<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=3X3c8P_0wPzXj7r00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=3X3c8P_0wPzXj7r00" width="1440" height="959" ><figcaption>Syracuse Stage Avery Clark, Christine Albright, Krystel Lucas, and J.D. Webster in "Dial M for Murder" at Syracuse Stage. October 16 - November 3, 2024. (Brenna Merritt) (Brenna Merritt/Provided photo)</figcaption></figure>Before the lights come up on “Dial M for Murder” at Syracuse Stage, the performance has already found its groove.That’s because veteran sound designer and composer John Gromada has supplied an original musical score for the play, which follows a jealous husband as he plots to have his wealthy wife murdered after discovering her affair with a famous American crime novelist.The composer’s credits in New York City include original scores for “The Elephant Man” starring Bradley Cooper, Chazz Palminteri’s one-man “A Bronx Tale,” and “The Trip to Bountiful” (which earned him a Tony-nomination).When it came time to develop a sound for this Syracuse Stage production, Gromada used a score he wrote for a previous production of “Dial M for Murder” as a jumping off point, crafting new cues to help support director Robert Hupp’s vision for this tale of blackmail, greed, infidelity, and murder.Gromada sat down with Syracuse Stage to talk about his work, his influences, and his favorite part of bringing this classic chiller to life.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=1wilob_0wPzXj7r00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=1wilob_0wPzXj7r00" width="1440" height="986" ><figcaption>Actors Christine Albright, Avery Clark, and Krystel Lucas perform in "Dial M for Murder" at Syracuse Stage. It runs through November 3, 2024. (Brenna Merritt) (Brenna Merritt/Provided photo)</figcaption></figure>SS: How did you begin your career as a composer for theatre?JG: I have a degree in public policy from Duke, but while I was there I spent most of my time doing sound design and writing music for plays. During my senior year, a production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”— directed by Jonathan Miller, with Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey—had its pre-Broadway tryout on campus, and they found that they needed some sort of transition music. A friend of mine was a production assistant for the show, and she steered them to me. And so, at the age 22, I was asked to write music for that production. They took that music with them to New York and I graduated from Duke with a Broadway credit.SS: How do you approach writing music for non-musicals?JG: It’s become my specialty, doing what people call “incidental music for theater.” I have to develop a vocabulary for each production, so I sit down with a director and we figure out where in the piece there could be music, where there could be underscoring. Usually I try to write a framing piece as a demonstration for the director who then responds: “Can it be a little bit more like this?”After that we’ll come up with a main piece, or what I call the “Mother Piece,” and from there I can extract all these variations to fill in for underscoring and for transitions—very similar, in some ways, to film music.SS: What’s it like to watch the actors respond to your music once it’s incorporated into their work onstage?JG: With a lot of productions the music doesn’t get introduced until the show has been in rehearsal for three or four weeks, and once you add the music the actors get this new jolt of energy. In film and TV, the actors never get to act with the music score, but in theatre—in the same way that a costume would sort of add to their performance—they get some clues from the music.Oftentimes I have to tell actors: “Don’t play into the music. If it’s sentimental, don’t slow down.” Because you certainly notice a change, and I tell the actors: “Just keep doing what you’re doing. Don’t pay attention to the music.”Unlike a film composer, I’m trying to write music for something that’s a moving target, so I have to build in flexibility that takes into account the changes in a live performance.<div style="position:relative;width:100%; height:0; padding-bottom: 56.25%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZJUGc2ytnd0?feature=oembed" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" style="width:100%; height:100%;top:0; left:0; position:absolute"></iframe></div>SS: What were some of your musical inspirations while writing the “Dial M for Murder” score?JG: One of my favorite composers is Ennio Morricone, and he has some great hard thriller scores from the 1960’s, particularly with a brush snare drum sound—and I think that’s where I got that idea for “Dial M for Murder,” a kind of loose, brush-snare thing. He uses an electric organ a bunch, too, and I borrowed that.Of course, there’s Bernard Herrmann’s “Psycho,” and I was inspired a lot by “Twin Peaks” composer Angelo Badalamenti, and I think that Morricone was a big inspiration for him as well.When I originally did this at the Guthrie in Minneapolis, I was sort of zeroing in on a language for it, and the director asked: “Can you make it more jazzy?” And I began thinking about Leonard Bernstein in the late 50s and early 60s, so things like “West Side Story” and that kind of beat-noir vibe.SS: What’s your favorite moment of music in this show?JG: The murder scene is so much fun to watch, and as a composer, to be able to do that kind of bold musical statement in plays—you don’t get a chance to do that all the time. I added all these banging piano clusters, and if you listen to it in the theater, the piano goes back and forth between the left and right sides, which adds to the chaos of the moment. Using instruments in that way, you don’t get a chance to do it, except in horror. I’ve been doing a lot of thrillers since the pandemic—I’m sort of making a living doing these thrillers—which is really fun.The DetailsWhat: “Dial M for Murder” by Frederick Knott, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher.Where: Syracuse Stage.Length of performance: 1 hour 50 minutes with one intermission.Runs through: November 3.Information: 315-443-3275, syracusestage.org</div></body>

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Tony-nominated composer John Gromada makes music out of ‘Murder’ at Syracuse Stage

Before the lights come up on “Dial M for Murder” at Syracuse Stage, the performance has already found its groove. That’s because veteran sound designer and composer John Gromada has supplied an original musical score for the play, which follows a jealous husband as he plots to have his wealthy wife murdered after discovering her affair with a famous American crime novelist.