De Niro,
Pacino film among Saltspring
composer's first Hollywood gigs
By Mike Devlin, They Might Be
Giants, Times Colonist
January 13, 2010
If composer Kayla Schmah had her way,
it would be 1960 and she'd be Bernard
Hermann, scoring with a huge orchestra
films of the highest quality.
The only problem? "My dream is
something I believe is long-dead in
Hollywood," laughed Schmah, a native
of Saltspring Island now living in Los
Angeles.
"But there's ways to adapt our dreams
now. You can still find great films
and do scaled-down versions of live
instruments and still write a great
score."
Schmah, 25, longs for the freedom
given to composers such as Hermann,
the man behind the music for Taxi
Driver, Citizen Kane and
numerous Alfred Hitchcock films,
including Psycho. They had
the tools to die for: Decent budgets,
big orchestras and the ability to pick
and choose projects based on
quality alone.
That will come in time for Schmah and
her husband, fellow film and
television composer Kyle Batter. The
couple is relatively new to Los
Angeles; they moved to Tinseltown, a
notoriously tough city to crack, in
2006 so it's slow going thus far. They
also have a nine-month-old son, Wyatt,
so the couple's focus is on family at
the moment.
"The thing about Hollywood, it's a
time investment," Schmah said. "A lot
of us haven't been out here long
enough to have gotten in-depth [with
the movie industry]."
Schmah has done extremely well thus
far, all things considered. After
graduating from Saltspring's Gulf
Island Secondary School in 2001, she
enrolled at Selkirk College in Nelson,
where she spent two years in a
transfer program. She landed next at
Boston's Berklee College of Music, one
of the most prestigious -- and
productive -- music schools in the
U.S., whose alumni include Diana Krall,
John Mayer, Quincy Jones and Melissa
Etheridge.
Almost immediately, she put her degree
in film scoring to good use. She has
worked alone and as understudy and
assistant to veteran composers such as
Michael Levine and Edward Shearmur. A
quartet of feature film jobs alongside
Emmy-winner Shearmur, including
scoring work on the Al Pacino-Robert
De Niro film Righteous Kill,
was Schmah's entry into the movie
world.
There's a feeling of satisfaction from
film composing that Schmah never got
from playing, she said, despite having
studied through the Royal Conservatory
of Music during elementary and junior
high school.
Film and tv composer Kayla Schmah also
worked last year on Allison Crowe's
upcoming album, Spiral.
Composing drew me in more than performing did. I've always been a nervous performer. I took a lot of conducting at Berklee and even that makes me nervous, so film scoring was the perfect route for me.
Despite a tiny budget, she scored
2008's Disfigured almost
entirely by herself, and as close to
the Hermann way as possible -- with a
full string section during sessions at
the legendary Capitol Studios in L.A.
That was a rare treat, she said. These
days, only composers on par with Randy
Newman, Thomas Newman, James Horner
and John Williams -- with a total of
81 Oscar nominations between them --
can do that, day in and day out, to a
much greater degree and with a far
bigger budget.
The majority of Schmah's work is done
at her home studio, which enables her
to be close to her son. Schmah and
Batter (who has written music for
CSI and Ghost Whisperer)
share the space. Scheduling is
beginning to become more of a problem,
as they continue to make connections.
Last year, she heard from two longtime
friends, Nanaimo-raised songwriter
Allison Crowe and her manager, Adrian
Du Plessis, with an offer to write and
arrange parts of Crowe's upcoming
album, Spiral.
Schmah, who interned with Du Plessis
when she was a teen, worked
long-distance with Crowe on strings
parts and various orchestration,
massaging the finished tracks "and
melding them into my own thing, while
still keeping her style intact,"
Schmah said.
After the birth of her son, it was a
nice reintroduction to
singer-songwriter music. And that it
came from connections fostered long
ago made it all the more meaningful.
"Ninety-five per cent of my work has
come through connections," Schmah
said.
"People always say it's the right
place at the right time, but it's
actually right friend at the right
time."
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times
Colonist
