What are your influences?
English church music. Although I haven’t sung that music since I was a child and don’t listen to it any longer, harmonically I think that’s where I’m coming from. I was brought up with great English composers such as Stanford, Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten. I also spent years roaming around the world teaching. I think the rhythms and sounds of Africa have stayed with me, although I haven’t really explored that in a composition yet, other than perhaps the flashback scenes that took place in Beirut in Spy Game. I think I brought to those scenes something that I wouldn’t have done had I not lived in Alexandria, Egypt.
What’s your dream project?
One I’m working on: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a Christmas 2005 release. It has [director] Andrew Adamson, who directed Shrek and Shrek 2. It’s live action with a lot of computer-generated imagery, with characters that are half-man, half-beast, like Lord of the Rings. You never know what the future holds, because there are lots of books of Narnia.
