Film Composer and Blue Man Bowen Has Roots in Randolph
By Martha Slater

Besides being on of the first members of the internationally known Blue Man Troupe, Christopher Bowen, son of Richard Bowen of Randolph is now a composer. Bowen wrote the musical score for the new film "Jellyfish."

The new film "Jellyfish," featuring a musical score written by Christopher Bowen, son of Richard Bowen of Randolph, received a glowing review in The New York Times (which called it "altogether charming") this spring, and won the prestigious Camera D’or Award at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Christopher Bowen grew up in Barre, where he went to Spaulding High School. He studied visual art, music and theater, earning a B.A. from Bennington College, where he did a semester abroad in London, studying with members of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts faculty.

"After college, I came to New York and started acting in plays off Broadway," Bowen explained. "I also played drums in a variety of rock bands while continuing to write my own music. In 1991, I joined Blue Man Group as a percussionist and in 1993, I performed my first show as a Blue Man at the Astor Place Theatre in New York. Since then, I’ve been a Blue Man in thousands of scenarios from our stage show and rock tour, to TV appearances nationally and internationally. I have also for many years trained and directed new Blue Men."

Bowen said he chose to branch out into composing because, "I have always been involved in the arts, whether it was drawing and painting, performing in dance pieces at college, acting in plays, writing my own music, or playing in bands."

Randolph area residents who attended dances here as teens in the early 1980s will remember "The Legends," a band Bowen played in with Brian Scott and several other young musicians.

"As a self-taught composer, I find that my experiences as an actor and director, along with my visual sense, have helped me to discover a relationship with music," Bowen observed. "Conversely, I’ve found that my experience in music strongly affects my acting in terms of movement, momentum and emotional life."

Bowen added that, "I feel very lucky to be a part of Blue Man Group, which allows me to explore all of my interests, and which also attracts and cultivates an amazing group of talented artists. I view writing music for film in the same way. As I watch a film over and over, in the course of working on it to write music for the scenes, I see it as an exercise in performing as an actor with the other actors and the director and cinematographer as well as an exercise in writing music."

‘Jellyfish’

Made in Tel Aviv (where the story takes place), the film "Jellyfish" was written by Shira Geffen, an Israeli writer and actress, and directed by her husband, Etgar Keret, a well-known short story writer with several volumes of his works published in 22 languages around the world. According to the New York Times review, it’s "the kind of movie…in which the accidental connections between lonely city dwellers are given a magical glow of serendipity."

"This project was my first feature film," Bowen told The Herald. "I was introduced to Etgar through a mutual friend, Tatia Rosenthal, for whose animated short films I had written music. Tatia's animated shorts, ‘Crazy Glue’ and ‘Breaking the Pig,’ are based on Etgar's short stories. Etgar called me one day, wondering if I had time to create music for this film he was working on. He'd heard my music before in Tatia's shorts and felt I captured something of the spirit of his stories."

Excited by the possibility, Bowen found "there were a couple of catches. He asked if I could do it in two weeks time, and I said I could, not really knowing what I was in for. He also needed to convince his producers that I was not his imaginary friend, and said it would be great if I could quickly sketch up some music based on a first viewing of the rough cut."

Bowen said he agreed to all of this without hesitation, "but my regularly scheduled life could not be put on hold. I was taking a trip that week to L.A. to perform at the Hollywood Bowl with Blue Man Group. I spent every spare minute in my hotel room working on a theme and was able to send it to him as an mp3 via email and get the green light from the producers."

Two weeks became four weeks and then the war in the summer of 2006 between Israel and Lebanon put a hold on the progress of the film as all of the film editing studios were being usurped by news agencies. The film underwent another editing stage and was finally finished in January 2007.

"One of the most amazing realizations I took away from the experience was how we could never have done this in an age without the internet," Bowen recalled. "Aside from weekly conceptual phone calls, we conducted all of our correspondence by email, including sending music and film clips back and forth."

That method of working proved successful for Bowen again this past year when he worked on the feature "$9.99," which was made even further away, in Australia. This film, also based on several short stories written by Etgar, is an animated ‘claymation’ stop-motion film directed by Tatia Rosenthal, starring the voices of Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Joel Edgarton, and many other Australian actors. Still in post-production, it will be submitted to various international film festivals this year.

The Process

Bowen said he usually begins his composing process by "improvising on a sampler keyboard, acoustic guitar, baritone ukulele, mbira or whatever else I might happen to have around. As I flesh out a piece, I use a MIDI sequencer on my computer to arrange the voices and develop the piece further. I like to use the computer because there are so many ways to manipulate sound in real time."

Most of the music Bowen writes is strongly influenced by the quality of the sounds in play, "and usually these are discovered in the process of writing itself," he added. "I rely a lot on the actual music I hear, versus what might be in my head, which usually functions initially as an impulse or feeling to start a piece. Once a piece has been written, I will create a demo which will be used as a reference when we start recording the musicians."

In addition to the award won in Cannes, "Jellyfish" was an official selection at the film festivals in Toronto, Telluride, Pusan, South Korea and Buenos Aires, where it won the top prize, the Golden Puntano, at the Festival Internacional San Luis Cine. This April, the film opened in the United States and, in addition, was shown as part of MoMA's New Directors/New Films series.

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