Antonio Sanchez
Scores with Birdman
Contact Ray Costa, Costa Communications, 323-650-3588
There is already an Oscar buzz around Birdman starring Michael Keaton, who plays a washed-up superhero film star struggling to resurrect his acting career on Broadway. For the score, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu hired Antonio Sanchez, a composer who had never scored a motion picture before and is best known as a jazz drummer currently touring with Pat Metheny. As Sanchez explains, his score is made up entirely of drums.
MC: Has there ever been a major motion picture score done this way?
AS: I don’t think so. In the beginning I was terrified. It was completely new territory.
MC: We understand that Alejandro G. Iñárritu wanted dirty sounding drums. How did you achieve this timbre?
AS: Drums are an instrument that you can customize so much. It’s not like a piano. It depends on the type of wood in the kit. I changed the drumheads to Vintage Legacy made by Remo, the company I endorse. This made the drums sound more vintage. I could also tune and put some tape around them.
MC: Did you develop specific rhythms for each character?
AS: That was my first approach. Alejandro said that was exactly what he was not looking for. We got together in the studio in New York after I read the script. He started telling me, “In this main scene the character is in his dressing room then he gets up and starts walking down a long hallway. His mind is simmering, all over the place. He walks to a stage door and they open it to the stage––what will you play?” I have been improvising all of my life, but I react to other musicians, this was very different, to try to play something to a specific image.
MC: You did demos first, scenes were matched to these, and then a final version was improvised. Was this the method?
AS: Yes. Alejandro grabbed those demos, and once the film was in a rough state he started splicing what I did and putting it into other parts of the movie. He used the demos during the shooting of the film. Then after he put my demos on the image I went back to L.A. I went back into the studio and did a bigger version, now improvising and looking at an image at the same time.
MC: Do drums and composition go together? And might you have advice for our readers who are players?
AS: Drummers have always had this stigma that we’re not musicians. I think the newer generation of drummers is very well trained in music in general. And you need a fair amount of music education so that you can do things on demand. Let yourself be guided by feel. You’ll be cool no matter what.
