Disney’s For Scores podcast wrapped up its first season with part one of an interview with composer Henry Jackman. Fans had to wait a while for the conclusion, which just premiered today. Henry Jackman had an interesting path to film composing, which he talked about in the first episode, leading to working on such Disney films as Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Ralph Breaks the Internet in addition to two Marvel Studios films, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War.
Growing up in a rural area in England, music consumed Henry Jackman’s life from a young age. His father was a composer and he was in the choir at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (the one featured in Mary Poppins). He spent five hours singing every day and performed in three masses every Sunday, including on Christmas. From the age of eight to seventeen, this was Henry Jackman’s normal routine.
At the age of seventeen, he started to become rebellious. After studying classical music and composition for so long, he turned his attention to 8-bit computers and house music in the 1980’s. A move to LA allowed him to work in the background in the pop music industry, one he grew tired of after a while. That’s when he got an unexpected call from a famous composer.
Hans Zimmer (The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean) had heard Henry Jackman’s demo and called him up one day. Scoring films wasn’t on Henry Jackman’s mind, but he soon found himself as an apprentice to Zimmer on Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code where he learned how a composer interacts with a director. His training in classical, electronic, and pop music gave him the perfect skillset to work in the film industry.
On the first Wreck-It Ralph, his electronic past can be heard to underscore digital characters in a video game world. But the sequel allowed him to play with other people’s music. In particular, he got to cram as many Disney Princess themes as possible into about 52-seconds of music during the film’s climax. He also got permission to play around with John Williams’ classic score from Star Wars, something he never thought he’d be allowed to do.
His approach to Captain America: The Winter Soldier broke the mold. In the podcast, he shares that he thought director Joe and Anthony Russo might fire him when he sat them down to blast five minutes of alarming sounds without much of a melody. He referred to it as “Harmonically less sophisticated” but talks in the podcast about the feelings of tension and unease that the music brings out. He avoided using any of the music from the first Captain America because it was very classic and didn’t fit in with the modern fish-out-of-water experience Steve Rogers was going through.
Returning to Disney Animation, Big Hero 6 was a marriage between Marvel and Disney and Henry Jackman tried to bring out elements of both styles while also infusing Japanese themes. Electronica and synthesizers were employed to bring out the technical aspect of Hiro and his friends and Henry talks about how music for an animated film has to be more lively because more happens per second than in a live action film.
You can listen to both parts of Henry Jackman’s episodes of For Scores by clicking here.