Words by Joe Williams

In less than a decade, Kris Bowers has rapidly forged a legacy as one of the most prolific and talented composers of the modern age.

Emerging from the world of jazz, where Kris won the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz International Competition (formerly known as the Thelonious Monk Institute) for playing piano in 2011, he spent several years lending his pianist talents as sideman to the likes of Jay Z, Kanye West and original Herbie Hancock drummer, Harvey Mason.

In 2016, he made his scoring debut for both film and TV and immediately won an Emmy for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for Amazon’s The Snowy Day. Two years later, Kris composed the score for 2018’s Green Book — the hugely popular and ‘Best Picture-winning film about legendary pianist Don Shirley’s infamous tour of the Deep South in 1962.

Just as comfortable scoring for long-running period stories, like the seismic cultural phenomenon of Netflix’s Bridgerton, as he is for heavy-hitting Hollywood dramas like 2021’s King Richard, Kris navigates through different mediums and genres with amazing ease and skill. Yet there is a connective tissue that joins all of his projects: a pattern of working on thoughtful and considered projects that champion or feature Black stories.

However, with the wise words of past mentors ringing in his ears, he’s defied categorisation and ensured that his craft always speaks for itself. This year alone has seen him collaborate once again with acclaimed director Ava DuVernay for her time-spanning opus, Origin, made his mark on the gargantuan media franchise that is the MCU with Secret Invasion, and worked with Blitz Bazawule to bring new life into The Color Purple. Speaking from his house in Pasadena, Kris reflects on how his creative approach to projects has developed, how his background in Jazz has profoundly shaped his outlook as a composer, and what the past decade navigating the industry has taught him about himself.

With The Color Purple, did you make a conscious effort to steer away from the music of the 2005 musical, or did you lean into it? How aware were you of that first iteration of the story, and how did that inform your compositional decisions?

One of the things that was interesting about the process of [director] Blitz is that he brought me on several months before they started shooting. It was while they were working on the pre-records of those songs for all the on-camera performances. One of his reasons for that was to have me make a couple of arrangements. But it was more so I could be embedded in understanding how they're reimagining these songs. Blitz had different references, in terms of more modern references, like pop and hip-hop, R&B and blues, and he wanted me to be intimately aware of the chord progressions and the melodies. What we talked about was the score needing to be the glue — not quoting the songs, nor being a continuation of the songs, because that would just make it feel longer and never-ending. We looked at the songs to see if we could use any small aspect of them to find the first bit of inspiration for what I would write. Whether the shape of a melody was something that might be interesting to borrow from, or incorporating the fact that — for instance —  heavy drums were thematically related to a character. Because I did the arrangements with The Colour Purple, I was able to see what set the bar for how big we can go with sweeping orchestral stuff, in terms of palette.

Was this your first experience of music for a project that was directly related to, or ran tangent with, other music?

I think the only other comparison that comes to mind is Green Book. I knew that Don Shirley was influenced by Black Spirituals, and influenced by classical music. So, instead of quoting his songs, or trying to write a score that sounds like his music, I wrote a score that sounds like the stuff he's inspired by. It was like writing melodies that feel like Spirituals, that are also orchestrated in a more traditionally classical way. The only other thing that felt that similar in terms of pulling from existing music was with Aretha Franklin for Respect. I enjoy this process of looking at something that's part of the canon of the piece and seeing where we can create these series of tangents so that when I arrive at what I write, it has its own identity. For Blitz, we can always go back and say, “This is the reason why we made these choices and that is very clearly related to these things.” Having that balance, to me, always creates this connectivity throughout the whole thing.

In that same vein of working on projects with a pre-existing musical identity associated with them, how did you approach Chevalier? Did you have a specific philosophy regarding whether you were going to try and incorporate or avoid his music?

My first step was to learn as much of his music as I could. I looked at all of his violin writing — I literally transcribed a bunch of violin motifs. I also looked at his tendency for phrases and melodies, to see if I could write something that sounds like that. It goes back to my jazz background, I think; the process of learning jazz has a lot of emphasis on transcription. To transcribe well, you have to figure out how to get inside the DNA of a musician so that you're not just copying them. ‘Okay, this is the phrase that this person is playing. Now, let me get into their harmonic approach — are they superimposing this harmony over this harmony all the time?’

You’re questioning things like, “Is that what Herbie Hancock always does?’ Not always. But does he often do this, let’s say, diminished thing over this dominant seventh chord? Yes, and if I approach this chord progression with that harmonic mentality, then it's going to invoke the sound of Herbie, but it's not going to be Herbie. That's something that always helped me as a jazz pianist — learning somebody's approach to something, rather than learning the exact musical vocabulary they were using. That translates into these processes on films; finding a way to write something that feels like it’s worked with other music, but isn’t the same.

Do you think your jazz background distinguishes you as a film composer?

The other ones that come to mind are Quincy Jones and Terence Blanchard. Then of course there’s John Williams — he was the one that made me feel a little less odd about it. What's so interesting is that, when I first got into the industry, I had a lot of Black composer mentors that told me to be mindful about being pigeonholed as a jazz musician, otherwise they're only going to give you the ‘jazz’ projects. Some of my first conversations in this industry were like, “Oh, we don't have any jazz things”, so then they would send me Hip Hop stuff, even though I wasn't making that much hip-hop music. It was more to do with being Black. So I think, once I realised that John Williams was a jazz pianist, I understood that one of the most traditional composers we can think of in this industry started as a jazz pianist. That helped me to feel less scared of being pigeonholed. I know that it has much more to do with race, and how people see you, but it gave me the confidence to resist categorisation and stand on my merit.

From a musical standpoint, do you think having a background in jazz gave you a certain set of philosophical, creative or artistic skills that have been particularly useful when it comes to making music for pictures?

Yeah, 100%. One thing that comes to mind immediately is, especially being a pianist, my role swinging back and forth between soloing and accompanying. I think that so much of the process of film scoring is balancing moments where the music is supposed to shine, and times where it's supposed to serve the dialogue and the moment. That ability to listen, I think, it's something that always goes back to the jazz context. There’s also a necessity to create things at a very rapid pace. Jazz is so helpful with that; if a director’s unsure, or something isn’t quite working, it allows me to respond and rearm anything in that moment, because of the experience of doing that on the bandstand. On every scoring project, there’s the need to work quickly and be nimble.

You’ve recently scored Disney+’s Secret Invasion. What was your experience of joining such a cultural behemoth as the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

The first conversation we had was about how this wasn't the usual Marvel story in terms of where we meet our hero, and what this hero is facing throughout the whole thing. We immediately talked about the fact that Fury is contemplating mortality for most of the season. The theme needed to have the range to be able to feel a little bit darker. I looked at a lot of old, classical pieces that were written for funerals — music written about death was a big reference for Secret Invasion. But then, at the same time, we needed the ability to make it big and heroic and sweeping. That was exciting to start to explore. The idea of writing a theme for a major MCU character that may become his theme from now on is such a huge honour.

The way they use those themes or the way that the fans can identify those themes and become intimately aware of what the music represents — I think it's so exciting. Of course, there was a lot of pressure in terms of wanting to make it feel like something that could exist for however long the MCU is looking to use it for. It was fun to find a good balance of the contemplation of death and mortality with classic heroism. On the other side of the spectrum was [series villain] Gravik and that was so fun to look at — he’s somebody that would just represent chaos and violence.

For me, writing music is always a very visceral type of thing where I'm digging into my personal feelings and thoughts. The way I live my daily life is a very easygoing, laid-back kind of life, but I’m also very aware of our capacity for darkness and anger. It's always fun to write themes for those kinds of characters. With Gravik, I had a lot of fun writing something that felt chaotic, untethered, and unhinged —- a kind of revenge-fuelled anger. My references for that ranged from Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Machine Gun’ to Shostakovich’s ‘Symphony No. 10’; everything that was unabashedly aggressive and almost violent.

Do you have a personal, emotional connection to your music?

Yeah, I think there's a duality for me. It's a balance, where it's incredibly personal in the creation of it, and then as soon as I'm done creating it, it becomes removed. For some projects I'm working on, if it's a deeply dark emotion that I'm pulling from, it's helpful for me to take a break and not be in that headspace. Also, because this is a collaborative process, I pride myself on being able to write something that feels deeply emotional and deeply personal to me, and then be cool with it if I show it to a director the next day and they say, “No, that's not it.” There are times when directors are trying to be nice, and I’m like, “We're not here to make me feel better.” We're not here to say how great my music is, we're here to make sure that the movie’s going to be as great as possible, and that my music is helping it do that. I don't feel personally attacked if they don’t like my music. I’m happy as long as it's coming from that deeply personal place. You know, I can make something that's cool, but I feel like as an artist, I just really want to make sure it's coming from a resonant place for me.

How have your relationships with directors and ability to navigate the industry changed over the last decade?

I've dreamt about this career for so long, ever since I was a little kid. I've been playing piano since I was four, and because of that level of intense desire, I have so much of my identity ultimately wrapped up in my music and my career. There was a period where there was so much fear around whether or not somebody was going to like what I was doing, or whether or not I’d be successful. It was so overwhelming, navigating this industry and needing to please this other person that you've just met. I'm a person that likes to please and so that was always something that I measured myself by. But now, having worked on the amazing things that I've worked on, and created over and again with so many incredible artists, I realise just how much I depended on validation by this external industry and world. Today, as long as I know I’ve done the best work I can, that’s all that matters.

What do those very first creative steps look like when you sign on to a project?

If the emotion is very visceral, then it always starts from a place of improvisation. I think about Ava's [DuVernay] new movie, Origin, and watching that, the thing that was most visceral to me was the concept of the literal past at work — the past as this antagonistic, dark force in the movie. That felt so clear to me, and I knew I wanted to hear groaning and this muted roaring — all this kind of stuff. So I might have a really clear idea, and then my senses are diving into some sort of interpretation of that, and I’ll start working with musicians to help build something, or I’m asking people to record, like, creaks in their house, or asking people to record themselves playing their instrument in a way that feels creaky or detuned.

Then, the other part of the process for me, whether or not it comes first, is deep, deep research. Researching things that are directly related to the project, or researching things that are related to that emotion that I'm trying to get at. I’ll listen to stuff and question what exactly makes it feel the way it does. Is it the instrumentation? The way it's played? So my process vacillates between improv and creation, and deep study and research, and I like seeing how those two things kind of come to represent the feeling that the director and I talked about.

You’ve previously expressed a desire to grow and develop your conducting and orchestration skills — has this changed?

For conducting, I still go to Fabrizio Mancinelli, who I've used since he conducted Green Book — we met at the Sundance Composer’s Lab,  and he’s just such a masterful conductor and a great human. I want to learn how to conduct as a skill for myself, but I don't think I'll ever conduct my scoring sessions, because I like being in the booth. I like listening to it and being there with the director, so when they're listening you have that immediacy of being able to respond. Orchestration-wise, I feel like I've only gotten much, much deeper. I've always prided myself on working using orchestrators to augment and help me in certain ways. I was super proud of the orchestration on Haunted Mansion — but it's always a learning process. I love the collaboration with the people that I have on my team because of how much it helps me learn as well.

You’ve composed for two video games [Madden NFL20 and Madden NFL21]. How aware and involved are you with that medium, and is it a composing space you’d like to explore further?

Yeah, that'd be something I’d want to explore further. I'm working on another one right now. It's a little ways away, and it's definitely a different kind of thing in terms of how the music works with it. I can't speak to what it is, but it's a franchise I'm super excited to be a part of. When I was a kid, I mostly played sports video games, like Madden and NBA 2K. Oh — and Metal Gear Solid, GoldenEye, and Super Smash Brothers. I didn't play first-person shooters much. But to be a part of Madden, that was really dope because it went back to my childhood, and how much I loved playing it. That was super special. I love how much of a world these games have become, and I like how much they've been able to provide a landscape for an intimate and involved score. So, yes, I would love to be a part of a game that has a really clear world that requires a very specific sound and approach. I've seen composers like Hilda Guðnadóttir, or Stephanie Economou, and seeing what they do in video games is inspiring.

The Color Purple releases in US theatres on December 25th, 2023, and in the UK on January 26th, 2024.