la la land soundtrack another day of sun

It was so useful to begin the process with the main theme so thoroughly realised - both compositionally and orchestrationally. 'Planetarium' - and its sister piece, the eventually unused 'Overture' which we originally envisaged as the beginning of the movie - were two evocations of the main theme that Damien and Justin had firmly in place from an early stage, well before my involvement. It helped that Ryan liked the basic tune so much that practising it wasn’t too much of a chore.

Here Randy Kerber’s playing is at its most explosive and flamboyant, and he came up with something here that even he couldn’t easily repeat, so how Ryan learned it so accurately I will never fully understand.Īnyway, this scene fell at a very early stage of the shooting schedule, and everyone was a little tense - but after Ryan’s first take, before the deserved applause, there was at least 10 seconds of astonished silence. He and his piano teacher Liz Kinnon did something quite miraculous getting him ready to perform these tracks - four months before the shoot, he was to all intents and purposes a beginner. But the big story here is really about Ryan, and his journey as a pianist during the prep stages. I mention below how useful it was to start putting all this together with Justin’s central musical theme so clearly established, and this is the first time you hear that theme on the soundtrack, initially in a very delicate simple pianistic rendition. It was a wonderfully deep process of collaboration with Mandy Moore and the choreography department, many weeks of planning and rehearsal brilliantly overseen by Music Supervisor Steven Gizicki, and a long and challenging journey with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul - because the piece acts as an overture to the story, it was really tricky to establish just exactly what the song should be about, but Benj and Justin eventually found the perfect balance between poetry and naturalism and between the specific and the general in this hymn to the daily LA routine. A lot of scrutiny went into the creation of this, a lot of drafting and redrafting - and as the only fully ensemble song in the movie, it was also the most complex in terms of vocal arrangement, staging and logistics.

Everything is at stake - your contract with the audience, the establishing of a musical language, setting expectations for type of vocal delivery and lyrical idiom. Opening numbers are always crucial, and this one took a while to build.

La la land soundtrack another day of sun