‘Origin’ and ‘The Color Purple’ Composer Kris Bowers Shares Gratitude for Kobe Bryant Mentorship, Ava DuVernay Collaborations and Scoring Empowering Stories

variety.com:

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Growing up, Kris Bowers felt like he was an outsider trying to fit in. These days, he is anything but that in Hollywood.

The Oscar-nominated composer has scored a wide array of projects in the past five years, ranging from “Green Book” to “When They See Us,” and worked with Ava DuVernay and Shonda Rhimes repeatedly.

This year alone, the Daytime Emmy winner’s credits include “Origin” and “The Color Purple” in addition to “Chevalier,” “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” and “Haunted Mansion.” It was during his middle school years — “a troubling time emotionally,” Bowers says — that he discovered how to channel his feelings through music.

The L.A. native, who learned to play the piano at age 4 before expanding his training in classical and jazz, found himself gravitating back to the keyboard once puberty hit. “The piano was more of a thing that I wanted to do because I could learn songs and play them for my friends at school,” Bowers says. “It became this way for me to interface with people that otherwise I felt a little bit like an outsider.” Back then, he didn’t have very many outlets to express himself or his feelings. “Being a Black boy, the idea of crying was being soft,” Bowers says of that period. “It was all about being masculine, and being masculine was not dealing with any sort of softer feelings like romance, love or sadness.” It was the same with anger: He could spend 30 minutes at the piano and deal with those “problematic emotions.” This sense of escape made the young Bowers fall in love with the piano. “I wouldn’t feel angry anymore,” he says.