Interview with Julie Giroux

Julie Giroux is best known as a composer for modern Wind Ensemble and Symphonic band music. Her 100+ television, film & video game credits date back to 1984 and continue to this day. Her music has been represented on hundreds of CDs and is played by concert bands the world over. Projects she has worked on have been nominated for Oscars, Emmys, Grammys and Golden Globe awards. She has won individual Emmy Awards in the field of “Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music Direction.” When she won her first Emmy Award, she was the first woman and the youngest person to ever win that award. She has won it three times.

On February 3rd, 2024, the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra will premiere the symphonic orchestration of Giroux’s 6th symphony: The Blue Marble, complete with video, audio enhancement, and even scents. In celebration, the GPO conducted a brief interview.

How did you get your start in music? Why composition?

My earliest memories [center] around my grandfather, who was a piano player by trade. Sometimes he would play for us on Sundays. He couldn’t read music, but could play anything you requested. He could play by ear and also had perfect pitch. Everything he played was in the key where he originally heard it, which included all of the classical music. When he would leave, I would go to the piano and try to play what he played. 

Giroux began playing piano at the age of 3 and composing at 8.

I have the same genetic talents he had. I never really questioned why I am a musician and a composer. I just did it. It always felt like the most important thing in my life, as well as the most comfortable.

What can you tell us about your work with Hollywood ?

Bill Conti, the film composer, gave me my break and hired me to work for him right out of college. We met at LSU, where both of us worked on an ESPN special, which was the two-year precursor to the Olympics. Now, we have Olympics every two years, but back then, there were mock Olympics. ESPN paid him to write the theme and to conduct his music that was most popular from television. ESPN asked him if he would write back up for the rock band they hired and he declined. That’s when they called the Baton Rouge Symphony, who I was a member of, and asked if there was anybody in town that they could hire to do that.

That’s where I met Bill for the first time. He gave me pointers on  how to conduct an orchestra that also has a rhythm section. He really enjoyed my charts and told me I needed to move to Hollywood. I had never conducted before, so you can imagine the fear that should go with that type of encounter. Fortunately for me, I was young and no idea that I should be scared. My conducting debut was on live television conducting the Baton Rouge Symphony in the end zone, backing up the Rolling Stones on the 50 yard line; seven charts in all.

A week later, Bill called me and hired me. He asked me when could I be there and I told him I can be there tomorrow. He sent me a plane ticket. The next day I arrived in Los Angeles at noon, and by two in the afternoon I was writing for the miniseries “North and South.” 

What inspired you to write The Blue Marble Symphony, to combine music and the environment? 

I was originally going to write a symphony that involved space, and then Covid paralyzed the world. I spent my whole life as a musician and composer who lived for deadlines. Now, I had no deadlines. The first year I ate Cheetos and played video games. I enjoyed the change, but was horrified because my partner was a nurse, and she dealt with those patients every single day. We had to isolate not only from the rest of the world, but from each other. That’s when I got mad. That’s also when I changed what the symphony was going to be about about. 

Like everyone else, I wanted to be out and about in the world. But I couldn’t be. That’s when I started to research earth. The research allowed me to mentally leave the house. As I researched places and things,  I began to understand how precariously earth is balanced, and that we played a big role in its survival. I also am a big animal lover and enjoyed getting to learn about so many different types of life that exist here. 

Basically, I fell in love with earth and everything about it. It made me feel better, even if only over the internet I was making these connections. That’s when I realized that would be my symphony. I wanted to remind everybody how beautiful earth is, and that it is still out there waiting for us. 

That is also when I realized that it wouldn’t be enough to just hear the music I was writing about Earth. I wanted the audience to see it, too. The thing that was different, and what separates this type of production from nearly all others, is that the music was written first, and then the film was cut to the music. I’m also not rich, so I decided I should do the film myself. I had nothing on my hands, so why not? So during Covid, not only did I absorb more Cheetos than any human should (the crunchy kind by the way, not the puffy ones), I learned how to make films. 

I think it was easier for me than it would’ve been for anybody else to do it because I knew what I was thinking about as I was writing it. All I had to do was use video footage that fit what I was thinking about, that meant it would fit perfectly with the music. I had some footage created, and also purchased footage from sources that provide that. It was a learning process, but I enjoyed every minute of it. I like to think I was able to make something that was beautiful during one of the darkest periods of modern civilization. 

If there was a single message you hope the audience takes away from this piece, what is it?

People need to know more and care more for the place we call home. We need to keep in mind that earth doesn’t belong to us. We belong to it. We all need to fall in love with this place we go home; to fall in love with The Blue Marble.

In a simplified manner, what is your creative process when working on a new piece?

I am a programmatic composer. It is one of the reasons I took so quickly to writing for television and films. I can visualize or see something and immediately hear music to go with it. So, I’m writing music that isn’t accompanying visual arts, I still write to stories. I think of myself more as a storyteller than a composer. I am also a very emotional composer. I internalize whatever the story is and let my emotions define the music that will accompany it. 

There’s also method and form to stories. That form is identical to musical form. You have a beginning or you introduce characters or themes, then you develop that to introduce change and conflict, then the end where you resolve the conflict. 

That conflict may or may not be a happy one. Stories and programmatic music share the same forms. A story gives you form, and that enables a composer to think less about the form and just compose, experience the emotions that are produced from the story itself. It basically is how I write almost everything. As a result, I am emotionally invested in the story which means the music I am producing really means something to me, and that tends to make for better music. 

It is our understanding that your friendship with Maestro Lowell Graham goes way back. Can you tell us about your relationship that led to this moment? 

Yes! Lowell Graham and I do go way back. As you know, he is an Air Force colonel and I am an Air Force brat. I have always made it a priority of mine to know who the conductors are in the Air Force, which grew into knowing who all of our military band conductors and musicians are. I actually can’t recall the first time I met him, but I can really remember clearly the first piece of mine he premiered, called “The Nature of the Beast” which I had written around the emotions I had with being diagnosed with cancer, coming what my doctor described as, “one 100th the thickness of a sheet of paper,” close to being terminal. 

So, the first music that Lowell conducted the premiere of was heavy to say the least. He has since conducted several premieres of my works. He is one of those conductors that knows instinctively how music should go. I never worry one second about what he’s going to do with my or anybody else’s music. I know it will be as close to perfection as anyone can come. I can’t say perfect, but that’s only because music is never perfect. It is an art form. And just like all art forms, it revolves around the human element. Humans will never be perfect, a fact which I am glad of.

I absolutely adore Lowell and think of myself as lucky to have ever met him and to call a good friend. Did I say I loved him? I guess I should’ve started with that. Absolutely, I love retired Col. Lowell Graham. 

Join us for at Our Blue Marble on February 3rd, 2024. Tickets and information here.

You can read more about Julie and her work at juliegiroux.org.