Classical Hands: Composer Kris Bowers on Scoring ‘Green Book,’ Teaching Mahershala Ali Piano, Seeing His Hands On Screen

– Kris Bowers

Kris Bowers, 28, not only composed the original score for “Green Book” and performed and supervised the recording of Dr. Don Shirley music used in the film, but it’s his hands you often see playing piano on screen. Well, his and Mahershala Ali’s whom the young composer taught to play. Here, the virtuoso discussed Dr. Shirley, scoring music for shows like “Dear White People” as well as racial attitudes today.

See: The Black & White Of Touring: Green Book Looks Back At Life On The Road

Pollstar: Can you give a brief overview of your career?

Kris Bowers: I’m originally from L.A. and studied jazz piano at Julliard where I did my undergrad and masters. I started playing with people like Q-Tip and Kanye and won the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Piano Competition. I started touring with artists like Marcus Miller and Aretha Franklin and put out my own album on Concord and toured with my own band. The last five years I’ve transitioned into film scoring.

What’s your take on Dr. Shirley and his music?

I’d never heard of Dr. Shirley before reading the script and was really thankful to have the opportunity to study and discover his work and have become a huge fan.

You redid a lot of his songs and you wrote original music. How did that work?

When you see the film, the piano performances are transcriptions essentially of Dr. Shirley’s original recordings. I transcribed it, learned it and wrote it out for the other instruments. Then we rearranged it slightly, adding cello for the film’s sake and things like that.

Did you teach Mahershala Ali to play piano?

We spent about three months working at the piano. I knew he messed around with piano. His wife is a musician and he’s a very musical person, but what ‘s incredible is his focus and attention to detail. When he played scales he tried to make each note balanced so there weren’t any notes sticking out. His fingering was correct, which is something a first-time pianist never thinks about.

It looks like Mahershala is playing from the get-go, but were you part of those shots?

If the dexterity is really intricate, then those are me. We would take turns at the piano going through the songs and they would find the best way to combine them, whether that was using mostly him or mostly me or some combination of both. There are times I look at it and I’m not sure if that’s me playing or him.

Is it weird to see your hands on the movie screen?

Yeah, it’s creepy. At times they used my body, or my legs or hands and combined entire portions of our bodies.

I wanted to ask if you’ve experienced racism in your career.

That’s one of the things that connected me to the story. Obviously, I haven’t had to combat anything on the level of Dr. Shirley, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with white friends who talk about being blacker than me because of their knowledge of black music or culture. In high school I only listened to jazz or classical music.

How has that attitude manifested itself in your career?

The music I compose is all over the place, but a lot of it’s inspired by everything from Ravel to Steve Reich to Cliff Martinez and some rock, electronic and jazz stuff. But I get calls pretty frequently to do hip-hop scores and there’s this assumption that seems based on my race. I do want to be a representative for my community and be a part of projects that do that in a beautiful way, but at the same time I’ve seen my mentors, older black composers, get pigeonholed.

Like who?

I was having conversations with Terence Blanchard who scored “BlacKKKlansman.” I’ve known him from high school and he’s a mentor. We spoke about how I get calls for hip-hop scores and being viewed as a black composer, not just a film composer, and he was like, “Yeah. I mean I hate to say it, but also get used to it. I’ve been dealing with it from the beginning.”

What projects do you have coming up?

A bunch of stuff. “Dear White People” on Netflix is back for season 3. “For the People” on ABC is back for season 2. I just got a new series called “Black Monday” on Showtime with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as executive producers. I’m doing a film with Justin Simien and the creator of “Dear White People.” It’s a horror film set in the ‘80s called “Bad Hair.”