00:00:00: Hi there, my name's Usheenani and welcome to Audio Talks presented to you by Harman.

00:00:05: and today we are exploring the power of musical score in film, stage, TV and interactive media like enormous, very famous games.

00:00:15: So our incredible guest today has truly changed the sound of our world.

00:00:20: Literally.

00:00:20: She was the first woman to conduct at the Oscars.

00:00:24: She's led the world's top orchestras at venues like the Royal Albert Hall and Sydney Opera House.

00:00:29: And her music has reached millions through legendary video game franchises like World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Overwatch.

00:00:37: She is also a radio presenter, producer, speaker and a very passionate mentor for the next generation of composers.

00:00:45: Welcome to the podcast, Imer Noon.

00:00:47: Thanks, Oisin.

00:00:48: Wow.

00:00:49: I really don't feel like I just got out of bed late with the cold after hearing that.

00:00:53: So thank you for that.

00:00:54: You don't look like it either, Imer.

00:00:56: Thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:57: So listen, I would love to just, you know, hear about your early steps and the beginnings of your incredible career, because as people listen to your career path, they'll understand the journey that you've made.

00:01:08: So kind of first things.

00:01:09: first, let's start at the beginning.

00:01:11: Can you recall your very first kind of vivid musical memory?

00:01:16: Was there anything that was a spark that really made you want to be a part of the world that you're in today?

00:01:23: You know, Oshin.

00:01:24: I mean, growing up in Ireland and especially in the countryside, You don't have a first musical memory because music is just omnipresent and ever-present.

00:01:33: Every family get together.

00:01:34: while you get up and sing a song, you get up and play your instrument, you get up and tell a story.

00:01:39: You know, it's only recently that I realized how much experience we got as kids from playing it mass.

00:01:46: So my little village did have a local composer Paddy Fahey who literally lived across the road from the elementary school.

00:01:54: It was one of those things where It's a quirky place and Paddy was just a normal, abnormal, super normal guy, you know.

00:02:04: Fantastic.

00:02:05: And what's normal in a village in Ireland.

00:02:08: This room for eccentricity, this room for uniqueness, you know, you're one of our own.

00:02:15: My first experiences of music, I can't remember.

00:02:18: I just remember it always being there.

00:02:20: But I do remember in national school, which is where I sit right now, is the school that I can walk to down the road where my kids are at school right now, where my dad went to school.

00:02:31: But I remember it's been given out tin whistles.

00:02:33: And for my American friends, that's the penny whistle.

00:02:36: They still cost like twenty quid, you know, at the time, I don't know what they cost, but they're really, really accessible and affordable.

00:02:44: And we were handed them out in elementary school.

00:02:47: I was, I just turned five.

00:02:50: And I couldn't believe that this thing would do exactly what I wanted to instantly.

00:02:55: And I was completely fascinated.

00:02:57: So I went home and I came back after the weekend playing some of the tunes off the telly for my teacher who straight away my primary school teacher and shout out to elementary school teachers everywhere.

00:03:09: They are our most precious angels and our greatest advocates.

00:03:13: She insisted to my parents that we buy a piano.

00:03:17: Now my parents were really, really young.

00:03:18: had just moved from Dublin and had built a house from scratch and we didn't really have any furniture yet.

00:03:25: So the idea of buying a piano, which was a non-essential in their minds, you know, they weren't musicians.

00:03:32: was unbelievable.

00:03:33: So the principal of the school would let me play his piano at lunchtime every day and thus began my long history of hitting the classroom at lunchtime to practice and later on in secondary school at PE during PE class.

00:03:48: but we won't talk about that.

00:03:50: And that was the start of it, but I do remember my fascination with music that I had to be part of it.

00:03:56: What is this?

00:03:57: Why does it make me feel this way?

00:03:59: Why do I have goosebumps?

00:04:00: What's it doing to me?

00:04:02: I don't understand.

00:04:03: I need to know more.

00:04:04: I need to be part of this.

00:04:05: But I remember very vividly, my dad was a huge fan of music and musicians, but wasn't.

00:04:12: a musician.

00:04:13: In fact, my dad was tone deaf.

00:04:15: And when he'd later, when I was a teenager and he'd drive us to rehearsals or recitals, whatever, and dad was singing along to the radio, I'd be like, dad, stop

00:04:22: it!

00:04:23: Dad!

00:04:24: You know?

00:04:25: Very different from your dad, Oshinlani.

00:04:27: Indeed.

00:04:28: you know, but dad and dad would be the one that was loving every second of it and you know, buying the other dad's pints afterwards.

00:04:36: and he's the guy that flew with me to Eastern Europe to my first recordings when I was like twenty and just hugely supportive.

00:04:44: But it tested me as well.

00:04:46: It was it was very scary for parents to have a music mad kid when that wasn't what they knew.

00:04:51: and from an area where music was a great passion but an amateur pursuit.

00:04:57: It wasn't something you got paid for unless you were playing in a show band, you know?

00:05:01: And that wasn't necessarily my direction or my passion, even though definitely that would have been my parents' passion in their younger days with a smattering of the albums we had at home.

00:05:13: We'd have like a... Dad wasn't a huge Joe Dolan fan, but that was what was around here at the time, but he loved Thin Lizzy and he loved Simon and Garfunkel, which that makes sense to me.

00:05:26: I don't know how, but it's good songwriting and it's storytelling.

00:05:30: I didn't come from a music family, but dad called me down to see an orchestra in the tally.

00:05:35: I was about seven.

00:05:36: And I remember it vividly.

00:05:37: And I remember a guy with big, white curly hair and tails conducting an orchestra in Vienna.

00:05:42: And I looked at it and I went, yeah, I'm going to do that.

00:05:45: Wow.

00:05:45: Wow.

00:05:46: I love this because there's a parallel timeline where the e-mournune country and Irish minstrels was taking the world by storm.

00:05:53: But I'm very glad that you chose this alternative path.

00:05:57: You saw that conductor on the TV and you plotted your course from there.

00:06:00: But, you know, you're talking about penny whistles.

00:06:02: You're talking about accessing the school piano during the lunch breaks.

00:06:06: I mean, what was the leap from this passionate but, you know, grassroots level investment in learning music and becoming a musician?

00:06:15: What was that path from there to becoming a pro and getting paid for it?

00:06:19: And reaching the world.

00:06:21: It's obsession, really.

00:06:23: You know, it is the number of journalists that have said things to me like, oh, you must be so ambitious.

00:06:30: You must be so career-driven.

00:06:33: And I'm going, I've never, ever thought of career and I've never thought of ambition.

00:06:39: I've only ever thought of, God, wouldn't it be amazing to perform that or wouldn't it be amazing to put on a concert with that piece in it?

00:06:47: And there's always as well a little bit of an edge to that, like, you know, you must be a ball buster or something like this.

00:06:54: And it never occurred to me.

00:06:55: And similarly, when people say, oh, you're driven to show the world that a woman could, no, it didn't occur to me in my family that I was that different from my brothers.

00:07:06: When it came to intellectual pursuits, that didn't make any sense.

00:07:09: And it still, it doesn't make any sense.

00:07:12: I wasn't going to go out and try and do things that didn't make sense for me, you know, in a physical way.

00:07:18: I wasn't going to become a professional caber tosser, you know, tossing the caber in Scotland because I have spindly arms and I wouldn't be able to lift anything.

00:07:27: That's me.

00:07:28: But it didn't occur to me that any of these things wouldn't be available to me because I suppose the family I grew up in, I grew up in a house full of boys, but I mean, I wasn't treated differently for my brothers.

00:07:41: they are my three best friends, you know.

00:07:43: But in terms of music getting to the professional level, I mean it was lots of fits and starts and it was it was obsession.

00:07:51: It was how do I get stuck in?

00:07:53: How do I get close to it?

00:07:55: How to get near to it?

00:07:56: So it was in this little area, it was getting piano lessons and then going to join the town band where I was playing flute on a borrowed instrument for years.

00:08:07: My first job when I was fourteen was playing flute for Calamity Jane because I could sight-read the show and I could sight-read it because I was doing it in band every week.

00:08:17: My first flute teacher was a member of the Irish Army Band, you know, at the Western Command.

00:08:24: So again, I was doing a lot of sight-reading.

00:08:26: I was coming across a lot of different styles.

00:08:28: then the music director.

00:08:31: in Balanced Low said, you know what?

00:08:32: Why don't you coach the singers for me?

00:08:34: I'll make you the assistant music director.

00:08:36: I was like, fifteen.

00:08:37: So I'd bash out the songs and then something really special happened.

00:08:42: My friend, Liam Daly, who was, I didn't know him at the time.

00:08:46: He was the conductor of the Army Band of the Western Command.

00:08:48: They came to my school.

00:08:50: I love telling these stories because this is all small town stuff.

00:08:53: And people see me on stage and they assume, oh, I was conservatory trained, which I was.

00:08:59: Eventually, I got a scholarship, I had a scholarship for eight years.

00:09:02: I remember Liam coming to my school and the army band was doing a concert for us.

00:09:09: He asked the teachers, you know, are there any kids that can sight read the concert?

00:09:14: So myself and one other girl, and like a lunatic, a fifteen-year-old, complete, ballsy lunatic, I sight read the concert, not on flute.

00:09:23: No, no, no, that would be too safe.

00:09:25: Piccolo which is the nowhere to hide instrument.

00:09:28: So I sight read the concert and in the middle of the concert the conductor Liam turned to me and said you're up next.

00:09:36: I turned to one of the members of the actual army band next to me one of the flute players and I said what does he mean?

00:09:41: you're up next?

00:09:42: Oh he does this thing where he has one of the kids get up and conduct the band.

00:09:47: don't worry about it just flap around.

00:09:48: we'll play.

00:09:49: don't worry about it we'll play anyway.

00:09:50: I was like whoa And it was the first time I've had this feeling and I've had this feeling only a few times since where I'm equally as excited and terrified.

00:10:01: It's a signal that you're on the right road.

00:10:03: So I get up.

00:10:04: And I make the band wait.

00:10:07: I remember it's so vividly.

00:10:08: Made them wait while I'm sitting there going.

00:10:10: I knew how an orchestra was laid out.

00:10:12: I knew how a band was laid out because I'd played in both.

00:10:14: And I conducted the band.

00:10:15: And of course the girls, I went loony afterwards and as you would.

00:10:19: But afterwards I was packed up my instrument and I was walking out to the Town Hall Theatre in Banaslo.

00:10:25: And a couple of the lads from the army band were there and they said, hold on a second there, you know.

00:10:30: Said, we've been chatting and you know... We all think you should be a conductor.

00:10:34: And you could have written me a check for a million and it wouldn't have meant as much.

00:10:40: And I couldn't believe it.

00:10:42: I floated out.

00:10:44: I was fifteen years old and I floated out of the place.

00:10:48: But what was important to us?

00:10:50: when we were performing, instead of feeling really, really super nervous and everything, I felt like I was seeing everything in four dimensions and everything calmed down and everything was in the right spot.

00:11:02: It just felt right, you know?

00:11:05: So that was what I remember most vividly from that experience.

00:11:10: Everything you're talking about is, you know, an illustration of the power of passion, real love of saying yes, of trying things, of, you know, being kind of curious and unafraid to get things wrong and just really, you know, being guided by the North Star of your love for music.

00:11:25: But I wanted, if I may, kind of come on to a slightly later part of your career because, you know, you were talking earlier about that buzz of kind of sharing these moments with, you know, more and more people.

00:11:37: But of course, you've reached millions of people through these massive game franchises and titles like World of Warcraft, Metal Gear Solid and you were kind of in there quite early as well, which I suspect was guided by this insatiable passion to try new things and to bring music to a wide audience.

00:11:55: Could you talk to us a bit about that transition from yourself as a professional musician, composer, conductor, and you kind of moved into the world of games?

00:12:05: for which you're very well known today.

00:12:07: So, absolutely.

00:12:08: One thing I do want to point out, though, before I move on, is when you're from a small area, and it doesn't matter where you're from, there are wonderful adults that see a child with passion and endeavor to do something about it, who diminish it in a way that they know how big a deal it potentially could be, but they make it nice and small, so it's not terrifying.

00:12:30: Like, it's a space in the car.

00:12:32: you know, when it could be something that changes your entire life.

00:12:35: And I want to say that in every community, in every culture, there are those people and they are our wealth.

00:12:45: those people, I think other grownups, other adults need to be more supportive of those community leaders because what they do is beyond money and they don't get paid for things like that.

00:12:57: Those are just our angels.

00:12:59: So I wanted to say that.

00:13:00: But in terms of, I tell the story on stage about being in first year in college in Trinity and Dublin.

00:13:06: And one of the things we would do as music students is we would sing in the Chapel Choir because Chapel Choir had different music every week.

00:13:14: We had to be able to sight-sing it.

00:13:16: I'm not a great singer, but I can note bash pretty well.

00:13:19: I can sight-read pretty well.

00:13:20: So we would do that, which is why David Downs, who was in fourth year.

00:13:25: when I was in first year, David knew where to find us on a Thursday evening in the pub after chapel.

00:13:31: David was always working, always through college.

00:13:34: He worked with Phil Coulter all the time.

00:13:37: He had a nice car.

00:13:38: None of us in college had a car in Trinity.

00:13:40: Nobody.

00:13:41: David had, because he was working with... all the cool people and all the celebrities and everything.

00:13:45: so David was in fourth year found us all in the pub and said um what are you guys doing tomorrow or in a couple of days or something?

00:13:52: we come in and we need to put down some choir tracks for this japanese composer.

00:13:57: so we were all like yeah what is it like?

00:14:00: thirty quid or forty quid each or something we were like.

00:14:03: that's the beer money for the weekend we're in.

00:14:05: so i remember us sitting on the floor, we're sitting there making changes to parts and stuff, but it was all in pencil.

00:14:14: I joke about us having these these wooden rods with lead going through them that we, you know, would use to make marks on this stuff that comes from trees.

00:14:24: And that's how we wrote down our changes to our parts and recorded it.

00:14:28: But six months later, my brother calls me in a total flap.

00:14:31: He goes, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

00:14:34: I'm here with the lads.

00:14:35: Did you work on Metal Gear Solid?

00:14:38: And I was like, what are you talking about?

00:14:40: And he goes, I'm sitting here at the lads and we're looking at your name on the screen.

00:14:44: And I said, wait a second, who else's name is on there?

00:14:47: And he's like, David Downs.

00:14:49: He mentioned a bunch of other people from college.

00:14:52: That was my first credit and it was so completely random.

00:14:55: And now that game is a classic.

00:14:56: And I've actually conducted parts of that score all over the world.

00:15:00: But they had a moment where they had an offshoot in Dublin of UCLA Extension program and film scoring is a certification program.

00:15:09: And I was moonlighting.

00:15:11: Colin Moby used to enter me for composition summer schools and composition courses without me even knowing.

00:15:18: He'd put my name down for them.

00:15:20: So firstly, Brilliant people at MRO had this composition summer school.

00:15:24: Again, a blip in time.

00:15:26: We were spoiled rotten.

00:15:28: There was like two students per composer.

00:15:30: And the composers were people like Carlisle Rasmussen from Denmark and people like Kalevi Aho from Finland.

00:15:37: These are superstars of the orchestral art music world.

00:15:42: We were writing serialism, atonal music, you know, highly academic stuff, and I was like, sixteen, seventeen years old.

00:15:50: But then Kaleviaho read his doctoral thesis to us about boxing yourself in as an artist.

00:15:57: Oh, I can't do this because people won't think that's cool, or I can't do this, I can't write a melody, I can't use tonal composition.

00:16:04: And all of a sudden, you've straightjacketed yourself.

00:16:06: You can't move.

00:16:07: You've told yourself, there's so many things I can't do.

00:16:10: You're purely thinking about what other people are going to think.

00:16:13: And he just kind of blew my mind by reading his doctoral thesis to us.

00:16:17: I was about seventeen at the time.

00:16:20: So I thought, film music, that's an area where I can try all of these different styles.

00:16:25: And maybe when I'm an old lady, I'll decide on one that's really me or something, but I need to educate myself.

00:16:33: I went and I got this thing in the door after my leave insert, the summer after my leave insert, so that's eighteen.

00:16:42: It said, congratulations, you've been accepted to the UCLA Extension Program in film scoring.

00:16:49: I was like, what?

00:16:50: And it starts next week, right?

00:16:53: I was like, hang on a second.

00:16:54: I never applied for this.

00:16:56: Not only did I never apply for it, I never even knew about it.

00:16:59: And this is the house next door, my mum's house, where I got this in the post.

00:17:04: We live in LA or we live next door to my mother in the countryside.

00:17:08: So I get this thing and I go, oh my God, this is the greatest thing ever.

00:17:11: I just had last summer going, I really want to study film scoring.

00:17:15: Where do I do that?

00:17:16: There was nowhere in Ireland.

00:17:17: It was unheard of at the time.

00:17:19: There's some amazing courses in the UK.

00:17:21: They didn't exist at the time.

00:17:23: there was USC or UCLA or Berkeley.

00:17:27: You know, I couldn't afford to go to any of them.

00:17:30: They're now, even now, they're like seventy grand a year.

00:17:32: So anyway, I take this program, but I ended up all through college.

00:17:37: I took it over six years.

00:17:38: I took every module they had and eventually I took a course with a module in orchestration for film, and I had set up an orchestra in second year in college, which your sister played at my first concert.

00:17:53: Coravina Sonny played beautifully.

00:17:55: Oh my gosh, I can hear her.

00:17:57: I can hear her sound in my head right now.

00:17:59: I can hear her.

00:18:00: I never forget someone's tone.

00:18:01: I can hear her playing the theme from Schindler's List in my head.

00:18:05: I set up an orchestra with my classmate, Gillian Saunders, to perform.

00:18:09: film scores that we hadn't heard in done live yet.

00:18:12: I had to call the guy that had the parts, Franz Waxman's son, John, to get the parts for Braveheart, sent over to Ireland.

00:18:21: And he told me, you can't perform it because it has a really, really weird instrument called the Ewellian Pipes, or she none.

00:18:27: The Ewellian

00:18:28: Pipes.

00:18:29: No way.

00:18:29: Red card.

00:18:29: I was like, what?

00:18:31: But I know the score really well.

00:18:32: I know the soundtrack backwards.

00:18:34: What's the Ewellian pipe?

00:18:35: I was like, oh, the Illum Pipes.

00:18:37: So we set up this orchestra, that was about twenty-one or twenty-two at the time.

00:18:41: In that concert, I programmed Danny Uffman's score to Batman.

00:18:45: It hadn't been done in Ireland yet at that time.

00:18:48: I remember us at Regent House in Trinity, which is right above the front arch, that big window right above front arch.

00:18:55: I remember Colin Connolly, when he was alive, doing a feature for RT News.

00:18:59: lying on the front square and the grass going deep in the heart of Trinity College.

00:19:03: And you could hear us playing batman score in the background from Regent House because it echoed all over front square.

00:19:14: And anyway, we were playing through some Steve Bartek's orchestrations.

00:19:18: It was working fine.

00:19:19: We're putting it together.

00:19:20: There was one particular part and it was a walls.

00:19:26: Now, young orchestral musicians, one of the things that we do to make a few quid when we're at music college, and this is pretty much everyone, the United States, Europe, everywhere, is we all play for those January Viennese New Year's parties where we play the Strauss waltzes and get lost in the repeats, everybody.

00:19:46: So when we played this waltz that was a complete piss take of a Strauss waltz, but it was so pithy.

00:19:53: and it was waltzed to the death where the Joker and Batman are waltzing to the death on the rooftop in Gotham City.

00:20:00: We played it down, we sight read it, and we're all like late teens, early, early twenties.

00:20:06: Nobody was twenty-three.

00:20:08: We played it down, we sight read it, and then we instantly burst out laughing.

00:20:12: The whole group, we all got the joke.

00:20:16: So I'm in my orchestration class a couple months later.

00:20:20: They've brought over this Hollywood orchestrator who's a big name and he's Tori Amos's arranger and he works with Danny and he works with this one and he works with that one.

00:20:29: And he goes, oh, I worked on Batman and The Insider and Ali and I worked on this.

00:20:33: And I was like, oh, you worked on Batman?

00:20:36: Which part?

00:20:37: And he said, oh, this Waltz thing.

00:20:39: And I said, is it the one with the cello line?

00:20:41: And I didn't sing the melody.

00:20:43: I didn't sing the tune, the cello line that goes this.

00:20:45: And I sang the counter melody because how would you know that?

00:20:48: And I said, well, We just performed it.

00:20:50: and this happened and blah blah blah blah.

00:20:52: So I did this course for eight weeks on orchestration for film and I just loved it.

00:20:57: I wanted to know how do they make that sound.

00:21:01: not just the sound of an orchestra, but the cinematic orchestral sound.

00:21:05: That big cinematic sound that we know as Hollywood.

00:21:09: How do you do that?

00:21:10: And here was the man with the keys to the kingdom, the information, the knowledge.

00:21:15: And he actually hired me as his assistant on the strength of that course.

00:21:19: And that's how I came over to Los Angeles.

00:21:22: And then there was this video game.

00:21:23: And this video game wanted to conan the barbarian sound.

00:21:28: Now, when Scott, who was my boss, was a kid.

00:21:32: His dad was the composer on Murder She Wrote and a bunch of those TV shows.

00:21:38: Like me, he was orchestrating and composing really, really young.

00:21:41: And then when he was twenty-four, he worked with a composer called Basil Polly Doris as his orchestrator on a film called Conan the Barbarian.

00:21:50: One of his students was now the composer on this new video game and they wanted it to sound like Conan.

00:21:56: So they hired him as the orchestrator, but they did not have the budget for his time and his energy.

00:22:00: So he went, okay, here's where you learn how to do the job.

00:22:05: And I was like, oh my God, real human beings are going to play this.

00:22:09: Oh my God, I was freaking out.

00:22:11: I was so thrilled.

00:22:12: and actually I hadn't moved to LA so I was coming over and back and I actually worked mostly on it in my apartment in Dublin on this video game.

00:22:22: and I remember going to the sessions which were recorded at Citrus College in Azusa because they didn't yet have the budgets for later on we would have been at Skywalker Ranch.

00:22:35: so we were in Azusa and the choir was the college choir.

00:22:39: I mean, they were very good college choir, but they were still students.

00:22:43: But I remember looking at the cinematic, which is the short movie that sets up the story of the game.

00:22:50: And I remember going, oh, my God, this is different.

00:22:53: This is unreal.

00:22:55: This is something.

00:22:56: And I knew it was special.

00:22:58: And Jason Hayes, the composer of the game, And we're still good friends.

00:23:03: Jason was his first time ever working with an orchestra.

00:23:07: It was my first orchestration job, my first pro gig as an orchestrator or as a composer.

00:23:15: And we were terrified, but we got it done.

00:23:17: And I still perform those themes and some of that orchestration today.

00:23:22: And it was World of Warcraft.

00:23:24: Wow.

00:23:24: It's still, when you hear those themes, it's the same themes that Jason wrote then, that we argued over whether that famous theme is a seven four or seven eight, endlessly the two of us.

00:23:36: And that was it.

00:23:37: I didn't work with Blizzard again till years later.

00:23:40: I was giving a free masterclass in conducting for the Society of Composers and Lyrists in Hollywood.

00:23:46: And the audio director was in the audience and he said, Why aren't you going to come back to us?

00:23:52: But I was the assistant.

00:23:53: So if your boss wasn't working with them, you weren't working with them.

00:23:56: So I went back on my own steam after that.

00:23:59: And the rest is history kind of thing.

00:24:01: Absolutely.

00:24:02: Oh, thank you so much, Amir Abi.

00:24:03: You're mapping out this course that's been guided by passion, this North Star.

00:24:06: Angels, as you described, these wonderful people who looked out for you, who put you forward for courses, etc.

00:24:12: But, you know, you've come a long way since those early days.

00:24:15: And you've worked at the Sydney Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the BBC Concert Orchestra.

00:24:22: You made history in twenty twenty as a first woman to conduct at the Academy Awards, which is just enormous.

00:24:29: And you've also bought these iconic video game scores to venues like the Royal Albert Hall with the worlds of fantasy video games in concert.

00:24:38: Is there a particular moment where you just like all of this kind of came back to you and you found yourself there in the venue with the score for whatever film or video game it was and you've just thought.

00:24:51: Oh my God, this is one of the moments.

00:24:53: Oh, does this happen to you on a kind of regular basis?

00:24:56: That's a really good question because, you know, it does and it doesn't in that I'm constantly moving forward because music is a really cruel taskmaster because you can't know enough about it or everything about it.

00:25:13: So to me, I am still a student and There's so much I don't know.

00:25:19: So I'm constantly trying to get better and I'm constantly in that space.

00:25:24: But I tell myself from the outside, like if I say it to myself and my ears hear it, I'll believe it, you know.

00:25:30: Like, look at this.

00:25:32: Oh my God, look at all these people.

00:25:34: Isn't this amazing?

00:25:35: But I don't really believe it, if I'm honest, you know, it's not that what you call it, not inferiority or what is it?

00:25:42: Imposter.

00:25:43: Imposter

00:25:43: syndrome.

00:25:44: Yes.

00:25:45: I don't think it's that really.

00:25:46: I mean, probably I am an imposter because this is an art form really that comes from the likes of Vienna and stuff.

00:25:53: But for me, I love if I'm to trace it back to what's really Irish and this is very cliche.

00:25:59: But it's the storytelling aspect.

00:26:01: I mean, I just came back from Nashville with the Nashville Symphony, but... I went and listened to some fantastic bands.

00:26:09: I mean, you can't help it.

00:26:10: One of the things I love about Nashville is every single bar on Broadway, every single bar on the Strip, there's a great band in every single one.

00:26:17: If I was to draw a correlation between Irish music, you can get into the technicalities of trad and people traveling, but it's not that.

00:26:26: It's much, much deeper.

00:26:27: Like when I listened to Dolly Parton, I hear... the type of story that connects on a really deep level.

00:26:36: It gets right into my DNA and it's very primal and it's very direct.

00:26:42: It's instant.

00:26:44: I get it.

00:26:45: I have a human connection to this person straight away.

00:26:49: There's no barriers.

00:26:50: It doesn't matter if it's in a different language.

00:26:52: It doesn't matter anything like that.

00:26:53: I straight away feel she gets me.

00:26:57: I get her.

00:26:58: We're all in the same boat here, we're all on the same planet.

00:27:01: And I think that's what has always driven me.

00:27:06: And that's why I love coming from the countryside.

00:27:09: Irish people love country and Western.

00:27:11: Why?

00:27:12: Because the songs have stories in them.

00:27:14: One of my favorite, I mean, Jolene's one of my favorite songs of all time.

00:27:17: But Code of Money colors makes me cry.

00:27:20: I mean, that story, those are the stories.

00:27:23: Story in music is what drives me.

00:27:26: It doesn't have to have lyrics.

00:27:28: It doesn't have to have libretto.

00:27:30: It doesn't even have to have an actual story behind it.

00:27:34: But if you can connect with somebody through a lived experience or through, even it doesn't have to be your lived experience.

00:27:41: If you can get the kernel of something of a truth and you can share it, that's my job.

00:27:47: That's my raison d'être.

00:27:49: You know, maybe it'll always be music, maybe it'll be film, maybe it'll be something else, but I see myself as a communicator first and foremost, and I love people.

00:27:58: It hurts me, the world at the moment, it hurts everybody, but the way people don't see people in other people, that's, I think that's our biggest, our biggest problem.

00:28:08: But I was in Nashville going, oh, I get it.

00:28:11: This is why Irish people love country so much.

00:28:15: How am I this dumb?

00:28:16: You know how?

00:28:17: Am I just getting this now?

00:28:19: And why is it that this is what the type of orchestral music that I fell in love with as a kid was?

00:28:25: I remember watching Fantasia and seeing they had they had set the story of the Greek gods to Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

00:28:33: I remember the lightning bolts being thrown during the Govitter storm, the storm, and just being so energized by it and so excited and so scared.

00:28:42: It was the music, you know, and I was like, how is this happening?

00:28:47: So I had to find out why is it when the bassists do that tremolo?

00:28:50: It's the storm.

00:28:51: Why is it?

00:28:51: Does it make me feel so unnerved?

00:28:53: And I'm writing a piece at the moment, actually, for performance at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of next month.

00:28:59: I was asked to write a really scary piece.

00:29:01: The writer of this project called Fright Night said, the scariest piece in the world.

00:29:05: And I was like, uh, no pressure.

00:29:07: So it was like, what really scares me?

00:29:09: Well, if I'm honest thing that scares me most is silence, the ultimate silence, but I can't write a piece in silence.

00:29:16: So although John Cage did very well, but.

00:29:19: I realised it was the rumours of the Banshee and it wasn't that the Banshee scared me so much.

00:29:27: I was terrified of losing someone in my family because if you heard the Banshee, that meant you were going to lose somebody in your family.

00:29:34: The piece, by the way, is called The Original Scream Queen.

00:29:37: I know it's the Banshee.

00:29:38: And Ann Doshinlani, it's spelled B-E-A-N-S-I-F-O-D-A.

00:29:42: For the Royal Aboriginal.

00:29:44: Excellent.

00:29:45: communication and its storytelling.

00:29:48: Some artists, and I applaud this and it's very, very valid, are like, if I satisfy myself, somebody else is going to get that and it's going to communicate and be great.

00:29:57: And that's a wonderful way of doing it.

00:30:00: That's not me.

00:30:01: I do it a different way, which is... I have this feeling or emotion or idea and I want to communicate that in a direct way to somebody else.

00:30:12: And that's why I think tonal music in the orchestra, what we would have called a program music back in the day, which is music that tells a story or paints a picture, is what's ultimately for now drawn me.

00:30:25: I want to be able to bring in somebody off the street who's never heard a lick of orchestral music.

00:30:31: and they can go, oh, I see it, I hear it, I feel it.

00:30:36: Whereas, you know, I love early Schoenberg.

00:30:39: I love some of the masters of atonal music.

00:30:42: I'm somebody who, I suppose, it satisfies my heart because my intellect is so drawn up in it and I have the basis for that in a musical education.

00:30:54: Not that everybody wouldn't, I'm not saying that.

00:30:56: But for the vast majority, I like a more direct mode of communication.

00:31:02: Yeah.

00:31:02: You know, that totally makes sense.

00:31:04: You know, all of these things that you're describing for our viewers and listeners on the podcast, it's this continual kind of lifelong communication and distilling these beautiful human emotions and connecting with somebody on a profound level.

00:31:18: And, you know, you've had all these incredible milestones, but it is all about that central act of connecting.

00:31:24: But I'd love to just throw back to one of the things you mentioned earlier because I thought it was beautiful how you said it, how you know there are angels in the small villages and people who look out for each other and you spoke about the importance of paying it forward and I know this is something that you do from the heart.

00:31:40: Could you talk about how you get involved with mentoring the next generation and is there any particular advice maybe you give to young women who are trying to get into the world of, you know, orchestral music, etc.

00:31:54: And maybe talk about some of the work you're doing along those lines.

00:31:57: Yeah, well, thankfully, today is very different.

00:32:01: when I was starting out for women in the industry.

00:32:04: A lot of work left to be done, a lot.

00:32:06: However, it is a different landscape.

00:32:09: It's massively different.

00:32:11: But we've a long way to go.

00:32:13: And I think that if you can, you must, I always say that if you can, if you can do something to change it.

00:32:19: You must.

00:32:20: I used to teach for Columbia College of Chicago at UCLA Extension.

00:32:24: I loved it.

00:32:25: I don't have time to do that anymore, so I've chosen different ways to contribute.

00:32:30: One is for organizations that invite me in to do things.

00:32:33: I'll do something.

00:32:34: You know, maybe once every eighteen months for the Society of Composers and Lyricists in Los Angeles, which organization I absolutely love, most generous of spirit people.

00:32:44: And those are my colleagues.

00:32:45: And I will contribute something from my toolbox to my colleagues.

00:32:49: The other is organizations in Ireland like Skillnet, where I'll help out there.

00:32:55: They're absolutely fantastic, the stuff they're doing to help people keep current and upscale.

00:33:01: But in terms of composition, I mean, Me too had to happen.

00:33:05: That was really important and I'm so glad it happened.

00:33:08: But there are certain difficulties that come to our side of the industry because of that.

00:33:14: I mean, conducting and composition have long been sort of mentor-mentee type situations and that makes that situation a little bit scarier for which is what is still a predominantly male.

00:33:28: organization for the established working composers and conductors.

00:33:33: So I'm acknowledging that.

00:33:35: I'm not pretending it's not there.

00:33:37: It's not there for every composer, but it's definitely there.

00:33:40: I've had some very frank conversations with respected male colleagues about this.

00:33:45: People I've seen be champions and be the change at very, very high levels.

00:33:50: Craig and I, we have created a free mentorship program for one female composer at a time who, when they're done with us, it's the old mentorship style.

00:34:01: So it's like, you're an apprentice until you're done with us and then move on.

00:34:07: and try somebody else's style, or we have one mentee, Zoe Bell Cosgrove, who we absolutely adore, who's just started.

00:34:15: the last, about three weeks ago, started her master's at Columbia College, Chicago, where both Craig and I used to teach the semester in LA, and then we went back as artists in residence for a while, and massively welcoming, amazing, holistic, nurturing program.

00:34:33: Our friend Kubey Ooner heads it up, he just... Amazing.

00:34:36: Zoe Bell went to the Trinity program the same as I did and, you know, we're very careful.

00:34:43: We need to see that same absolutely completely crazy passion and work ethic.

00:34:49: because you need that if you're going to survive.

00:34:51: If you're going to raise three kids on music, pay your bills and your mortgage.

00:34:55: And also Zoe Bell is a wonderful artist, amazing work ethic, amazing human being.

00:35:02: I mean, she just is one of these people like Emma, our assistant.

00:35:05: that gives Gen Z an amazing name in our house.

00:35:09: So we will be looking for our next mentee.

00:35:12: We only take one because it's really competitive out there.

00:35:16: AI is coming.

00:35:17: We want to take one at a time to do everything we can.

00:35:20: when we take someone on we're not just going okay we're done with you now bye.

00:35:24: this is someone that's in our music family going forward that that we keep supporting as as long as they're going because there's a lot of psychological aspects that you need to keep right and keep healthy.

00:35:37: it's very very competitive.

00:35:38: you need to be resilient you need to have your music family.

00:35:42: you need to have your people.

00:35:43: you need to of people you trust.

00:35:45: I had a bit of a crazy launch into the industry that I'll go into someday.

00:35:50: But let's just say that I'm very measured and thoughtful about how I want a young female artist to enter and sustain a career in our industries because there's a couple that I participate in.

00:36:09: And I am watchful of that and I am cognizant of the difficulties.

00:36:14: I don't pretend certain things aren't there, but I feel that the audience deserves great voices and diversity of voices.

00:36:22: And those voices deserve to have a healthy life in music, you know?

00:36:28: So that's something that Craig and I, both of us, Craig did a lot of teaching as well.

00:36:35: We consider our colleagues our wider musical family.

00:36:38: It's like Ireland, you know, I just had a cousin from Australia show up on my doorstep the other day and I was like, Liam, of course you're a noon.

00:36:46: I've never met you before.

00:36:47: What difference does that make?

00:36:50: But you are now.

00:36:51: I know you now.

00:36:52: Oh

00:36:52: my God, that's amazing.

00:36:53: Well, listen, thanks to yourself and Craig for everything you're doing there.

00:36:56: You really are the rising tide that's lifting the boats and your perspective, I think, is invaluable.

00:37:01: Your singular path guided by passion and love and excitement and curiosity and Trust in the future.

00:37:09: It's such a great example to all of our listeners and we will of course be linking to your website in the show notes and make sure that anybody who wants to see what's coming up, you know, the Fright Night gig, the mentorship.

00:37:23: you know, all of your incredible releases and back catalog, all of that is linked really well from the website.

00:37:28: We'll put all the details in the show notes.

00:37:31: But I have one final question for you now, Emer.

00:37:34: And it is a question that we ask to all of our VIP guests, everyone from AR Raman to Carl Cox, everyone's chosen a track.

00:37:41: And this question is to add a track to our VIP title playlist.

00:37:45: So it's such a hard question, but it's one that everyone gets

00:37:49: asked.

00:37:49: Oh my God.

00:37:50: Oh my God.

00:37:53: Wow, okay.

00:37:54: It can be one of your own, like completely, that's totally cool.

00:37:58: So I will say one more thing about music and we all know this as musicians and it is often what sustains us through hard times in life as musicians and I will give you one of my pieces because it is going to be part of an RTE program called John Creedens Musical Atlas and it's the episode on grief.

00:38:22: one of the things that music does is it gives us a place to put things like grief and how to work out our emotions and other things like you know.

00:38:32: I mean it's like you know when you go through a breakup and you feel like you'd never really heard a breakup song before but all your songwriters have clearly been there or they wouldn't be able to write a song like that.

00:38:42: I wrote a piece for World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor and initially I didn't tell people what inspired the piece because it was so close to the marrow for me.

00:38:54: But I would hear from gamers, I'd hear from fans.

00:38:57: I'm here feeling something in this piece.

00:38:59: There's more to this and people copped on to it.

00:39:03: So eventually I opened up and would tell people and now I'm very much more open because I've had had some distance.

00:39:09: So Craig and I are first, we lost our first son, Aaron Porek.

00:39:14: And the piece from World of Warcraft, Warlords of Draenor, is called Malach Angel Messenger.

00:39:21: And I perform it in every single concert.

00:39:25: And Malach is a Hebrew word for the soul of a child.

00:39:29: It's like an honorific.

00:39:32: And it goes at the end of the child's name because it was thought that the soul of a child could bring a message directly to the ears of God.

00:39:41: And the piece... is pure program music.

00:39:44: We talk about telling a story through music, so this illustrates what I was talking about.

00:39:49: It is a story, but it's a story of an epic journey, and it starts with a lullaby.

00:39:56: It's a mother singing a lullaby, and the story is loosely based on the story of Masada.

00:40:01: One of the women, they say that five women escaped from Masada, so it's a mother singing a lullaby.

00:40:10: But for me, it's me taking my son on a journey.

00:40:13: And it's the only way I could do it was through music.

00:40:16: And I have performed this piece so many times all over the world.

00:40:21: And Oshin Lonnie, there's some Irish in the choir.

00:40:24: The first line, the choir sing, is Eggshul Legia, which is walking with God.

00:40:33: And I've seen choirs in Taipei sing Eggshul Legia.

00:40:36: I've seen choirs in Australia.

00:40:38: I've seen choirs in Germany, in all over the world, seeing that line in Irish.

00:40:46: It's incredibly important to me because I toured Pregnant with my two other sons and performed that piece, and that is an experience.

00:40:56: Hey, when I was told at nineteen, I had no chance at a career because I was young Irish and female.

00:41:02: What other tell me, composer-conductors?

00:41:06: have had the experience of making life whilst performing a piece that they created for their son on the stage in real time.

00:41:17: Now, that's an experience that I will always, always have.

00:41:22: And that's where a free seat in the car to Mullengar can end up.

00:41:30: You just never know.

00:41:31: My goodness, Emma, I've been just like the goosebumps on the back of my neck have been off the charts there.

00:41:36: Thank you so much for sharing that.

00:41:38: It hits deep.

00:41:39: Thank you.

00:41:40: Thank you.

00:41:40: That's beautiful.

00:41:41: I'm going to listen to that straight away and I hope all of our listeners will as well.

00:41:45: I'm going to change the tone slightly and add to the playlist a track that was composed and performed by a young man you very kindly introduced me to earlier on in the year at the Dublin Tech.

00:41:54: so much none other than Stuart Copeland from perhaps my my favourite soundtrack album of all time.

00:42:02: one of them certainly the the theme music for Rumblefish and this is of course the the wonderful track Don't Box Me In which I really think describes your singular path.

00:42:10: you have never been boxed in.

00:42:12: He's my big bro.

00:42:13: The pair of you were just magic.

00:42:15: I absolutely love that.

00:42:16: So don't box me in Stuart Copeland because you are never boxed in, Emer.

00:42:20: And listen, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

00:42:23: My pleasure.

00:42:24: Your work reminds us that music doesn't just accompany stories, it shapes them, it elevates them, and sometimes it even steals the scene.

00:42:31: so much looking forward to diving into your back catalog.

00:42:33: Thank you so much, Ima, for joining us.

00:42:35: My pleasure.

00:42:36: So listeners, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did.

00:42:40: Don't forget to subscribe, review, and share with your friends, family, geek buddies, and World of Warcraft teammates.

00:42:46: It really helps spread the word about our magnificent guests like Ima, and we have so many more lined up for the rest of the series.

00:42:52: For more exclusive content, some behind the scenes goodies, and maybe even some competitions, find us over on the Instagram.

00:42:59: Our tag is at Audio Talks

00:43:01: podcast.

00:43:02: I hope you can join us again for more classically trained audio talks.

00:43:06: We'll see you next time.