Words by Jim Ottewil

“I find it hilarious that I’m now working as a TV composer,” laughs Isabella Summers, speaking from a home studio overflowing with records, books, and music gear. She may be giggling about this latest chapter in her career but she’s no stranger to serious success. 

Musical adventures began via a passion for hip hop which led to a stint studying at art school. A chance meeting with Florence Welch and their subsequent songwriting partnership has seen Isabella enjoy sky-scraping Grammy-nominated triumphs both as a music maker and performer. This rich vein of creativity has continued in recent TV scores with the music she wrote for the Little Fires Everywhere series earning another industry nod, this time from the Emmys. 

“I’ve worked on five TV shows so far and it’s the best fun ever,” she says. “Each one has its own identity. The filmmaker wants their own unique sound and it’s great as a music maker being able to lean into what they want.”

“I’ve just scored this Apple TV show Physical which features Rose Byrne,” she continues. “It’s set from the late seventies to ‘85, so the journey goes through that sonic palette. We’d be drawing on the cocaine eighties, so lots of crazy synths and over-the-top guitar solos. Composing a score from the beginning is extremely daunting as you want to get it right but it’s such a privilege to be part of the creative process.”

Isabella grew up in east London in Hackney surrounded by the music of her beatnik dad and an eclectic record collection resplendent with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. 

A move to the seaside as a teenager saw her start hanging out with a couple of fellow hip hop lovers. Bored and with nothing better to do, her crew would spend weekends trying to beat match and listening to obscure music sourced from car boot sales. 

“I have a strange mixture in my musical background and upbringing,” she says. “I was born on Halloween so I think I’ve always connected with the dark side of things, but I love James Bond scores and soundtracks too.”

“It’s a real melting pot of styles. I remember getting Gravediggaz’ ‘6 Feet Deep’ with Prince Paul and the RZA and loving it - but then also films by Tarantino. That’s how it started swirling around and how it continues to do so today.” 

The move from fan to music maker came through the purchase of some decks and throwing herself into a world of beats and bass. At 18, she bought a pile of jungle records off eBay, then set about learning how to mix. 

“There was an element of the boys not letting me touch the turntables when I was a teenager. I was hugely competitive and I was like ‘ if they can do it, then why can’t I” she states. 

Isabella believes these early efforts in learning to mix records stood her in great stead not only for her songwriting efforts but also in composing scores. 

“I think it’s been important in helping me refine my process. It’s all about tempo and I had an understanding of the heartbeat of a song from the beginning. Then I bought an MPC and I wanted to be RZA - so I would sample these records, then someone showed me Cubase. This was a huge revelation as I could see sounds in the waveforms.” 

Joining art school proved to be a pivotal moment. It was during her studies that she started to put flesh on the bones of her ambitions, learning more about production, equipment and collaborating with anyone capable of providing different sounds to experiment with. She ended up meeting Florence Welch while working at a “dirty little rock and roll den” at some rehearsal studios in South London. 

“Meeting her was a life-changing moment for sure,” remembers Isabella. 

“Florence was just hanging out at the studios I worked at, waiting for her boyfriend to get his guitar fixed. Back then I was determined to be the best producer I could while also being sick of boys telling me what to do. So when I saw her, I was like, ‘do you want to make a song?’”

Florence agreed to work together, then went into the studio, and the creative energies between them sparked. 

“She came up with some lyrics, I worked on some beats and recorded her. When we heard the results, we were both like: ‘Wow, this is it.”

It was the start of a brilliantly creative musical relationship and one which has taken Isabella all over the world as a touring member of Florence’s ‘Machine’ as well as a co-songwriter. Compositions and songs have appeared on key albums including Lungs, Ceremonial and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, elevating Florence to international stardom. “It was all huge fun,” she laughs. “My second gig with her was at Glastonbury, but initially I only wanted to be a producer. She opened up this whole musical world for me. Cut to 14 years later, I was able to go back into the studio and focus on a different side to my music - which began with scoring Little Fires Everywhere."

While she had always harboured ambitions to work within film and TV, it’s only been during the last year that maneuvers have been made towards this new musical universe. 

“I’d got to a point where I was really keen to make my own record and see what it was like to work in the film world,” she says of her initial forays into composing scores. “I’d made some music and my friend Sam Levinson had just made his first movie Assassination Nation. He loved it, used the music, then I was asked to compose more.”

The music supervisor on the project paired Isabella up with veteran American composer Mark Isham, a music maker with more than 400 TV shows and films to his name. She travelled to Los Angeles with just a suitcase and ended up staying for six months, working with Mark on the score to what would become the hit American show, Little Fires Everywhere. The Hulu series explores the story of a family, led by Reece Witherspoon’s Elena Richardson. Her whole world is dramatically turned upside down by the arrival of another mother and daughter in their suburban home. 

“We made the music to picture - and the whole process was a question of hanging out and creating the sound. Knowing and understanding the story was really important to help purvey the right mood in the right places. But we had time to experiment in the studio and Mark is so amazing with his piano melodies. They also gave us a budget to record proper strings, something I now understand how lucky I was able to do.”

The series and accompanying soundtrack to Little Fires Everywhere has been bestowed with innumerable awards including an Emmy nomination for the pair. It’s also opened up the doors to a raft of exciting scoring opportunities including Amazon’s Panic’ a drama set in Texas depicting a group of graduating seniors risking their lives by competing in a series of challenges for the chance to win life-changing money and escape their small rural town. This time collaboration came with composer Brian Kim. 

“It was a huge undertaking as these shows are so well made and there’s a huge amount of music to create,” Isabella states. “It was also a massive responsibility for them to hire me when I was still so brand new.” Rather than collaborating in the same studio, this compositional process took place during the pandemic meaning there were plenty of files sent back and forth between the pair over almost a year. “It took a long time because there was so much music and negotiating with the feedback from different corners,” she says. 

“I loved working on Panic, and really enjoyed experimenting with big synth sounds. I worked on all the big challenge cues which were really fun - all of those moments of action and adrenaline were great to explore.”

Despite a fascinating and successful career trajectory from pop to composition, Isabella is reluctant to offer too much advice for any music makers looking to follow in her footsteps. 

“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she says. “But I think doing something until you are ‘it’ is probably the best way in.”

What works under picture and dialogue doesn’t necessarily work in its own right. But ultimately, everybody has a different way of making music - communication is key, understanding what someone is looking for, then figuring out how you can translate that into the music.” 

Isabella has been working hard during the last 18 months and her schedule shows no sign of abating. A movie score has come her way and when she’s not being blown away by the latest Tyler the Creator release, she’s putting the finishing touches to her debut album.

“It sounds so different to everything that I’ve been scoring - it’s a slightly different craft to doing something for yourself - I’ve written and produced for lots of other artists and writers for this whole time. To be championing my own project is a huge responsibility, to put my own voice into the melting pot. It feels like all the lightning bolts are coming together at the same time.”