I think it’s a simple guideline for everybody who worked on the film in every department; To be equivalent to Truman Capote’s prose and approach. I used that as my study guide, really. His approach is clean and very simple and descriptive; in fact, deceptively simple. It’s the perfect word in a perfect place. There’s no extra frills and bells and whistles. It’s all very clean. That’s the model that I tried to be the equivalent of. The music for Capote is really music about and from the human interior world, which is very unlike his exterior world. It’s is a very lonely and empty place. So it had to be something that captured that quality.

Water is a very different score with its use of Indian music. Would you agree that Capote and Water represent two different sides of you as a composer? Scoring typical American films and films with a world music approach? If so, which side do you prefer?

I love working in both worlds. Ironically, I am probably better known for the ethnic work that I’ve done in film music. My background and my honing has been the Western classical music. That’s what I grew up studying and listening to. It’s fantastic to be able to go from one to the other. They inform each other and both stimulate work in the other worlds.

A lot of your scores incorporating music influences from exotic countries. How did this love for ethnic music start? Do you travel a lot?

When I was studying music in Toronto, it was a point in time when Toronto as a cultural city was exploding and exploding in a good way. Toronto is a very successful, mutlti-centric city, All these different groups intermingle. There is a great deal of artistic expression from Egypt and its all very accessible for anyone else, So when I started going to school and studying composition at the University in Toronto, it is so easy to accept all these different kinds of music and dance and art forms from all over the world. Toronto continues to be a very great working model of what a multi-ethnic city can be. That’s really where I first started hearing these sounds and getting excited about them. As a result, I brought them into my work.

I believe Ararat is probably one of the most underrated films and scores in recent years. How do you feel about this project? Do you think it’s a greater responsibility to score a film like this with a political relevance compared to other more mainstream projects?

Because of my close relationship with Adam, who is the person that I began this career with, because I’ve known him for so long, I know how close this work is to his heart. It was a very important film for him. Because I was very close to him, it was very close to my heart as well. It’s something that I took very seriously. When you are working with history, not fiction, you have an obligation to honor the actual life of the people who is involved in the story and to remember these are real people and real cultures. They are alive. I wanted to honor that through the music. I spent a lot of time studying Armenian music and getting to know quite a bit about it. I traveled there and worked with musicians there. It was a tremendously moving experience to be there with Adam and work with the music of his culture which, in a sense, I was reacquainting him with on an intimate level. Recording a choir at night in this 4th century church was just an incredible experience. It’s a very important film to me.

Your score to Hulk was rejected by the producers. Can you tell us something about your original approach? How did it affect your working relationship with Director Ang Lee? You did not score one of his films since Hulk.

It was a fantastic opportunity. It hasn’t affected the work relationship between us.

A few years ago you score 8mm by Joel Schumacher. It is a very unusual concept for a thriller score to use Moroccan folklore. Was it your idea and weren’t you afraid of being accused of associating Arabic music with the porno business?

If I were scoring that film now, I might very well make different choices just because the world has changed since that time. But let’s be clear that is Moroccan music. I would be very careful about calling it Arabic music. There is very clear reason why I used it, which are 100 percent musical. Moroccan music has this propensity towards tempos that increase in speed. The almost start slow and work into this frenzy of ecstasy, almost like a whirlpool. That kind of structure just seemed to match the action of the film where we have Nicholas Cage as this private detective being pulled into this whirlpool world of underground pornography. So the choice was 100 percent musical.

Some years ago you composed music for non-film music albums like A Celtic Tale/ A Celtic Romance. Do you have plans to do more cds like this or to composer music for the concert hall?

I have a plan to do an opera, but this is a very early stage to say this.

A lot of people in the classical music business don’t think of film music as real music or art. How do you feel about this issue? How important is it for you to compose music that works apart from the pictures?

The priority for film music is to serve the film. There’s nothing embarrassing about that. Film is the most powerful artistic form of expression at this point in human history. Certainly nothing embarrassing or shameful about writing music for that. The experience of film is multi-sensual and music is a major part of the experience. I wouldn’t want to work in anything else. Whether it should stand apart, I do take care to try and make the music be satisfying on its own and to make a satisfying CD as well as have it in the film. But that is definitely not the priority of what I’m doing.

How is your relationship to the film music scene in general? Do you read reviews on the Internet or do you listen to classic or current film scores?

Of course, I read reviews and I definitely do see new films all the time.

Can you tell us something about your upcoming projects?

“Breach” with Billy Ray, a turn-coat FBI agent story. And “Surf’s UP,” which is a Sony Animation film. That will be really fun because that’s a completely different world for me to enter. Those are the only two projects I can talk about right now.

Mr. Danna, thank you for the interview. (mr)