La La Land Composer Justin Hurwitz on the Film's Longevity: "It's Surreal"

Though the 2016 film La La Land is all about Los Angeles, it will always have a strange connection to Miami: It was, of course, the film that was initially (and erroneously) announced as the Best Picture winner at the 2017 Oscars instead of the rightful winner Moonlight, the Liberty City-based coming-of-age tale directed by Miami's own Barry Jenkins.

This week, La La Land will screen twice in the home of the film that beat it at the Academy Awards, but these screenings won't be your typical AMC outings. The film will play at the Adrienne Arsht Center, accompanied by a full orchestra and jazz band conducted by Justin Hurwitz, the composer of the film's original score. Ahead of the shows, Hurwitz spoke to New Times about his composition work and these unique showings, which have toured the world since 2023.

Hurwitz began writing music at just 10 years old, with early inspiration coming from the compositions of titan John Williams and his work on Jurassic Park in particular. "I think I became really aware of what music could do for a movie growing up on some of those films and scores," says Hurwitz. When he took up writing, "I loved it more than I ever loved practicing the piano, which I never liked doing all that much."

Composing music became addictive. "When I was 10, 11, and 12, I was staying up late and just found it to be all-consuming," he says. "As I got older and started to think about studying music in college, it just made sense to compose for film. I've always loved orchestral music, and films are such a great canvas and platform for that. Not every score I do is orchestral, but, in the modern day, if you want to compose music for an orchestra and you want people to hear it, a film score is a great vehicle for that."

Over the past 15 years, he's worked on five projects with director Damien Chazelle, including the acclaimed Whiplash, La La Land, and Babylon. "One thing I think is unusual about our process is how early we start — whether or not it's a musical — because a lot of music needs to be recorded before even shooting the movie," he explains. "Damien will storyboard literally every shot by hand, and I'll be writing music while he's creating those...I think it's more unusual than just coming in at the very end of the process and trying to replace a temp score or fit a score to a finished cut."

That collaboration and fixation on getting imagery and music to be harmonious is exactly why a film like La La Land soars, extending to a similar blending together of the personalities and lives of protagonists Mia and Sebastian, played by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Hurwitz says writing their recurring theme song was the most difficult part of the process.

"We knew that it would not only be Sebastian solo at a piano but that it would be at the heart of other pieces. 'Planetarium' would be built around it, and a lot of 'Epilogue' would be built around it, so it would serve as this tentpole to hold up big parts of the score," he adds. "It took me a really long time to find that theme at the piano, but once we did, we started focusing on song melodies and thinking about moments in the story and what the characters were feeling.

"The yearning in the wistful optimism, or the cautious optimism, of 'City of Stars' — what does that sound like? And what does the exuberance of 'Another Day of Sun' feel like? We would tackle these song melodies one at a time, and once we had those, we could build the score around it. Once you have that all established, they become so loaded; you can play with what the songs mean and bring them back both earnestly and ironically."

I suggest some of the musical themes in Babylon — which contains my favorite Hurwitz compositions — sound like darker inversions or variations of La La Land's songs, with "Manny and Nellie's Theme" and "Mia & Sebastian's Theme" being one such pairing. Hurwitz is surprised but says he's heard some say Babylon's "Gold Coast Rhythm" is reminiscent of one of La La Land's themes.

"As a composer, you have certain chord changes that you like, certain motifs that you like, and those kind of come back here and there," he says. "It's one of those challenges that you have as a composer, that balancing act: Having your own style and your own identifiable voice while also not literally repeating from one score to the next."

Of course, bringing those existing compositions to life inside a concert venue with a 50-piece orchestra and jazz band is an entirely different beast. Hurwitz says the process requires some reorchestration because the score is played all the way through without stopping.

"La La Land is unusually eclectic as a film score, especially for one of these concerts, because you have so many different kinds of music," Hurwitz explains. "You have orchestral music, and you have jazz combo and hybrids of the two, and all of this needs to go straight through. There are a bunch of instances of pieces of music crossfading with each other — like orchestral fading out as jazz comes in — and we have to make that all playable. So there are all these little spots where I have to diminuendo an orchestra while bringing in a jazz band at a completely different tempo, and it's tricky, but it's fun to make it all happen live."

In prepping for the concerts, Hurwitz admits "it's surreal" to witness the film's longevity and impact nearly a decade after its release. "I just got back from Singapore a few days ago, and the fact that the movie and the music have such a place in the culture that I can go to all these places...I didn't envision the work having this kind of life and that I'd be traveling the world with it. I'm really loving having this be a part of my career, but my main job is creating new film scores and new movies with Damien. So I'm very excited to have a new movie out in not too long and to be able to continue going around and sharing our old work. It's really special."

La La Land in Concert. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, and Thursday, April 10, at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org. Tickets cost $69 to $129.