New Interview with Bear McCreary from HitFix

Here is a NEW interview with Bear McReary from HitFix

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From HitFix:

If you’ve watched TV in the past 10 years, chances are you know Bear McCreary’s music.

He’s become one of the most (if not the most) sought-after and prolific composers in television, ever since he came into his own writing the boundary-pushing score for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series. He counts The Walking Dead, Outlander, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. among his credits. And this March theater-goers got to experience his music with a big screen presentation; he composed the chilling and thrilling score for J.J. Abrams’ 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Today McCreary is juggling so many projects that he can’t count all his current TV shows and movies and video games — “I can’t even tell. I honestly don’t even know,” how many projects he’s in the midst of, he said during an interview at Cafe Laurent in Culver City, CA.

More after the jump!

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The timing of McCreary’s foray into the entertainment industry was providential: The Battlestar job — his first professional gig as a composer, at age 24, which he acknowledges “is crazy” — came along at a time when music for the screen was breaking away from the confines of classical, European, symphonic influence. With artists like Trent Reznor and Junkie XL becoming in-demand film composers, it’s been the biggest shift in the industry since Vangelis put electronic film scores on the map in the early 1980s.

In this new era, producers and directors are more open to unconventional instrumentation, the realm where McCreary thrives.

“10 Cloverfield Lane,” and more unconventional sounds

On 10 Cloverfield Lane, McCreary made the Blaster Beam — of Star Trek: The Motion Picture fame — and the yayli tambur centerpieces of the film’s score.

McCreary had used the yayli tambur, a Turkish instrument, on Starz series Da Vinci’s Demons when he needed a sound to represent the Ottoman Empire. The idea to use the lute-like instrument on 10 Cloverfield Lane came after a conversation with the thriller’s director, Dan Trachtenberg.

In an early meeting, “we totally geeked out over movies and over film scores,” Trachtenberg told HitFix. “When I mentioned the harmonica theme in Once Upon a Time in the West, we were both immediately in sync and excited to work.”