal. Getting your music out there on TV and film is so much more important now in terms of getting exposure."
Cyril Morin, a successful film scorer, producer and musician who divides his time between L.A. and Paris, agrees. "The world has changed so much for musicians," observes Morin, whose film credits include such critically acclaimed international pics as Eran Riklis' "The Syrian Bride" (2004) and last year's Flaubert adaptation "Un Coeur simple," directed by Marion Laine. "You earn your livelihood now through licensing, doing films, doing live concerts and maybe producing. It's not at all about putting your own CDs out."
Working in film is deeply energizing, Morin adds. "Film music has become the most interesting thing I do," he says. "When you work by yourself, you're in a world of your own creation alone. A director can push you in a direction you would never have explored on your own, into new countries, new worlds, new moods. And one work winds up energizing another. If I have an idea that doesn't quite work in a film, I can put it into a solo song."
Kadushin says the sum total creates multiple challenges as well as opportunities. "The playing field is much more level in our business today than it's ever been, but also the market is totally saturated," she says. "We still focus on being really good songwriters and composers, but we also have to put on our business hats and do the licensing, the publicizing and the marketing. You have to go this route -- this is simply the way the business is these days."
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