Brian Keane
His great grandfather arrived from Ireland to help build St. Peter’s Cathedral in Danbury, Connecticut. Long Journey Home, the Tom Lennon documentary that first aired on PBS in January, represents a closing of the circle for composer Brian Keane, who lives not far from the town where his great grandfather settled.
“I grew up in a traditional Irish household. Every Sunday the family would gather to sing John McCormack songs. Working with the caliber of great Irish musicians who were lined up for this film score was a big thrill, especially since I was able to bring my dad, uncle, brother and a group of friends along to help sing some Irish songs in one of the film’s bar scenes.” The talent that Keane speaks of includes Van Morrison-old Dominoes still has a lock on mournful soul, as evinced by his vocal work on the Paddy Moloney arrangement which kicks off the soundtrack.
Other notables who lent their considerable talents to this project include The Chieftains, Elvis Costello, Sinead O’Connor, Vince Gill and the Irish Film Orchestra.
Keane, who’s listed as co-creator of the film score with Paddy Moloney, traveled to Dublin to track with the IFO. Although the acclaimed jazz guitarist-his numerous solo albums have received extensive air play on contemporary jazz stations around the country, and did we mention that he’s produced eight Top Ten Billboard recordings in the last two years, mostly in the New Age category, is comfortable penning an orchestral score and waving his arms in front of a room full of players, he generally hands off the baton to a colleague so that he can oversee a session from the control booth.
“I did in fact conduct some of the Journey sessions, but I tend to not like that part of the process. You’re working with 100 orchestra members, and they all end up sitting around while you run into the control room to hear a play back, only to discover that there was an intonation problem in the second bar that forces you to record the cue all over again. It’s more effective for me to be in the booth-I can concentrate on the cue more fully, and stop things as soon as I hear a problem.”
Long Journey Home, which Keane calls a “real roots experience for me,” is a step along the escalating exposure path that the artist is following. Another score-for Rick Burns’ The Way West, is ranked by Keane as one of the most powerful films he’s worked on. “It’s the story of an American holocaust, and is incredibly insightful about Americans, and our sense of ambition and entitlement. I think that Rick Burns is the most gifted documentary film maker working today.”
“The things we take for granted! Just consider Mt. Rushmore for a moment-an icon of American culture. The film ends with a slow pan over Mt. Rushmore. We’re left to contemplate the fact that the mountain out of which those presidential faces were carved is one of the holiest places in the land of the Lakota. What that tribe was put through!”
Keane finds documentary films, which rely less on dramatic devices and effects, more difficult to score than features. Thanks to a couple of breakthrough projects he reeled in in1997 he now has a basis of comparison. The composer scored his first two feature films, one for the artistically adventurous director Nick Gomez, whose company Shooting Gallery operates out of New York. Working hand in hand with SG sound designer Jeff Kushner and director Gomez, Keane and his crew concocted a unique palette of musical tools for the Ill Town score.
“Nick’s main idea was to create a film from an artistic, rather than a commercial point of view. The script deals with a heroin addict, and his desire was for us to create a sound track that paralleled the under directed, dreamlike approach he took with the actors.”
Gomez’ temp tracks relied heavily on Brian Eno, and so Keane knew which direction to head toward. “We wanted to create complex sounds, ones that you couldn’t really identify, and so we started by processing acoustic instruments-with multiple delays, for example, until they morphed to the point of being indistinct.”
Keane sampled these sounds and used them as building blocks which he combined with harmonicas, Native American and bamboo flutes, electric cello lines, and some Steve Roach sound design. “We actually recorded Coyote Old Man, who lives on the reservation, playing the Native American flute and got some haunting performances from him. Dave Darling is a great electric cellist. We took these disparate sounds and kept going.”
Jeff Kushner is a highly talented sound designer who we’ve spoken with before. In the past he’s told us that the small size of the Shooting Gallery operation allows for a more intense interaction between him and the composers who work on SG films. Keane says that this close working relationship made a big difference to the Ill Town score. “We really did join forces with Jeff Kushner to lock in the entire sonic palette for the film. For example, we’d record the hum of a dryer or refrigerator, or maybe the sound of running water-pitch less things that still had tones, and process those through various echo reverberation devices and pitch changers. Throughout the process we’d be in close contact with Jeff, talking about how we could create music that would weave around the sound effects, and visa versa. This approach worked quite well.”
Keane also scored The Night Flyer, a Stephen King film, in 1997. The score to this theatrical release, directed by Mark Pavia and starring Miguel Ferrer and Julie Entwhistle, will be released on RCA Records. As Keane points out, the cues we heard to The Night Flyer properly settle into the Romantic school of film scoring- post Mozart piano concerto writing that features simple, dreamlike piano figures woven around thick blocks of minor harmonies. “What I liked about working on a horror film is that, in addition to the passages of plain old romantic orchestral scoring, people tend to have a much more stretched ear in this genre.”
“When you’re doing a score that calls for pop music you’re constrained harmonically. The work tends to become a study in minutia-you’re struggling to make a unique contribution amidst all of the borrowed material you’re forced to rely on. With The Night Flyer I was able to come up with some interesting sound design elements. For example, we brought a dog into the studio, held a mic up to its snout and recorded a variety of the growls he made while playing with his toys. We then processed these growls and combined them with whispers, violins and Tibetan bell samples, all of which were modulated with a pitch wheel to create eerie effects.”
Brian Keane Music has grown to the point where other arrangers are brought in to help BK himself on a regular basis. In fact, Keane points out that his business is divided into three distinct areas, and that each is watered in a way that allows for maximal growth.
“The oldest part of our business revolves around scoring for television, with a particular emphasis on large mini series, including The Way West, Long Journey Home, The Great Depression, and Science Odyssey. We also do a lot of steady work for HBO Sports and aBC News. In that world we had 21 hours of programming that used our music in January alone. How we handle things in this area is pretty interesting.”
“When I get a film, the first thing I do is look at it in its entirety, just as the viewer will. I then identify the places that call for the main theme. My criticism of a lot of film and television composers is that they often build the designer kitchen without having the plumbing in place!”
Meaning exactly what? “The main theme, and where it needs to occur!” OK with us.“The thing that lasts with the viewer is the melody. If you can’t convey the melody with one finger plucking on a piano, then in my view you haven’t written the theme! Piling on exotic synth patches is a way of covering up the fact that you haven’t developed a convincing main theme.”
But didn’t you say that your Eno-like score to Ill Town was texturally driven? How melodic was the refrigerator line? (maestro laughs) “True, that score was in a sense the exception to the rule. But still, we sought to have identifiable melodies, recurring at structurally significant points, there for the viewer to hold onto. Furthermore, if you can create a sonic situation that is unique enough in its textural qualities it can serve in the same way as a melody. The fundamental rule is that the music must have an emotional quality that resonates with the viewer.”
Since multiple projects are often flying through Keane’s studio at the same time, and his attention is most required by his record work (biz #2) and, hopefully, more feature work (that’s right, biz #3) Keane has developed a method of working with outside composers and e mail. “I’ll spot a film and get some feedback from the director. Then I’ll enter a skeletal score onto the computer, using my trusty old Voyetra Sequencer Plus Gold sequencer.”
This skeleton score is then e mailed to an orchestrator who will take detailed instructions from Keane indicating frame in and outs for his main and secondary themes. “This process, whereby talented orchestrators work out arrangements of my themes saves me two thirds of my time. When the orchestrator is done with his work he’ll e mail me a MIDI file, which I load into my system and refine.”
Yeah, but let’s get to the details. A lot of the projects that Keane handles in the manner described above are MIDI scores, and different synths respond differently to controller messages. How are these variances dealt with? “Good point. We see to it that we’re on the same page as far as gear goes. Every one of the composers I work with has a Roland 2080, and we send around Jaz drives of custom sounds that we may be using on a particular project.”
Keane’s record projects are coming along just fine, thank you very much. Among the top ten recordings we mentioned earlier are a pair of Windham Hill sides, Carols of Christmas, and Winter Solstice. The latter was such a success that its successor, Summer Solstice II is having the finishing touches applied as we speak.
Although Keane spends much of his time operating out of large studios, his Connecticut home is where much of the television work is finished. His studio currently revolves around three Yamaha O2R consoles. “I can’t say enough about the O2R. We have 48 tracks of DA88, and ADAT XT, plus a full Pro Tools complement, and the digital pathway between these multitrack formats and the O2R is pristine. The bottom line is that with the O2R you have a feature set and sound that would have cost three quarters of a million dollars just three years ago sitting in the basement of your house for around thirty grand. The artistic control that is available today through a combination of the O2R and Pro Tools is stunning. You can get almost anything you want, any mixing effect, with recall.”
Keane has a bunch of impressive outboard mic pre’s and eq’s, so he relies less on those aspects of the O2R than other users might. “We’ve acquired some classic pieces over the years which we use all the time. These include a Telefunken U47 with 3 original tubes which we got from Victor Young’s estate. In fact, this mic was used on the original, Around the World in 80 Days score. We have a bunch of B&K and Neumann mics as well, all of which come through John Hardy M1, Telefunken V7, Neve 9098 and Grace mic pre’s.”
Throughout his career Keane has resisted the temptation to hike into the big Apple on a daily basis or set up shop on the left coast. Like his rugged New England forebears, he’s stayed planted on the home soil, and it’s worked-producers and directors seek him out. Kind of reminds you of another New Englander, the one Robert Frost imagined into being:
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
(“The Road Not Taken”)
Appeared in Mix, June, 2003
