Based on Anne Rice's iconic novel, Anne Rice’s Interview with The Vampire follows Louis de Pointe du Lac's (Jacob Anderson) epic tale of love, blood, and the perils of immortality. From the war-torn landscape of Eastern Europe to the chaos of the Théâtre des Vampires, the tension of Dubai, and the percolating jazz of Paris, this season takes viewers on an auditory journey across time and space. We spoke to composer Daniel Hart about creating the unique music that gives Season 2 the depth, emotion, and authenticity that elevates the show to new heights. 
Q: You’ve scored all of David Lowery’s films since 2009, so you’re no stranger to long term collaborative relationships and continued partnerships. I'm so curious — how did the opportunity to compose the score for Season 2 of Interview with the Vampire come about and did it have something to do with the man behind it all, creator Rolin Jones?  
A: It did! [Laughs] I met Rolin Jones in 2016. He was looking for a composer for Season 1 of The Exorcist where he was showrunner and was reimagining that classic horror franchise. We met in the valley at a coffee shop, and we chatted for an hour. We found that we had a lot of musical sensibilities in common. He’s incredibly well versed in music in general, but especially in the contemporary classical world — the contemporary experimental, avant-garde classical world — which is not a place that a lot of showrunners spend a whole lot of time in.
So, we talked about a lot of stuff that I don't get to talk about very much when it comes to music for television. We really enjoyed that time together and felt like we had some work to do, so he hired me for Season 1 of The Exorcist, and we did that one season together. We’ve been looking for a chance to collaborate ever since, and Interview with the Vampire was the next time we got that chance. The music that Rolin’s the most interested in, is a lot of modern minimalist music, that doesn't work in a lot of television shows. A lot of television shows need something other than that, but he's found projects that cater to his vision, and luckily, he's brought me along with him.
Q: Let’s talk about the overture. Sure, there's a familiarity with the opening overture from Season 1, but this season the overture feels much more intense and much darker. There’s less of a buildup and more of a chaotic, bubbling, dangerous explosion of horns that gives you chills immediately. What were your goals with revamping the overture for this season?  
A: Well, you won’t believe this, but the main title music is the same for both seasons. The main title music — just a little 30-second-long piece — we call it Interview with the Orchestra. The idea behind it, which went back to Season 1, was that the show itself feels sort of like an orchestral piece of music in the way that it moves and interacts with characters and dialogue. We wanted it to feel like this would be the opening of this orchestra, like an opening of a symphony, and the first thing an orchestra does is they tune. So, we have them start tuning just as any orchestra would, but then it goes awry very quickly to much darker, scarier territory. That was always the idea. I think we owe a great debt to the brass section of the Synchron Stage Orchestra in Vienna because they took my direction, which allowed for a bit of improvisation within their parts, they took it, and they really brought it to life!
Q: There are so many different themes and emotions to play with this season, from the somber string-filled melodies that we hear as Louis and Claudia search through war-torn Eastern Europe, to the sensory Dreamstat moments that are peppered throughout the season, to the jazz-infused compositions we hear once we're in Paris. The opportunities to play around with different tones and different sounds were endless. Can you walk us through some of what your creative process is like when tackling these really robust themes and deeply emotional moments?
A: I'm looking to Rolin for guidance always. He has very specific musical ideas about what kinds of things he wants to accompany these journeys that these characters are going on.
Q: Do you work together episode by episode or scene by scene?
A: Scene by scene! Within that first episode when Louis and Claudia are in Eastern Europe, they're mostly in Romania, so we start with this very ornate violin and piano duo that feels like it comes out of maybe the mid-18th century. By the end of that episode, the music is much more hopeful and fairly modern, minimalist, or maybe even post-minimalist. Feels a bit to me like the contemporary American composer John Adams, who takes the ideas of minimalism and maximizes it. Maximized minimalism. Gosh, that sounds awfully nerdy, but yes! We talked a lot about the role that music should be playing, and we didn’t want to ignore the time periods in which things are happening.
For example, when Armand starts telling his story of meeting Lestat, in Episode 3, that takes us back to 18th-century France. We have a lot of music around that opening section of that episode which is supposed to be reminiscent of that period of classical music. The German counterpart would be Mozart. So, it's supposed to feel like that, but at the same time, they're all in Paris in the 1930s and '40s, so we need something to capture the essence of that spirit as well. We looked to Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, among others, to infuse that introduction of Paris that Louis and Claudia experience as Americans.
For me, I had in mind George Gershwin's composition An American in Paris because he made that journey to Paris himself a little bit earlier than them, but around that same timeframe, the first half of the 20th century. So yeah, we're looking to history to tell us things about what kind of music should be happening in these scenes, and then we're looking to the characters themselves and their journeys and how they might have similarities to journeys in real life, musically speaking. We’re just trying to be true to the storytelling, in the music that we're making.
Q: The Théâtre des Vampires presented another opportunity to dive into a completely different type of music — dark, musical theater! You’re no stranger to the stage having performed with large bands with legendary stage presence like Broken Social Scene and the Polyphonic Spree. How does your experience as a live performer inform your approach to composing for visual media, especially within the lens of the Théâtre des Vampires and especially Baby Lulu?  
A: Oh, Baby Lu. [Laughs] Well, this actually took me back even further, before The Polyphonic Spree and Broken Social Scene, into my time in school because my degree from university is in playwriting. I spent a lot of time doing theater, writing for theater, but also performing in theater because in the theater program that I went to, at this little private school in Dallas called Southern Methodist University, all the theater students, no matter what their discipline was, were required to take acting classes for the first couple of years in school so that everybody had some background on the stage. So, I was performing, and that's also where I started writing the first music for media that I ever did in my life, because I did some scoring for a couple of plays that were staged at my school where they had live musicians on stage as part of the performance, exactly as it is in the Théâtre des Vampires.
It's so much fun to write that kind of music. I was definitely channeling that earlier part of my life when I was writing the Théâtre des Vampires trio music. Having a trio of musicians provides extra parameters and helpful limitations as to what the instrumentation can be and how it needs to be limited, because although these are vampires who've been doing this for over 150 years, there is the expectation of a budget, which is their constraint at the time. So, it can't feel like a symphony there. The musical composition needs to feel a bit more threadbare. I liked having that stand in contrast to the orchestral music that we were writing for the score throughout the season. I found the Théâtre des Vampires music pretty easy to write, for the most part, because it felt to me like the place that I came from, and I could call on my previous experiences to inform all of that almost circus-like musical experience.
It does have that element. The combination of the three musicians, but then a whole bunch of other people on that stage with them.
Yeah. It's so electric, isn't it? They're all performing together. You see in the episodes that the musicians are watching the stage and that they are affected by what's going on on stage. They are an important part of this pseudo breaking of the fourth wall when the victim runs out on stage and has the long goodbye with Santiago. The musicians play as if they've been interrupted, as if, "What's going on on stage? Wait a minute, this isn't supposed to happen. We've got to stop playing our instruments in a way that feels like we're surprised," and they do it night after night after night. Getting to write in this almost cartoonesque interruption, like the Roadrunner screeching to a halt. It was so much fun.
Q: As we bounce from one timeline to the next in Season 2, like you mentioned, music becomes a way for the viewer to find some footing in that particular timeline and setting. It helps to ground us in those moments. The irony is that oftentimes your music has a timeless quality to it, as you blend elements of contemporary and classical styles. How do you navigate balancing modern sensibilities with more traditional musical influences within your compositions?
A: Well, we have these moments in the show that feel like they need music specific to the time in which they're happening, and then we have places where we're sort of blending that with the score. They sort of run into each other. For example, that same part we were just talking about where Santiago has that first long seduction of his victim Annika on stage. The music that plays underneath Santiago's monologue, it starts out with just timpani and the violin. And it's supposed to feel like this is coming from the onstage band in some form.
By end of that piece of music, when Annika is finally fed to the rest of the vampires on stage, we've expanded into the orchestra, and we've moved beyond music of the 1930s and '40s into something much more modern feeling. There was certainly dissonant and atonal orchestral music happening in the 1930s and '40s, but the goal was to take us out of that time period and into the larger storytelling of this show with that score transition. So, we've found moments where that needs to happen. Rolin and I tackle this every time, with every episode, asking what is happening musically in this episode that needs to be honest to the music of the time in which this is happening? And what is happening musically in this episode that feels more like... well, like it's coming from Dubai! That it’s part of the story that Louis, and then eventually Louis and Armand are telling Daniel. We're always talking about it. We're always trying to be clear about what's happening where. And hopefully that helps the storytelling also be clear about what's happening when.
Interview with the Vampire airs on Sundays at 9/8c on AMC. Episodes are available to stream on amc.com (with a cable provider login), and the AMC apps for mobile and devices. You can also watch episodes via AMC+ at amcplus.com or through the new AMC+ app available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Fire TV, Apple TV, and Roku plus Samsung and Vizio smart TVs. AMC+ can also be streamed through a variety of providers, including AppleTV, Prime Video Channels, DirectTV, Dish, Roku Channel, Sling, and Xfinity. Sign up for AMC+ now.