Words by Sean Wilson

Composer Jeff Russo is ubiquitous within the field of television. UK viewers are about to get reacquainted with his idiosyncratic, Emmy-winning sound for Fargo, the hugely successful Noah Hawley series that has just entered its fourth season. In terms of Russo’s career, however, this is just one of my fascinating compositional projects.

Russo actually started out in rock music and was one of the founders of the alt-rock group Tonic. Formed in 1993 with Emerson Hart, Tonic released its debut album Lemon Parade in 1996, which subsequently reached platinum status in the United States. The group also received two Grammy nominations for its 2002 album Head on Straight. Embedded within these band days are the origins of Russo’s compositional career and storytelling ability, and we were keen to find out more about his process.

In addition, we discussed his enduring partnership with Hawley, which has also expanded to the TV show Legion and Natalie Portman's film Lucy in the Sky. He also talked about what it means to play in the Star Trek sandbox on both Discovery and Picard. Russo also spoke at length about the importance of collaboration in film and TV scoring, the enduring influence of Pink Floyd on his career, and why scoring the underlying emotions, not the visuals, is often the critical factor.

You've diversified into a huge range of TV shows. Is there more scoring creativity within the realm of television nowadays? What are the opportunities in terms of you being able to imprint your own voice on a project?

I definitely think that there's a lot more envelope-pushing in TV now. People are trying to do different things and there's a lot of opportunity on TV. There's simply a lot of shows. Last year, there were something like 400 new shows. It's incredible. I've been extremely fortunate to be a part of projects that have wanted to push the envelope, to be a bit different, a bit more melodic or creative in terms of their sounds. 

That gives me a lot of ability to have fun. One of the reasons why I got into music in the beginning, when I wanted to be in a rock band, was to have fun. Music is an emotional release and, to me, is supposed to be emotionally cathartic and fun. You should love doing it. That's not to say that parts of this particular job aren't extremely tedious or time-consuming. But I would say that it should always lead to some sort of emotional release.

In the different projects I'm doing, I get to feel like that. Recently, I got to experiment with different sounds for the 'Main Title' on a new project. I am extremely fortunate that I get to try different things. I got a new synth that I opened up. You sit back and listen to it and say, 'Yeah, that's pretty cool. Hopefully, they'll like it.' If they don't, obviously I'll go and try something else. That's the beauty of jumping in and out of new projects you get to shake the cobwebs out every time you switch gears. On the one hand, I could work on something for Fargo, and then I might have to jump into something for Star Trek: Picard or Discovery. Those projects display a very different ethos, in terms of the way music is treated and the way I want to present the musicality.

If I'm sitting there, banging my head against my keyboard because I can't think of something, I can jump onto something else. Maybe something perfunctory on another project, and then return later on. It shakes out the rocks in the head.

You started off in rock, specifically the group Tonic. How did you get into that in the first place? What were the musical influences that took you from being in a band to scoring?

When I was young, I started out playing drums in a band in high school. Mainly, we played covers of 'Cars'. I remember doing that a lot. A friend of mine then directed me to Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'. I hadn't really listened to a lot of Pink Floyd. I was maybe about 13 or 14. All you kids out there, don't do this, but my friend was like, 'We've got to smoke a joint and listen to this album'. [laughs] So I did that and I listened to this song called 'Mother'. I heard the guitar solo. It was partially due to me being stoned, and also due to it being an incredible piece of music, but I thought to myself, 'Now that's what I want to do, play guitar and make those sounds.' I really got into Pink Floyd and then started teaching myself how to play guitar. 

I then started writing songs, although not necessarily in the style of Pink Floyd. Maybe that did have an impact on my interest in writing music for narrative. Because Pink Floyd's records were incredibly cinematic. Maybe that did have an impact on my desire to write music for film and television. I didn't begin that part of my career until 11 years ago. I didn't really get interested in it until 15 years ago. That's when I started to become interested in wanting to do film music. 

I'd always loved the end piece in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. I was always so enamoured with how the music played with the whole scene. Again, that wasn't something I ever considered doing myself. It was just something that I loved. I had some soundtrack albums that I listened to when I was a kid, but nothing that pulled me into wanting to do it as a career. I was a huge Star Trek fan when I was a kid and a teenager, but never with the expectation that I would end up doing the thing that Dennis McCarthy or Jerry Goldsmith or James Horner were doing. 25 years later, I'm writing some of that music. It's pretty incredible.

 It's interesting that you cite E.T. because that's a prime example of the importance of collaboration in film scoring. Steven Spielberg re-edited the sequence around John Williams' music, which is somewhat unusual but a clear sign of trust. You've carved out a partnership with Noah Hawley across several different projects. What does it take to collaborate with a showrunner or a director in terms of the musical vision for a project?

Communication between collaborators is the most important thing, whether it's music and director, or two writers, or two music writers that are working together. My ability to communicate with Noah is a very special thing and a very interesting thing. We communicate on a musical level. He's already very musical, he plays guitar and he was in a band when he was in college. He understands how to speak music. He also understands how to adjust the music. I've also worked with filmmakers who have zero ideas how to speak music. They have no idea to make music or what it takes to accomplish the thing that they want. 

The overarching connection in any collaboration is for a director or a producer to explain to me how they want the music to make them feel. That's really the most important thing. Noah and I have a couple of things that we live by in terms of how we think about music. One is that you can't play music until you've earned it emotionally in the scene. The music is only as important as the silence that precedes it. If you have wall-to-wall music, the music just becomes background noise. 

So we take care not to overuse music, specifically score. And we never want to lead the audience. Music gives the viewer the go-ahead to have a feeling. It gives them the thumbs up, 'What you're feeling is right'. You don't want to be in front of that and tell the viewer how to feel. There's a very fine line and we sort of live by that mantra. Our back and forth in talking about music revolves around what we're trying to help in the story. What part of the story are we trying to help tell? And whose story are we trying to help tell?

I also don't want to write music based on what the character is doing, but mainly what the character is feeling. I give the viewer the opportunity to know what the character is doing because you have eyes and you can see it. I don't need to tell the viewer what the character is doing, only what they're feeling. This is especially important in scenes where there's no dialogue. A lot of the time, that's where music shines. Where there is no dialogue telling the viewer what's happening, and it's only visual, the combination of the visual imagery and the music can be extremely powerful.

I've asked a lot of composers if it's easier to collaborate with someone who's musically literate or not. Some people prefer that the director just spoke in terms of emotional extremes and that it helps if the director isn't musically well-versed. But in terms of you and Noah Hawley working together, you appear to be simpatico. 

In reference to my relationship with Noah, the answer is yes. That's also because of how we're able to communicate. I've been in situations where filmmakers were also musicians and it actually was a detriment. In that situation, they're trying to tell you what they would do. And what would do isn't necessarily what I would do. 

There isn't a struggle so much, because my entire job is to deliver music that the filmmaker wants. They want it to bring up this particular emotion. But I have a particular way of doing that. When someone starts to tell me how to do that, it can become problematic because all of a sudden, I'm doing something in a way that I'm not necessarily happy with. It can be problematic. A lot of times, people who are musical don't understand how to do this part of the musical job, as in scoring. What I do now is so different from what I did as a guitar player in a band. Just sitting down and playing guitar and singing a melody to your buddy who's then going to write a lyric around it. And then, maybe, he's like, 'Well what if you go to D-minor, instead of B-flat?' As a composer, your whole job exists as a translator. You need to translate the filmmaker's language of narrative and emotion to the language of music. It can be quite complicated. [laughs]

I imagine what might otherwise constitute technically accomplished music could end up being dramatically inappropriate. Have there been occasions where you've come up with something great, only to find it doesn't match up to the picture?

What I would say is, on a lot of projects, I will write music before there is picture. With Fargo, a lot of the themes are written prior to the picture. Noah will send me a script, we'll start talking about what he's thinking and then I'll start writing. Then, we'll start throwing themes up to the picture. And what I thought was going to be one theme actually becomes a different theme. When you look at it, you realise that a particular piece of music makes a lot more sense for this character rather than another character. I'm literally just reading a script, closing my eyes, and imagining what this particular character is going to do. What this scene is going to look like. And that's where fine-tuning becomes a thing. 

That only happens when I'm writing music without picture in front of me. When I'm writing music to a scene that needs to be scored, I'm thinking about where the music is going to be and I'm tailoring the composition around the scene before the composition is actually created. I don't write something and think, 'Oh this doesn't belong here.' Because in that instance, I'm creating it in place. It's certainly been the case with at least one filmmaker where I've written something to picture and they've come back going, 'Well, this isn't working.' That's always an interesting conundrum because music and film are all subjective, right? And what I think works, someone else might think it doesn't, therefore I start again. That's always an interesting part: the idea of making art in service of someone else's art. The art I'm creating is in service of this other person's creative vision. How to bring that together is a delicate dance. 

I imagine that must be really important when dealing with a show like Fargo, which is incredibly complex, mercurial, darkly comic, and shocking. You've got a host of quirky characters, obviously building on the legacy of the Coen brothers film, and its score by Carter Burwell. Do you have a series of instrumental choices and themes that cut through the craziness of the show? Or do you lean into the eccentricity of it?

In that show, we always want the music to enhance the drama. One of the things that makes Fargo what it is: we don't really play funny music. When there's a comedic moment, we normally don't play music. Perhaps we'll play music and then make it stop. Then we let the funny be funny. The humour in that project is very real. It feels real and grounded and I don't need to spell out the funniness for the viewer. We talked about how music can enhance the drama. And in doing so, when we play very dramatic music, it can be ironic. But not in an on-the-nose type way, although that can work very well. Then, there's the emotional aspect of it, the need to lean into the emotions. Then, of course, there's a lot of tension and we want to build that tension. 

A lot of times, silence builds more tension than music can ever build. When you don't know what's going to happen, and there's no music, that has sometimes made me feel more uneasy. Certainly more than if I were to play some weird aleatoric thing. That's uneasy on its surface, but it's telling you that something is uneasy. It gives you the go-ahead to feel more uneasy, and that makes you feel more relaxed. 

There isn't one instrument that I pick that does cut through it all. It's more about how I deal with the project melodically, and I deal with it from an emotional standpoint. 

The use of silence versus music must play into the importance of spotting cues. That must be a pivotal part of the creative process? 

Noah is a genius on many different levels but in terms of my collaboration with him, he's very in tune with where music should go. How it should start and how it should end. We're adjusting spotting all the way up until the very, very end. 'That should start a second and a half later', or 'We just want that have a little more breath right before the music starts', or 'It really comes out way too late, we need to come out a lot earlier because if we cut it right off at the end, we'll allow that moment to land'. 

Spotting is very important. A lot of the time, our spotting sessions are very perfunctory. We watch it and talk about music but we don't really get micro about it until the process of writing has already begun. We can say, 'Oh, let's start it right there', but that doesn't really work. You need to find that right spot while you're writing it. Then you can adjust it later. We also have the opportunity to have that much time. A lot of television, you simply don't have the time. I start writing music so early on in the production process with Fargo, which means we have a lot more time. 

It's a double-edged sword. Sometimes you have more time, and therefore more opportunity to fuck it up. Other times, I'll get a phone call demanding a Main Title, someone will say 'We need it tonight', and I haven't started it yet. I have a day to do it and sometimes that's when I do some of my best work. When I'm under so much time pressure that you don't have time to second-guess. You've just got to write the melody and sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't.

Fargo has become a huge success and has gone on to encompass four seasons. Is there a drive to reinvent the sound, either subtly or overtly, every time, or is there a desire to keep the music consistent?

The tone of the show is consistent. The devices that we use are consistent. It's the way we use those devices. We have a mantra: 'No themes repeat.' I don't really repeat thematic material from previous seasons unless absolutely necessary. The Main Theme obviously repeats. We use Carter's theme once a season, usually around episode eight or nine. That flags up where we've come from. It really is necessary to tie it all together. The only other theme I've used more than once is the 'Wrench and Numbers' drum theme, the bad guy theme, which started out with me playing the drum kit. Then, in season two, it played in a marching band and then, in season three, it went to being back on a small drum kit. In season four, it was in a jazz context. 

Other than that, new thematic material has to be created every year, but in the same sort of vernacular, because we are telling the same type of story. The stories are all interconnected in one way or another. In season four, we connect to season two. In season three, we connected to season one. There was a connection between seasons one and two. There is an overarching connection that I want to keep going with the music. 

That thematic connection must be imperative in Star Trek because you're dealing with something that has an extraordinary legacy, across film and television. You work on both Star Trek: Discovery and Picard. What is it like to be in the captain's chair on that?

I pinch myself every time I sit down to write. Every time I sit down to write something in the Star Trek world, I pinch myself. I'm standing next to giants in my field. To think that I could be mentioned in the same sentence as Jerry Goldsmith or Alexander Courage or Dennis McCarthy or Fred Steiner – there are so many brilliant composers in the world of Star Trek music canon. James Horner, Michael Giacchino – the list goes on. To think I could be mentioned in that same sentence was just unthinkable to me until now. I'm standing in the shadow of people who have written some of the most iconic music ever for television. 

That original fanfare – you only need the first two notes to know what it is, right? The same with Goldsmith, and I'm not even talking about his other work. I'm simply talking about work solely within the Star Trek universe. You only need a couple of those first notes to recognize the theme. It's incredible to me to be working within that same universe. I never really thought that that could ever happen. I sit at my keyboard and try to write a melody and I try not to think, 'Will this stand up?' But in the end, I do think that. I have to ask myself, 'What would Jerry think?' [laughs] And by the way, he would fucking hate it! He would think I'm a hack, probably. And that's totally fine, but it can be harrowing. I'm just really thankful to be able to apply what I know musically to this Star Trek world.

In an environment as sweeping and as bustling as Star Trek, you've got Picard, freshly revived as a character by Patrick Stewart, and then you've got Discovery, which contains new characters. Is there a leitmotif, character-based principle that you apply to the canvas of characters in both shows?

Yeah, there is. And I try to keep that pretty consistent. In Discovery, there's a Giorgio/Burnham theme. There was a Klingon theme for season one. There's a Discovery theme. And with Picard, there's Picard's motif, plus some other motifs for Jurati and various other characters. I don't want it to be too restrictive. But the one thing that music can do in these shows is connect the universe. 

In Picard, when Seven of Nine showed up, I got to do a little tip of the hat to Voyager. In Discovery season three, they show up at Starfleet and you see Voyager version 20. Again, I could do another tip of the hat to the Voyager theme. That was interesting to do that cross-series approach. It is fun for me to draw on canon as well. In the opening of Picard, where you first see the Romulans, I thought it would be fun to quote Fred Steiner's Romulan theme from the original show. In my mind, I thought it would be fun and I wondered if anyone would notice. It aired and I got like a million emails from fans, some saying, 'How could you do this?' and others saying, 'Oh my god, I can't believe it, it's so great!' 

For some fans, the music is such a big deal. When I get that kind of feedback, I realize that people are actually listening. [laughs] And they've been paying attention for years. The fact that I literally played four or five notes of Fred Steiner's theme when we first see the Romulans, and people picked up on that – I was like, 'That's pretty cool.' I love doing that. I have no problems doing that. These are all amazing pieces of music that are in the world and I've got to use them. 

I'm curious about your setup. Are you happy mixing up an organic, symphonic approach with something synth-based, like pads or plug-ins?

I'm not a purist. I'm the kind of composer who thinks, 'whatever works.' That usually leads to a hybrid. I'm a firm believer in the need for live musicians to be on any score that isn't supposed to be 100% electronic. If you need the score to live and breathe as part of the fabric, you can't really do that well without a live human being someone on the score. They inject heart and blood running through veins. On that level, I'm pretty much a purist. I have a bunch of electronic stuff and a bunch of live stuff. I like to play, I bang on things and manipulate them, and put them in scores. I play piano and guitars, or sometimes I'll put a bow on something. I'll try to mix it up.

The space in which you record must be of paramount importance, and the notion of reverb and the mix. Is there a particular sound that you seek out when you're recording something?

I do try to find the right space for something. I have a live room in my recording studio that has a drum kit in it, and I've recorded a bunch of string and horn players in there. Whatever I need. In terms of space, because I have a limited amount of space here, I do have to fake that if I want long reverbs or rooms or stuff. Or I'll go to another studio and find the right room. There isn't one way to do it. We use plug-ins all the time and long, modulated reverbs in short rooms. 

There can't be rules when it comes to how you make music, and how you make something sound. Whatever is the shortest distance between point A and point B is the key, particularly when you're working in television. When I've worked on films, you have a little more time to experiment on how you get from point A to point B. But mainly, when working with faster turnarounds, you don't have a lot of time to experiment with sound. You just want to get there as fast as you can so you can be as creative as possible.

When you're working on a film as opposed to a television show, do you get to luxuriate a little bit more?

It all depends. When I did Lucy in the Sky, which was a film I made with Noah, I spent a year writing that score. That's as long as I've ever spent writing a single score that wasn't episodic. Obviously, I can spend a year working on a television show because there are multiple episodes. But on Lucy in the Sky, we had a lot of time. I started writing when he sent me the script. I was writing all the way through the shooting of the movie and all the way through the editing. We came to the recording session at the very end, and I'd had a lot of time thinking about how I wanted it to sound. I built instruments for it or had them built by someone I know in New York. I had time to explain to him what I wanted to be constructed. It is interesting having a lot more time. 

What were the instruments that were built?

I wanted some sort of bowed drone thing, and he built this crank on a long piano string that would move through a bow. It was like a saw. It would spin and make this guttural sound that I was hoping to get. It worked really well. I recorded a lot of that and then sampled it. 

One of the shows that you've done is the superhero origin story The Umbrella Academy, which is wonderfully nuts. That must be a brilliantly offbeat show to work on?

The interesting part of working on that show was the following: the story and characters are batshit crazy, so what if the score focused mainly on the emotion? What if the score wasn't about the action or the weirdness or the craziness? Because we have all that. What if the score was truly to tell the story of the family underneath the surface? That to me was way more interesting. Vanya's story, and how to tell the story of this person who grows up thinking that they don't have powers. I'm talking about season one, obviously. And then, to find out that she did have powers, maybe more than anyone else, and how that might manifest emotionally. 

That's where the apocalyptic symphony came from at the very end. That all stemmed from the original piece that I wrote, which was Vanya's Theme on a solo violin. The choice of the violin was easy because that was Vanya's instrument. That became the main instrument in the show, along with the piano. Two very emotive, evocative instruments. I got a chance to play against the show. To play it like an emotional piece. We did a lot of action music, but not in the way that you'd think. It wasn't big, bombastic superhero music. This is not a superhero story. This is a family story. This is a story of a dysfunctional family and, therefore, why don't we tell that story, musically? Steve Blackman, the showrunner, was very interested in that. 

You could contrast The Umbrella Academy with something soberer like The Night Of, or Clarice. Presumably, they present a different set of compositional challenges? Because in both instances, you're dealing with something decidedly non-fantastical?

With The Night Of, there was a sense of irony that we wanted to play up. The main character, not Riz Ahmed's, but the main lawyer – there was an oddball sense about him. I didn't want to make fun of it but I did want to include that part of it in the musical storytelling. I was able to put a bit of irony in the music. Maybe I'll add an oboe to play that theme, or maybe a bit of pizzicato. 

I'm not a big fan of pizzicatos in general, especially when you're talking about comedy music. It always seems so on-the-nose to me. We're trying to play against what you're seeing. I enjoyed the opportunity to play against the picture. It was a very deep and dark story, so I played a lot of that. But really, playing a little bit of the irony of that lawyer was very interesting.

Clarice is a whole other story. The only emotional music, and thematic music, that you'll hear for Clarice is her theme. Everything else is a horror movie. At its core, Silence of the Lambs was a horror movie. Yes, it was a crime drama/thriller, but really it's horrific. So I do that a lot in the show, or as much as I can on broadcast network television. A lot of that is orchestral effects and quartet effects that really give the tense level of craziness.

Circling back to Fargo, you get the Emmy for the episode called Aporia. Do you have fond memories of working on that episode?

Working on that episode versus other ones, I'd say no. There was a moment in that episode that I was particularly happy to write and particularly proud of. The main character comes out of the police station, and there's a long, slow-motion tracking shot where Emmett walks to the car. It was a really emotionally cathartic moment and yet there was something so sinister about it. Being able to write that melodic moment felt really fulfilling to me. 

That may have been the reason why I chose to submit that particular episode. I was particularly happy with that one moment. Not that anyone would necessarily notice that versus the rest of the episode. But that was something of particular note to me.

You've worked on video games as well: What Remains of Edith Finch. You were BAFTA-nominated for that. The video game scoring industry has exploded, and video game music is now much more sophisticated than what you got when I was younger. How do you go about scoring something like that? Are you scoring to picture in the manner of a film?

The thing I really loved about Edith Finch was that it was like scoring a film. There was a direct narrative for each one of these missions, so to speak. Each one of these set-pieces that you were navigating through. It was an open-world experience. The thing I liked about it was I got to write themes for the characters. That was why I was so interested in doing that particular game. It felt like I was scoring an interactive movie rather than a game. 

I'm working on another video game now, and it's a very different experience. The experience is very mission-based. The music is very much along the lines of, 'It needs to be here and it needs to do this and it needs to do that, and we need to hear it loop.' It's very specific. It's very mechanical. That makes it a little more complicated. Maybe not quite as artistically satisfying. The challenge is not on a creative level. It's on a practical level. How do I make this particular piece of music work under these conditions? It's more of a puzzle, which I find to be extremely interesting. That's why I'm enjoying doing it. 

On a final note, they clearly cancelled Legion far too early.

I agree, wholeheartedly! 

I read that Noah Hawley is developing an Alien series. If there was a chance to dip into that world, would you grab it with open arms?

We've talked about what the music for Alien might be. That's a very interesting story to tell. What that will end up being is still unknown. Whenever anything is in the development phase, you never know how it's going to end up. But yes, of course. When Noah asks me if I'm interested in doing something, I'm always like, 'Are you kidding? Of course I am!' Alien is a tall order. Two of my favourite movie scores were from that series, written by Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner. 

I've already been in a situation where I've dealt with Goldsmith and Horner, respectively. Star Trek: The Motion Picture, written by Goldsmith, then went into Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, written by Horner. It seems like familiar territory for some reason! [laughs] The Wrath of Khan may be my favourite Star Trek score. 

You brought up Legion. I will say this. It's the project that, musically speaking, remains the closest to my heart. I was able to make a score over those three seasons that combined everything that I love about music, every one of my true musical loves and everything that has informed my musical choices, from Pink Floyd to Beethoven. 

I loved writing the score for that particular project more than any other. I love working on Fargo and Star Trek and I love what I do. But that particular project gave me an opportunity to create music that I never thought I would be able to make. I really got to do some interesting things. It's one score of mine that I will go back and listen to. 

Because the show had a limited air time, does that have the effect of crystallising its importance in your life? 

Noah and I share a love for the same sort of music. When we originally talked about it, he said, 'Think about what Dark Side of the Moon would sound like if there was an orchestra involved.' He also said, 'Think about what Beethoven would do.' He encouraged me to turn melodies on their head and use synthesizers in a way that I wouldn't normally do. He asked me to open up my sandbox and put all my toys in the sandbox and see what happens. 

He also said, 'There are no rules here – what have you got?' I had a lot of creative freedom within a certain context. Nothing ever came back as wrong. Only in terms of, 'Maybe we can't do that here, but what about here?' It was a big kitchen sink. It was really great. Every time I talk to Noah, I thank him for giving me the opportunity to work on that score. From an artistic standpoint, it was just so much fun. To stand in front of a Moog and plug stuff in that I'd never done before. Just doing stuff that I otherwise wouldn't have time to do, and nobody saying stop.