BY LIAM HEITMANN-RYCE
Artists can undergo an entire evolutionary cycle of job roles throughout the course of their film career, in front of and behind the camera. As in the case of Australian composer Christopher Gordon, music makers might dip their toes into completely different waters, too.
Elected to City of Ryde council in September 2017, the former Hollywood composer served as Deputy Mayor for the Northern Sydney suburb after accumulating numerous high-profile film credits, such as swashbuckling Russell Crowe vehicle Master and Commander and gory vampire flick Daybreakers.
Christopher does not see his time spent in the music studio to have impeded on his commitment to the city. Quite the contrary, he feels his music background is an advantage.
“It is important that our politicians, collectively, have a wide range of life experience,” Christopher says.
“When the opportunity came to stand for council, I felt that, as a composer and without formal education, I might be able to make a contribution that was a bit different.”
The balance between composer and Greens councillor is one Christopher finds to be “quite complementary”, given his role in the New South Wales council is only part-time. This allows him to “strictly compose in the morning, leave the afternoon flexible, and attend to council commitments in the evening”.
It is a career transition for which he seems especially grateful, being able to satisfy his artistic sensibilities as a composer but also get his fill of social interactions. Comparing the life of a composer to that of a councillor, Christopher says: “One is a solitary, introverted life and the other is more gregarious and outwardly focused.”
Talk about the best of both worlds.
Of course, being in the film industry will have been a very useful proving ground for the compelling skills of persuasion that surely play a key role in local politics. Often receiving “a phone call out of the blue […] from a director, a producer, an agent”, Christopher is accustomed to making deals, and establishing a comfortable middleground between the desired outcomes of multiple parties.
“Sometimes, I am offered the job on the spot; other times, it is a process of discussion, usually with the director who is trying to get a feel for which composer is best for his or her film.”
But the art of the deal is not what lead Christopher to becoming a composer in the first place. When asked what drove him to the career path of making music for a living, he remembers: “I was 13 when I decided to become a composer.” He’d been a member of the Australian Boys Choir in Melbourne for three years up to that point.
“I was introduced to a lot of wonderful music by composers like Kodály, Brahms, Schubert, Palestrina,” he recalls.
“I remember being haunted by de Victoria’s Tenebrae factae sunt. But it was Benjamin Britten who had a particularly profound effect upon me.
“He was my first ‘favourite’ composer, and I suspect the fact that he was still alive at that time shaped the way I viewed what a composer was.”
For all the bombast and vigour of his score for naval epic Master and Commander, some of Christopher’s most accomplished orchestral work of the silver screen can be found in the more unassuming 2013 drama Adoration, starring Naomi Watts and Robin Wright. Scored with Christopher’s friend Antony Partos (who has also reflected on his career within this publication), the film “poses an interesting moral situation where two women have affairs with each other’s [adult] sons, all having closely known each other since the boys’ childhood”.
Set in a wealthy beach suburb, the film is inhabited by characters who Christopher considers “quite self-centred, ultimately allowing their desires to destroy their extended families”. This kind of conflict, however, is excellent material for a composer – and Christopher and Antony provide a compelling, complex score that gently illustrates the lusty turmoil of its protagonists.
The result is strings-heavy, vaguely meditative, and orchestrated with expansive single-note sweeps that offer a feeling of vast open space. The music reflects the sun-dappled, breezy environs of its Australian setting, as well as what the composer calls the “emotional push-and-pull of desire and doubt”.
“I felt it could best be supported musically by waves of orchestral sound, a continual ebb and flow of primal emotion,” Christopher reveals.
“This is what music can bring to a film; the deep undercurrents of urges and motivation in a character.”
Reflecting on the collaborative process of scoring the film with Antony, Christopher called it “a somewhat strange experience, in that we never worked together on the film or discussed approaches”. The two composers only realised how well their individual approaches had worked when it was time “to compile the soundtrack album, and decided to include everything we had written for the movie, whether it was used or not”. This offers something of a stand-alone listening experience independent of the film.
(A gorgeous album to listen to, it’s a regular fixture within this humble interviewer’s writing playlists.)
Asked if he considers the ‘success’ of a score to be based on the quality of the music itself or how well it marries with the images onscreen, Christopher concedes, “some scores do seem to come off better on an album than others”.
“You do the best work you can for the film, then see what sort of an album you can make out of it.
“If I have time in the schedule, I like to write and record short passages especially for the album that link film cues together.”
It’s common practice within the industry, where the official soundtrack release may offer tracks far shorter than the music heard in the final film.
While the decision to enter the realm of local politics may be a decidedly uncommon practice within the film industry, it is nevertheless an arrangement within which Christopher seems comfortably rooted. One imagines the only major distinction between conducting 90 players within an orchestra pit and conducting town council meetings is the kind of notes which Christopher is tasked with organising.
Having been through “a rather overwhelming few weeks”, Christopher saw out the closing month of 2020 in the company of Orchestra Victoria in Melbourne, where he was recording the music for his ballet The Happy Prince.
Conductor, composer, or councillor, all Christopher’s roles require an ability to bring ideas together, be it with a clipboard in hand or with the wave of a baton.
Readers can keep up to date with Christopher’s political activities through his Facebook page, and he can also be found on Twitter and Instagram.
Shout the writer a coffee?
If you like, you can thank Liam for volunteering his time for Australian arts journalism during COVID-19. No amount too much or little 🙂
This story was also published in our sister magazine Level and Gain, and in The Riff on Medium.
Disclaimer: CutCommon is an independent publication and does not have political affiliations.
Images supplied.
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