You grew up playing classical piano and later moved into composition, studying at USC  Thornton School of Music. Can you tell us a little more about your musical upbringing and  what inspired the transition to media composing?  

I grew up studying classical piano under my teacher and mentor Ya-Fei Chuang at the New  England Conservatory in Boston, where I also took composition and music theory classes. I  always loved film music and began to dip my toes into scoring during my undergraduate studies  at Columbia University. That is where I started to experiment with different genres of music,  studied jazz voice, contemporary classical composition, and electronic music, as well as  collaborated with a wide range of student artists, filmmakers, and musicians. While I was in  NYC, I also participated in an ASCAP-run NYU film scoring workshop, which was a very  formative experience for me. I learned a lot from the mentors there, who were working  composers in the industry, some of whom have become longtime friends and collaborators.  

Your work spans orchestral documentary scores like Planet Earth III and more  experimental, hybrid projects. How do you decide what kind of “sound world” you want to  build for a project, and is there a through-line element that you would call your musical  voice?  

I always like to explore palette and theme ideas as early as possible when coming onto a project,  sometimes even just from reading the script. During this early exploration stage, I like to  improvise and record live, as that is how I feel most inspired creatively. Rather than focusing on  creating mockups and recording everything later, I prefer to build the musical ideas from  performances from the start. Often, this involves my own vocals or piano playing, and other  times it involves bringing in other soloists to improvise with. Even when working on electronic  scores, I like to begin with acoustic recordings, which I will then manipulate and process  electronically.  

You’ve talked about finding the heart of a story through experimentation with different  musicians. What is your process when approaching a new project?  

I think being open to trying a new approach, and sometimes even abandoning an idea that you  initially may have had, is really important. I think telling stories with music is a very intuitive  and emotion-driven process, and often the best ideas come from creating space for unexpected  perspectives to emerge.  

R.J. Decker leans into Florida’s vibe with Latin and blues-inflected music in the score. How  did that flavor shape your approach to instrumentation and melody, and how did you  balance the more playful moments with the darker, more suspenseful ones without losing  the show’s overall identity? 

This show has been a lot of fun to score because there is a unique blend of laid-back Floridian  vibes, off-kilter characters, humor, and underlying danger that feels very specific to the world of  the show. It was important to us to make sure the Latin guitars, along with the playful noir  elements and the darker suspense cues, still felt like they belonged to the same emotional  universe. Even when the music became more tense or psychological, we tried to preserve certain  tonal colors, motifs, or rhythmic DNA so the score maintained a cohesive identity. I think the  balance came from treating humor and danger as closely connected rather than opposites. In the  world of the show, the absurdity of the people involved and the crimes committed often make the  darker moments feel even more unsettling.  

Sean Callery, Tim Callobre, and you shared the score for The Beast in Me. How did you  coordinate themes, instruments, and character motifs so the audience experiences the  music as a unified, cohesive score?  

We were lucky to have had time to explore the sonic identity of the show even before it finished  shooting. Early on, we spent a lot of time discussing the emotional identity of the story, the tonal  palette, the harmonic language, and the core themes tied to the characters. We wrote several  theme suites based solely on the script, which ended up being used throughout the series. A big  part of maintaining cohesion was being intentional about instrumentation and motif  development. Certain textures, melodic intervals, and rhythmic ideas became part of the show’s  DNA. Even when the music shifted emotionally or stylistically, there was still a recognizable  thread running through it. This included a signature brittle sound for Aggie’s character, featuring  solo cello, as well as percussive sounds made from strings and woodwinds to create that brittle,  anxious, and intimate sound. For Nile, we created this simmering, growling synth sound that  evokes a kind of brewing beast, conveying the feeling that at any moment he could explode.  These were some of the musical ideas that we created together and which formed the foundation  of the score. We were then able to expand from there. 

Interview by Jocelyn Scofield

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