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Canberra Today 22°/26° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / All go for the Pokémon professor

_D4S7384THE recently-appointed professor of music composition and composition convenor at the ANU School of Music, Kenneth Lampl, has an unusual background – he had no classical music lessons until age 18.

For the boy born in the Bronx and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, who won a top classical prize at the exacting American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, and later became a faculty member at the Juilliard School in New York, is a noted film and TV composer, with more than 70 scores under his belt, not least for two Pokémon films – “Pokémon: The First Movie” and “Pokémon: Mewtwo Returns”.

There had been a score for the Japanese version, but Warner Bros wanted a more contemporary western style of music.

“There were five of us in the team – they’d say: ‘Compose something of 5 to 7 minutes, here’s a tape so you can see what you’re composing to.

“We went away, we produced music by the next day and they’d say ‘you’re good’ and we got a cheque… I learnt how to work quickly!”

It consoles him to know that Bach, his hero, had to write a new cantata every week.

“CityNews” caught up with Lampl in between classes and discovered a man brimming with energy. Just four weeks into his duties, he won’t talk about School of Music politics – that’s for ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt to do – but he’s up for anything else.

A serious thinker about musical pedagogy, Lampl was hardly a novice when he entered the jazz stream at Rutgers University at age 18, he played the sax well.

“I had been brought up listening to jazz records,” he says.

“In jazz, old guys mentored you and if you were terrible, they were still supportive and collegial, it was the best musical introduction you could have.”

It later struck him how “mean and ruthless” the classical teachers were in comparison.

“It was a shock to me when I began classical training, it was so strict,” he says.

But then, after hearing Richard Strauss’s “Death and Transfiguration,” he reports, “my mind was blown away” and he started studying composition for the first time.

A fish out of water, when he realised from his sax background that the key was practice he studied counterpoint and piano seven days a week.

Then he got a place in the famous English-language conservatory at Fontainebleau, where he won the Prix Ravel for composition and also made a chance discovery of a lost Ravel manuscript.

“The French were pretty unfriendly, but by the time I finished, I really liked it,” he says.

“It was so extreme and brutal but now I swear by this French system… it’s the same in Juilliard.

“There was never any talking about music, only working at it”.

On the basis of the Fontainebleau success, he got a full scholarship to Juilliard, taking out a DMA then later joining the faculty.

A visit to the famous Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts brought him face to face with composer John Williams, a man he judges to be “the greatest musical thinker”.

Lampl owned the “Star Wars” collection on vinyl but says meeting him “was like receiving the Ten Commandments from Moses.”

Williams, when asked the difference between his film scoring and his classical composition, said of the latter: “it’s like being on vacation … in film I’m racing to meet the deadlines”.

Lampl soon found there was no shortage of work and has now composed for more than 70 films and TV productions, everything from “Saints and Sinners” to “Born Again Virgin”.

Working professionally is important, he believes, a principle he puts into practice with this ANU students.

“I want them to be as active as possible, work is the real world of composing,” he says.

“I say compose a piece, do it again, do it another way.”

Right now he has 36 people in his music technology course and is impressed with Canberra’s talent in this area, saying that for his part: “You’ve got to create an environment where students can discover.

“The talent here in Canberra in multi-media is extraordinary, there are all kinds of video games businesses.”

Next year he’ll be teaching composition and multi-media composition, which means film and TV scoring.

As well, Lampl is the architect of developing new programs at the ANU and believes what they’re offering is a new kind of education with the 21st-century that didn’t exist before.

Using his connections, Lampl has inveigled his mate, the American cellist, Dave Eggar, who has performed with Coldplay and the Rolling Stones, to perform in Llewellyn Hall this October and take masterclasses.

Next year he’ll have “Spiderman” composer Christopher Young here, too.

“I’ve got lots of contacts to Hollywood, lots of friends and colleagues interested in coming to the ANU,” he enthuses.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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