My collaboration with Chloé Mossessian began in 2015, when on a sunny winter afternoon in Prospect Park we discovered our shared love of Oliver Nelson (first kiss on the subway to "Stolen Moments"), Arthur Russell's catalogue, Moondog's magnetic snake time ("I'm not gonna die in 4/4 time"), the rain scene in De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves"— it was love at first conversation and sight, and it didn't take long for it to evolve into a dialogue across our respective mediums.
This film reel includes moments I composed for several films made in collaboration with Chloé. I wrote the soundtrack for "Concert for the Sun" in the summer of 2018 with the idea of building productions over pieces improvised in nature (in the woods of western NJ; in the forests of the Adirondacks) on a busted-up drum kit purchased for 30 bucks at a yard sale, a hang drum, an electric guitar played through a battery-powered amp, and field recordings taken at dawn in the outlet of a lake that is very dear to my heart, when the water is glass-still and the birds and insects are immersed in their most spirited conversations of the day.
For "Alentour" Chloé combines film footage captured by her family over the course of three generations in the region where she grew up, where arid Mediterranean mountain slopes wear the scars of layered histories, the feeling of which I tried to capture by writing mostly arpeggiating themes on a Grandmother Moog.
For "Parler Forêt" I made guitar loops, reversed them, and then sent them through my pedalboard, modulating parameters of ambience (reverb and delay) and of EQ in real time with each scene to engage the action on the screen without disturbing it— a challenging balance to strike.
I am humbled by the craft of writing music for film, and it is a gift to compose music for my favorite filmmaker.
If you are a filmmaker who is in need of a film composer, feel free to get in touch!
Let’s discuss an approach and process that aligns with your vision.
hankmidnightmusic (at) gmail (dot) com
- Hank
