We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Charles-Henri Avelange a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Charles-Henri, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
Deciding to go into an artist career is a pretty big risk in itself. But I think the biggest, and scariest risk I have ever taken, was to decide–in addition of becoming a film composer, that I was going to do it in the United States, very far away from my native French Riviera in the south of France.
When an opportunity came to me to leave France and go to the US, I jumped on it without hesitation. Even though nothing was really waiting for me here. I was barely speaking english and I had $500 in my pocket. I purchased non-refundable airfares to make sure that no one could talk me out of it. I quit my job in Paris as soon as I saw the opportunity and never looked back.
Fate had it that I arrived in Seattle, WA. Still very far away from Hollywood, where was my ultimate destination. I was told that it wasn’t such a bad thing, as I was pretty much relearning to live as an American, Seattle was more welcoming into preparing me for this new life than LA, where people said I would have been “crushed.”
Nonetheless, it was everything but easy. After 3 months I could have full conversations with people. After a year and half, I could finally fully understand people over the phone. Then came the reality of stopping to be a “tourist” and finally upgrading my visa to a work visa. And that was really hard. You see, when you are an independent artist and you want to work in the US as such, you pretty much have to be famous. Or at the very least, be highly recognized by your peers in your field. So I worked on that. Little to little I managed to become the go-to film composer in the Seattle area. I became the official composer of the Seattle International Film Festival’s Opening Night and created the SIFF Orchestra: a 60 piece orchestra that performed live the music I created for their prestigious Opening Night at Seattle’s opera house McCaw Hall.
Of course by then I had successfully secured my work visa. I met my wife, born and raised in Seattle and now I was officially a Green Card holder. I started getting work from Portland, OR and subsequently from Los Angeles and this is at that moment that I had yet to take another leap of faith: to abandon my rising fame and career I had been building in Seattle for 8 years and at last move to Los Angeles. Near Santa Monica, CA to be precise. Except now I was no longer alone. I was married to my Seattle wife, I was completely fluent in English, but also fluent in “entertainment industry” language.
I like to say that Los Angeles welcomed me with a punch in the face. Even though I had lived in Seattle, which was for me already quite a big city, Los Angeles was a complete different animal. Career-wise, I quickly realized that I was living 10 min away from the studios of the very composers who inspired me to go into this business to start with. It’s quite daunting and intimidating.
But thanks to my experience in Seattle, I knew to join the right organizations right away. I knew to navigate the hurdles that comes with being a full time composers, constantly looking for the next gig that would allow to pay the monthly bills that had tripled compared to living in Seattle.
Now in my 10th year in Los Angeles, there are a number of accomplishments that I managed to check off my list. One thing that I learnt early on, is that it takes 5 years for people to take you seriously in LA. Back then I didn’t quite understand it. People want to make sure you are here to stay before they invest in you. Everything is an investment in LA. And I realized it myself when befriending new people in town. Though I have yet to score the big Hollywood projects that I dream of, I managed sometimes to get pretty close, like that one time where I was the runner-up composer to score CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery. I put together an entire recording session at Warner Brothers, at the legendary Eastwood Scoring stage, with a 64 piece orchestra to demonstrate first hand that I had the chops to get the job done.
It got me into the pool of “considered composers” which was a great achievement in itself, since I was still relatively unknown in LA. I believe it also started a trend as this endeavor was noticed at the highest level in Hollywood. Something I am very proud of. All these risks in the end do pay off because they are risky investments in myself. And they become only truly risky if I stop believing in myself. I have won numerous awards for my compositions and scored over 40 independent feature films and televisions pilots, featuring some of my favorite actors from Stargate, Star Wars and Star Trek, my favorite childhood shows. Meeting these actors on the sets, having the privilege to work with them and even sometimes befriending them is one major reason why I would never regret my decision to leave France 17 years ago.
I have become now a US Citizen, and I was naturalized in a big ceremony last year at Dodger Stadium, something I am very proud of. I was chosen to create for the first time in their history, an official theme for the Make-A-Wish® Foundation, which was nominated at the 2023 Hollywood Independent Music Awards and is now officially entered for consideration at the GRAMMYS®. This year marks also my first participation at the GRAMMYS® as a new Recording Academy member. Without taking all these risks, I would have never met any of the people that I now know here, that are my friends and that I consider my family. Neither would have I embraced becoming the citizen of another great nation, and never would have I met the love of my life in my beautiful wife Jennifer.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I started into music at an early age, producing concerts a la “Jean-Michel Jarre” with my synthesizers in high school. I would recreate my favorite music themes, and performed them live. One day I realized that most of these themes were either film music or television themes or from video games. That’s when I realized that I love making film music, and that when given a story idea, I can become very creative in composing the music that will be the right fit for the story.
But because of unfortunate family circumstances, I was not able to go to music school as I wanted. I learnt music without much help at the beginning, becoming a self-taught composer. The music grew from being synthesizer music to full orchestral pieces. So instead I was able to go to a Film School. I was admitted at the ESRA, one of the most prestigious Film School in France. My major was in Sound Engineering and Sound Design, but the school taught every single of their student about film. Even though I was in audio, I would know about camera lenses, depth of field, white balance, cinematography etc… But because my true goal was to become a film composer, being at this school gave me the opportunity to score many of the film the cinema students were producing. My enthusiasm for it, inspired later the director of the school to create a film music class at the school. Something I was really honored to hear about.
Being a film composer is being a permanent student. It doesn’t matter how much experience you get scoring films, every single new projects are always different and will always force you to step out of your comfort zone. Experience will help you deal with the stress, and how to communicate with your clients, but certainly not creatively in a manner of speaking. As I always found myself having to constantly think out-of-the-box in order to create the perfect soundtrack for the many projects I’ve worked on.
But because my MASTERS degree is in sound engineering and sound design, I can often offer more services than your usual composer. As a fully trained sound engineer, I can have comfortable conversations with the sound engineers on the production and in some instances, I can fully handle the entire post-audio production department. This knowledge allowed me to be also a pioneer into making immersive sound and music, proposing my film scores mixed in 5.1 surround. I can handle and consult on audio work, such as dialogue editing, dialogue cleaning, sound design, sound mix, score mix, music editing, audio/music balance etc…
I can create music in a wide variety of genre, which is precisely why I went into film music to start with. Through out all the projects I have scored, I have had the opportunity to create music from small to very large ensemble, Ethnic to Symphonic, EDM to Hip Hop. Romance, Fantasy, Children, Animation, Thriller, Western, Epic, Sci-Fi. I have done many. Not even mentioning marketing videos such as commercials, movie trailers etc…
What distinguish me from others is my ability to understand what film makers want musically or sonically. And to translate it immediately to music. I believe my journey coming into this country and having to figure out the language on the spot while already working into the business trained my brain to understand what cannot be expressed with words.
I often say that I don’t think of myself as a musician per say, but as a film maker responsible of the music and sound department.
One of my proudest moment was a couple years ago, I was hired to score a TV pilot, directed by Tim Russ (Star Trek: Picard) and starring Star Trek actress: the late Nichelle Nichols (this project would become her last screen appearance). When the producers approached me, the deadline was already very tight. I had less than 3 weeks to score 60 minute of epic-hybrid orchestral music for a Sci-Fi TV pilot. The project was to be premiered at the Los Angeles Comic Con and it was a big deal. Problem: there were issues in the editing department, and they ended up delivering me the final cut a week later than anticipated, reducing the time I had to score the pilot by that much.
This was making it near impossible to complete before the deadline. But seeing that the delivery was late, I called Executive Producer and writer of the project Frank Zanca, and we started discussing theme ideas for the film and for the characters. So when the final cut came a week late, I already had several character themes composed and already had the main opening theme figured out which made up for the delayed final cut delivery to me. We were prepared to have a temporary, unfinished score for the premiere. But instead we got a a fully mixed final score. My knowledge of sound engineering was crucial as I knew exactly how to deliver the score to the sound engineer so that he could integrate it into the final mix pretty much overnight so that we could have the premiere the next day at Los Angeles Comic Con.
This is one example where experience, knowledge and excellence in the craft and stellar communication made a project that seemed impossible, actually happen. My reward was to be praised publicly at the screening’s Q&A panel by director Tim Russ on how “beautifully efficient the score was for the film” he said that day.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I think first and foremost, society needs to start recognizing artists and people who work in the entertainment industry as true workers. The idea that one “should get a real job” need to disappear. Somehow, because people in the arts enjoy what they are doing, the common thought is that it must not be real work. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Particularly post-COVID pandemic. What this crisis as shown us–if anything, is that entertainment was absolutely an essential need during the lock downs. The ability to watch TV shows, movies, play video games or listen to music, was pretty much what kept people sane during these hard times. Watching entertainment is so engrained into our society and our social behaviors that “Netflix & Chill” is a recognized and widely used expression as to propose something to do.
As I write these lines, Los Angeles just went through a tropical storm. When watching the news, the journalists were issuing warnings recommended by the authorities, and the main sentence that kept on being repeated was “as much as possible, stay home, relax and stream your favorite shows while the storm alert is in effect.” Staying at home and consuming entertainment is now a safety recommendation for people to stay calm in times of crisis.
So I think it is time that society officially recognizes artists and content creators as a serious profession. It is very much “a real job.” As artists, we work hard. Probably harder than any average worker. And often our health can take a toll because of it. The nature of the job makes it that we do not enjoy the benefits of a steady income. It’s often “feast and famine.” If an artist loses their ability to work, or struggle to find any due to acts of god, we do not have access to unemployment benefits. It’s also very hard to have access to good and affordable health insurance.
If you ask people, many could not possibly imagine life without music or television shows in their life. This should give the answer to anyone who still thinks that being an artist is not a “real job.” It is a real job, and it is very much needed.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Undoubtedly, the most rewarding aspect of creating art is to see how it affects people’s lives. Whether it is the claps and standing ovations after a live performance, or the many messages of love when posting the work on the internet from strangers. I remember when I created my first album called “The Age of Heroes” which was my tribute to every day American heroes, including first responders, fire fighters, US Veterans etc… And when the music was out, I started having people from all over the country reaching out to me. They were touched by my music and it compelled them to tell me why they decided to become a firemen or enlist in the US marines. They would tell me how my music would remind them of why they made that choice, or it would make them remember of a fallen comrades. These stories would bring me to tears. And I don’t think I have the words to tell how rewarding that feeling is.
Artists in general are very empathetic people. We feel the world. The people in it. But also ourselves and our place in it. And even though it is a blessing, it can also be a curse. Because art is the expression of what cannot be seen, explained or said. And for artists, it must go out to the world. It has to be expressed one way or another. You become an artist the day you have an urge to express an idea, and you decide to create something to express it. It can be a poem, movie script, a piece of music, a drawing or a painting or a sculpture.
And another very rewarding thing as an artist, is that your art usually ends up making you meet people that are completely out of your usual social circles. Sometimes you will find that you have a lot in common with these people you meet. And sometimes, how that person resonated with your art might be the only thing that you have in common. And therefore, it makes you meet people that you would otherwise never meet or talk to. And sometimes even leads to collaborations that once again, provide such fulfillment that words cannot express.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.charleshenriavelange.com
- Instagram: @charleshenriavelange
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charleshenriavelangecomposer
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleshenriavelange/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesavelange
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPyX1cejQFhtpsNal-92NdQ
- Other: http://www.imdb.me/charleshenriavelange
Image Credits
Photo Credits: Avelange Music®