The process began in 2009, shortly after Hem completed the music for the Public Theatre production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in Central Park. “I wrote that imagining that scene where Amélie and Nino are speaking between the door,” he says, “So I’d already written a song for those characters, but then it took years and years to get the rights.” In fact, a longstanding fan of the film, Messé even divulges that the Hem song “Half Asleep,” from 2007’s Home Again, Home Again EP was actually influenced by a certain scene in the movie. Messé is not a stranger to the Academy Award-nominated romantic comedy. “Isn’t that exciting?!” he exclaims just a couple of days after he officially announced the news on Hem’s Facebook page.
But these days, Messé is right where he thought he would be, as the composer/lyricist working on the Broadway adaption of the film Amélie. But that was before the now-famous story of how his band Hem completed its lineup though an ad in the Village Voice it was before the folksy Americana group released its many beloved albums, including this year’s emotionally riveting Departure and Farewell. He name drops less-than-famous musicals of the decade like William Finn’s Falsettos and Adam Guettel’s Floyd Collins, and professes his admiration of Stephen Sondheim, all of which seems to substantiate his air of expertise in the field. Back in the ‘90s, Dan Messé thought he would compose theater music full-time.
0 kommentar(er)
