Lili Haydn Finds Her Space Composer-Artist on Violin, Voice and the Interplay of Sound as Music By Lily Moayeri
Composer-artist Lili Haydn in her new home, which includes a Dante network that allows her to record in any room at any time.
PHOTO: Steve Appleford
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t’s next to impossible to avoid Lili Haydn’s music on streaming services. The violinist and composer has scored the Starz documentary Ruth: Justice Ginsburg In Her Own Words. She also has scored the empowering documentary on pole dancing, Strip Down, Rise Up, out on Netflix, as well as the streaming giant’s popular series Ginny & Georgia. Head over to Spotify, or any DSP, and you’ll find Haydn’s latest artist album, More Love. These projects have kept Haydn studio-bound for the past year and more, first in a room at a composers’ studio complex where she worked on Ruth and, in part, Ginny & Georgia, then in mid-2020 from her own new home, which she shares with her musician husband, Itai Disraeli. They live in one of those studio homes where every room functions as a recording space. Here, she completed Ginny & Georgia and Strip Down, Rise Up in quick succession during the pandemic. “We wired the whole house with the Dante network,” says Haydn from what would be considered the “control room” of her Los Angeles
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home studio, where she has a vocal booth, a machine room and is set up with a big screen, monitors, and both Pro Tools Ultimate HD and Ableton Live. “My husband took the second floor of the house for his studio, and I took the garage. We’re connected so we can share files, and I can record his room. We can record the piano in the living room. I’ve got a little drum room above, as well. We can record everything from everywhere.” FROM FEATURES TO EPISODIC While all three of Haydn’s recent screen projects are female-forward, they are very different in character. Ruth is dignified, classical and, to some degree, operatic. Strip Down, Rise Up has changeable moods—most of which are not meant to be directly reflected in the music—and many song replacements. The pop-filled Ginny & Georgia has a number of reference points, including the UK version of Skins, Desperate Housewives, Gilmore Girls and, most interestingly, Dexter, which Haydn determined on her own without the input of the show’s creator. All of the shows have an
inordinately large amount of music. Haydn previously scored Anita: Speaking Truth to Power for writer/director Freida Lee Mock, so tapping her for Ruth was a no-brainer. Conscious to create a score that was distinct from RBG, the 2018 Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary, Haydn focused on the emotional narrative of Ruth and the triumphant nature of the film. She cites her cue for the closing scene, which supports the complete and utter devotion of its subject, as “stately and intimate,” and one of her best pieces of work. In contrast, Michèle Ohayan, writer/director of Strip Down, Rise Up, who brought Haydn on after hearing her score for the documentary Feminists What Were They Thinking?, was looking for a fierce and passionate score. In fact, Strip Down, Rise Up had Haydn’s previous score cues as its temp music. “Temp love can be murderous, even if it’s your own,” Haydn says. “I can’t do better than what I already did. It was about accessing the passion but not being too on-the-nose. Not crying when
