Musician Marty Isenberg’s Wes Anderson Project Makes Its Presence Known at APAP 2025

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Interviews

Published on Friday, 03 January 2025 17:52

Written by Brad Balfour

Every year, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals holds its conference and showcases in Mid-January starting on January 10th at the New York Hilton and other related venues. When I went to several APAP showcases last year, I made a few discoveries. One that really impressed me was Marty Isenberg and his Wes Anderson Project. The album “The Way I Feel Inside: Inspired by the Films of Wes Anderson" (TRRcollective) was released last year.

As Isenberg explained in his notes: “My fascination with Wes Anderson’s films dates back to my adolescent years. For my taste, no filmmaker has ever used songs in their films so poignantly and created such a unique and singular musical ambiance. There is a “mix tape” aspect to a Wes Anderson playlist: an intimate collection of one’s favorite songs, as if each song was painstakingly curated by combing through used record stores to find the most hip and heartbreaking music yet undiscovered by teenage ears. It evokes the childlike wonder of being immersed in a storybook and taps into the pain of loneliness associated with being an outsider.

“There’s something beautiful about creating a collage of sounds that aren’t supposed to fit together, and yet they form a complex picture of a life with contradictions. It’s that unconventional juxtaposition that drew me to this project and inspired me to explore this music through a new genre: jazz. A mix tape is a personal, intimate reflection of what we want to show others about ourselves, and this album is my own spin on that concept—a journey into my inner life through this collage of meaningful music, in my own voice as a composer and a jazz musician. It’s an album inspired by the songs and media that expressed how I felt in my younger years, but it is not a replication of that media. It’s a series of diary entries, a statement about identity and culture, and an exploration of genre and style.”

Marty returns again to this year’s APAP to do a showcase so I thought it would be a good time to feature his Project here in anticipation. Hopefully, our conversation will provoke further interest.

Q: When did you first discover Wes Anderson and what was the first movie you saw?

Marty Isenberg: I first discovered his films when I was a high school student in the early 2000s. I believe the first film I saw was “The Royal Tenenbaums.” There are a lot of reasons why his films resonate with me so deeply. On a surface level, Anderson’s films are just very clever and visually sophisticated. But his focus on themes such as alienation and teenage angst really hit home with me. My father had died recently and I was just beginning to navigate life as a young adult after such a significant loss. I think that’s probably the emotional reason I felt invested in these films.

I wanted to be a part of their world but the real reason I created this project and the thing that brought me back to thinking about these movies so many years later, is the music in his films. The cinematic moments these songs appear in films are seared into my brain.

I remember the feeling of discovering artists like the Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, and The Zombies. That experience sent me down a rabbit hole of discovering all this cool music with a very unique aesthetic. So for my album, I really wanted to try and think about what that aesthetic was. What were the elements of the ‘Wes Anderson’ sound, and what did that aesthetic mean? Then the challenge was to have this style of music re-contextualized into my own musical vocabulary that’s grounded in jazz and improvisational styles.

Q: How do you decide to veer from the exact composition to weaving in and out?

Marty Isenberg: I think it happened relatively organically. My approach to the arrangements on my album (or de-rangements as I like to think of them) starts with the goal that the source material is recognizable to the audience. That’s where the adventure begins, and the further I can break the audience's expectation of where the song will go, the more fun we can have. This ‘fun house mirror’ approach also allows me and the audience to infer layers of meaning to the piece. It’s similar to making a collage. These songs had meaning in my life, and here’s how it feels for me to reflect upon them.

Q: What film by Wes inspires you most?

Marty Isenberg: The two films I connect with the most are "The Royal Tenenbaums," and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." I believe these are the first Wes films I saw, so I have a bit of a nostalgic attachment to them. I do think it’s inspiring to see a director (or any artist for that matter) develop such a unique and singular style. I love the offbeat sense of humor and storytelling. Of course not everything ages perfectly, but that’s the nature of popular culture. 
and here’s more

Q: What film inspires you in general?

Marty Isenberg: There are many films that I love. I love Stanley Kubrick, The Cohen Brothers, Hitchcock, Mel Brooks, and some pop culture classics like "Terminator" and "Alien." However I don’t really see the source of my creative inspiration (at least not at this point in my career) always coming from films. It’s possible my next project might explore a different filmmaker’s work, or another type of auteur, but at this moment I think that is unlikely. What I have found inspiring about this project, has been exploring one film director's entire filmography and drawing connections.

A criticism some film fans have of Mr. Anderson is if you’ve seen one of his films, you’ve seen them all. But I actually love that about his work. It creates a universe that feels contiguous. His fidelity to his own voice is inspiring. There are some artists that are always searching and always trying new things, and that can be very inspiring as well, but when an artist really commits to a vision; I think that’s a testament to how much they believe in that vision. Anyone that understands the role that self doubt plays in creating new work, I think can understand why that kind of ‘commitment to the bit’ is impressive. 

Q: Do you prefer to build on previously composed music — how much do you improvise or not?

Marty Isenberg: I think being that this was my first album as a bandleader, I wanted to create an interesting theme that could introduce my work to audiences and reach listeners who might not be in the traditional ‘jazz’ audience. Many of the great performers of the world had their first album be ‘cover songs’. I do really enjoy exploring previously composed music and futzing with it.

Rather than try to cover a song, I kind of take a more classical music approach of variations on a theme; wherein elements of a familiar song become ‘the theme’ for a new piece of music. I expect this is something I will continue to do throughout my career. But I do also compose original works and I expect to release albums of fully original pieces at some point as well. 

Improvisation plays a big role in what I do as a performer/composer. When I write music for jazz musicians, I like to think every solo section has to have a little ‘game’ in it. Something that will throw the performer just a little off balance so that they can really explore something they haven’t done before, and keep their chops as an improviser sharp. Almost everything I write has this in mind. Often when I’m writing music I will sit down at the piano, or the bass and just make things up. If an idea comes out of that session, then I may try to develop it into a song.

Q: Are there other filmmakers who inspire you so much that you would create compositions around their work?

Marty Isenberg: I’ve thought about this as a follow up album, but as I said before it's not the direction I’m currently planning. One idea I had for an album was an homage to cult classics. In which case I might ask to collaborate and write songs with the likes of John Cameron Mitchell, or other indy songwriters, maybe even some film composers.

Q: Do you see your career moving toward soundtrack composing less jazz combo improvisation?

Marty Isenberg: I would certainly be interested in scoring films, but it’s not the career path I’m actively seeking. I make my living as a working jazz and theater musician. Creatively I’m interested in performing original pieces composed by myself or other colleagues whom I admire. We’ve also done something quite interesting with the Wes Anderson Playlist.

It’s become a theatrical performance that I intend to tour with for the next several years. I’ve written monologues into the show telling the story of my life as if it were a Wes Anderson movie. So the audience gets to understand where I came from, how music came into my life, and how these songs became a part of my story. It’s been a very fun creative challenge to act and create a theater production when that’s not really my background at all. I’ve been working with the director Edward Einhorn, and I’m really proud of the show we’ve put together.

Q: You write music, so have you looked at the scores for Anderson’s films?

Marty Isenberg: I have not looked at any scores from his films but I did transcribe a little bit of [Devo’s] Mark Mothersbaugh scoring. I wanted to try to keep my own perspective/voice as much as possible when I’m imitating such prolific composers as Mothersbaugh and Alexandre Desplat.

Q: Have you ever met Wes or people connected with his productions?

Marty Isenberg: I’ve made some attempts to connect with Wes as well as his music director Randall Poster but they haven’t responded.

Q: Are there any of his actors that you’d like to work with in some way?

Marty Isenberg: Oh certainly. I mean it would be great to have Alec Baldwin narrate the monologues in our live show. Or if Edward Norton were interested in playing some banjo that would be a tremendous honor.

Q: Have any film makers approached you to do your own music for them?

Marty Isenberg: No one from the film world has approached me after this album, but who knows! We’re still gaining momentum.

Q: How did APAP work out for you in terms of performing opportunities?

Marty Isenberg: Quite well. We have a 10 site tour planned for this March.

For more info go to:https://www.martyisenberg.com/

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