Does getting the opportunity to work with a cast as insanely talented as Justin Theroux, Lena Headey, Woody Harrelson and Domhnall Gleeson make a composer’s life easier, or more daunting? This is one of the questions put to a highly experienced composer in the world of film and TV, Jeff Cardoni, who has written the music for HBO’s Watergate Scandal drama The White House Plumbers.
Without overly generalising, there are mostly two distinct breeds of film composers. There is the film composer who has crossed over from the world of rock and pop, perhaps because a director or producer was a fan of their previous music releases and felt they’d be a great fit for the project. And then there is the composer who has done the full classical education and has pursued film scoring from the beginning of their music career, often working as an assistant to an established composer as their way into the industry. Cardoni is a better fit for the latter type of composer, and unique in how traditional his approach is versus the many Hans Zimmer clones out there.
He grew up studying classical piano while playing percussion in orchestras. Having said all that, he did dabble in the world of rock, briefly the guitarist for Warner Bros band Alien Crime Syndicate, which brought him to Los Angeles. He left the band to pursue scoring full-time, assisting John Murphy (28 Days Later, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) while studying orchestration and conducting at UCLA.