An interview with Thomas Newman (1990)
An interview by Daniel Schweiger, which was published originally in Soundtrack! (#38, June 1991). It's one of Newman's very first interviews, in which he talks about how he became a film music composer and about his first scores.
"The great thing about doing movie music is that you find out what you're capable of. You may think you're incapable of producing a certain rhythm, but it's your job to solve that problem. If you open your mind, an idea will lead you to the next one."
Click here to read the first part of the interview.
Click here to read the second part of the interview.
An interview by Daniel Schweiger, which originally appeared in Film Score Monthly (#51, November 1994). The interview was taken at the time of the release of The Shawshank Redemption and Newman mainly talks about this score. Other discussion topics are his experiments with sounds and his favorite kind of scores.
Click here to read the interview.
An interview by Doug Adams, from Film Score Monthly (#65-67, Winter 1996). Thomas Newman talks about his work for Unstrung Heroes, Up Close and Personal and How to Make an American Quilt. And if you ever wondered what a picnic (see soundtrack credits for Unstrung Heroes) sounds like, Newman explains it here!
An interview reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter - (Vol. 17 #1, Jan/Feb 1996). Thomas Newman talks about his collaboration with Bill Bernstein, source music, tight schedules, previews, the final dubb, and finding 'the melody'.
"One of the notions of the job of writing music is - this scene is not working, can you help us. Can you give it a sense of more urgency, more excitement? And sometimes we're forced to do that beyond the realm of our own taste - you say, Well, I don't want to have to sell something that doesn't exist. And yet sometimes that's the nature of the job. A certain music brings a quality to the film that makes it more itself and I think that's always our goal."
Click here to read the interview.
Interview and analysis by Doug Adams (Film Score Monthly #72, August 1996) on one of the most innovative scores of the 90's, Thomas Newman's The Player. Topics discussed are Newman's collaboration with director Robert Altman, the themes, motives and structure of the score and the soundtrack CD.
An interview reprinted from Amazon.Com. Thomas Newman talks about his career, his views on film scoring, the movies he did in 1998 and the importance of his father for his film music career. Did you know that Newman orchestrated the death of Darth Vader for Return of the Jedi?
"I feel like I know how to write in a similar style to my dad, but I prefer a score like Unstrung Heroes just because it gives me more of a unique voice. If I were to do a movie about space, I bet just by virtue of musical and dramatic expectations, I would have less of a chance to be original. Music can only follow the movie that it's in. Robert Altman's The Player allowed me a high sense of irony. Other movies aren't so smart and want to go towards the teary middle ground. And if you're being honest to the task you kind of have to follow it there, even though it may not be your taste. You have to make it more of what it is."
Click here to read the interview.
"An Interview with Thomas Newman" by Daniel Schweiger - Soundtrack! #38 (June 1991).
Film Score Monthly
Scoring The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
"I think I like smaller [scores] better, because I find more interesting places that the music can go. When you're working with a 90-piece symphony, your interaction with the players is much different. You're standing on a podium and talking to a large number of musicians. So the notion of nuance becomes a group effort and that's a difficult thing to get. I keep thinking of ways to communicate better, to scale down the orchestra's size so it will fit into my ambient palette instead of lying on top of it."
Unstrung Newman (1995)
"I would always want to think that I have places to move to musically. I feel like I have a lot in me yet to be expressed, so I just hope that at some point, sooner than later, I get a chance to do it. [...] I so love the moments in music when I feel like I've reached some place and it's such a delight to be at that you just want to write other music to get to whatever other places there are. It's just a real high in a way."
Color, Melody and... Perfume (1996)
Thomas Newman's The Player (1996)
"With great respect to Robert Altman, he provided a really unique canvas on which I could dab a little of my brush. I think if you heard this music in a really bad movie you might be saying something a little different about the music. It might not be so original."
Family Man: Thomas Newman (1998)
Required reading
"Scoring The Shawshank Redemption" by Daniel Schweiger - Film Score Monthly #51 (November 1994).
"A Refreshing Alternative" by Darren Cavanagh - Music from the Movies #8 (Spring 1995).
"Color, Melody and... Perfume" - The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter Vol. 17 #1 (Jan/Feb 1996).
"Unstrung Newman" by Doug Adams - Film Score Monthly #65-67 (Jan/Feb/March 1996).
"Up Close and Personal with Thomas Newman" by Fred Steiner - Schwann Spectrum (Summer 1996).
"Thomas Newman's The Player" by Doug Adams - Film Score Monthly #72 (August 1996).
Related links
Microsoft Cinemania Biography of Thomas Newman
Thomas Newman Page at MovieScore On-Line