‘Masters Of The Air’ Music Is A Love Letter To The Late Michael Kamen, Says Composer Blake Neely – Sound & Screen TV
deadline.comComposer Blake Neely called his score for Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air a tribute to his mentor, the late Michael Kamen. Kamen gave Neely his first job as an orchestrator on Band of Brothers, the first in Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ World War II series trilogy. “It’s a love letter to Michael,” Neely said, choking up at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television live-music event talking about Kamen, who died in 2003. “I got my start in this business because of Michael Kamen.
On Band of Brothers I was one of his orchestrators. Then we lost him.” The producers of The Pacific asked Neely to work with Hans Zimmer and Geoff Zanelli.
Neely did so reluctantly, but stopped producer Gary Goetzman in his tracks when he began asking Neely to collaborate again on Masters. “I said, ‘No, I just want to do this myself,’” Neely said. “I want this to have a single voice.” Neely wanted to return to the sound Kamen created for Band of Brothers.
He felt The Pacific got too somber, even though it was a war drama. “I wanted to have that same nobility but I just wanted to launch,” Neely said. “The hardest thing for me was figuring out how to make it, every pun intended, fly.
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