Interview with Robert Jíša

Highly inspirational and emotional music from the Czech Republic:
an interview with Robert Jíša (aka Rob Robinson)

Date: April 4 2011

One day, a couple of friends and me decided to make a trip to Boston. After NYC, Boston felt so familiar and comfortable: old buildings, parks, much slower tempo… and Berklee, the school my father told me about so much when I was young!
So I thought, I must see this building from the inside. So I went inside the main building and before I could even blink my eyes, somebody started to talk to me. A college employee, some counsellor, saw me, took me aside and brainwashed me in such a way, I left the school with applications and enrollment forms and a clear belief I could start studying film scoring at this famous school the next year if I just want to.

Well, and that’s exactly what happened! I just missed out on the famous John Williams, who was giving lessons at Berklee. Nevertheless. I met so many other amazing people that influenced and changed my life, my understanding of music and much more. I must mention Ken Greenhouse here, who showed me what it means to be a true genius, and I will never forget his impact on my seeing and hearing music.

Robert, please be so kind to give us an overview of the music and albums you made so far…
Well, so far, 27 of my works were released on cd. I had to check my website, hope I calculated them right 🙂 Most of them were either ambient or some sort of New Age or music therapy. I’ve also scored many films, I really don’t know how many, because some are not even listed in my filmography and I’ve even done some theatre and ballet music next to music for commercials.

From your albums, I’m especially impressed by “Space Voices”. What can you tell about its evolution and the series it apparently seems to belong to?
I’m glad that you like “Space Voices”. Actually, so far I like it probably the most myself. It was made in a time of rare harmony between my record label’s enthusiasm and some sort of listeners’ euphoria about my work that allowed to make a bit less commercial decisions than usual. It also happened in a highly inspirational time of my own life. Simply, nobody was too worried about buyers’ feedback, we just thought “it’s a great idea, let’s do it” and that was it. It was a high wave. Since then, things are getting more and more tense. Now we are, again, in a phase when we say “let’s do it”, but not because we’d know it’s going to sell well, but because we know it will not sell, because nothing sells. It’s a freedom too, just a different one:-)

The “voices” series was born by an accident. My friend Kristian, who runs the record label NextEra while also licensing all my recent work, called one of my soothing music albums “Forest Voices”. Simply because he heard some forest sounds in it next to the sounds of nature, birds, brooks etc. I myself hadn’t come up yet with a name for the album. I thought though it a great name, we sticked to it and released it under that name.

Then, the big label that distributed it, asked for something new. I remembered my project that I started to work on already when studying at Berklee in Boston: a musical trip over the world. Individual compositions represented mostly ports of the world I’ve visited before, such as Boston, Acapulco, Caracas, Galle, Dublin, Marsa Alam among others. Then I added places that I’ve never visited, and composed music that would represent how I imagined their energies: Spitzbergen, Ushuaia, Auckland etc. I also added particular rivers like the Vltava of Prague, the Amazone and the Russian Volga plus a few seas. I was fascinated by different cultures and how they are connected by the rivers, seas and oceans. I thought I could do a pretty interesting cd based on this Berklee work.
Somebody (probably Kristian again) said: how about calling that one “Sea Voices”. So people happy with “Forest Voices” would understand it’s in a way a continuation of it. I thought it not only smart but also pretty elegant and also the right idea at the time, so we gave it a go.

The album title “Space Voices” was the only logical consequence of that. What would be the next step after you have visited the ocean, right? 🙂
My next project will be called “Illumination Voices”, but that’s whole other story because it’s maily meant to be a live-performance oriented project. Who knows if it if ever will be released on any cd. Anyway, if that happens, it will mean the definite end of the series.

Are there any other recordings in your discography which have a special meaning for you or something special to them?
You know, unlike “Space Voices”, actually most of my favorite compositions have never been released. For example, there’s orchestral recording of about an hour of music I’ve recorded with the Slovenian Radio and TV Orchestra that was originally composed for the film “Phantom” by director Ema Kugler. I love the music, because you don’t often get the opportunity to work with large symphonic orchestra. But in the end there’s no soundtrack to that film, it used just a small part of the music I had written and recorded for it anyway. In addition, nobody seems to be interested in releasing orchestral music of an author that isn’t known as an orchestral music composer. So this music rests in my own and those of the Slovenian State Radio archives.

But looking back at my previous albums, I’m especially pleased about my very first album “Hourglass”. It meant a whole revolution in my life. I also much like the Amazonas album. I joined the expedition Titanus Giganteus 1994 to the heart of Amazone, recording hours of ambient recordings every day. Day and night. I did what was forbidden, I left the group and walked alone through the rain forest, making recordings the best as possible. It was a big adventure, and composing the music was an amazing trip too. The outcome was, for that period of time, outstanding I guess.
Generally though, I try to focus on the future. My latest work “The Egyptian Book of the Dead” is now being released, and I can already hear the music and sounds of the forthcoming “Illumination Voices” in my mind. The rest are only memories.

Years ago you had plans to move to the USA, but in the end you did not take the step. Why didn’t you stay in there at the begin of 2000 when you graduated?.
My plans to move over there are still alive. As said previously, my wife and I got a baby, and so we had to take more a flexible approach toward what happens when, but we still plan to move to the USA one day. I guess everything has it’s right time.
Around 1999/2000, I have to admit, I was sick of the East Coast, which was the same period my Berklee era got to an end. I still loved the school, but not so much the town anymore. I was homesick, after four years living there I still felt not welcome in Boston. New York City seemed too wild to me to settle down. And California felt too far away from everything, my friends, my family, everything.

I remember the chairman of my Film Scoring Department told me face to face returning home was a bad idea for my career. In his opinion, the best was to move to Hollywood and to start building my career. Me on the other hand, I wanted to taste a proper beer again, to kiss the girls again, to talk to my crazy friends again… I didn’t care much about my career back then. We Czechs were still like babies in the nineties, so even I thought good things may come without sacrifices. Now I see things a bit different.

How do you spent your time when you’re working on music, and how does this affiliate with your ongoing desire to produce film music?
Well, although I currently work about 80% of my time on ambient and therapy music cds, which I’m grateful for, I still hope for more cinematic work too. I’m often thinking what I’m doing wrong or missing to receive so few offers for film scoring. As said previously, it’s one of the reasons I intend to move to Los Angeles. The film and multimedia business in Prague is simply slow and the old bonds are too tight.

I love films, I’m even pretty interested in multimedia, which uses often music that is weaker than the visuals, lowering the value of the whole product. Hollywood films, however superficial sometimes, have usually superb music, sometimes BBC and National Geographic movies use fantastic music, while only a few French films have great music. Most of the time though, we hear average or even bad music underscoring stories and visuals that are excellent in all other means. I think, no, I believe this is a shame. Music can do so much for the way a movie, a show, a PCgame etc. works in our brain and heart. They write the screenplay for years, they struggle to collect money, they shoot the film for another year and then another couple of months they edit it, correct the colors, mix all the atmospheres and steps, shots, door slams and whatever else… so much work. And then they say in a minute: now let’s put SOME music to it, and that’s it. It’s by this very decision the movie loses perhaps 40-60% of its potential. They just aren’t aware of how important it is.

In my opinion, especially European films suffer from this unawareness of the importance of music way too often. At the time of working on the music, which mostly happens post-production, most of the movie’s budget is usually almost spent.There’s not much time left anymore, but it is so important to do this thing right… music can turn an average movie into a great and moving experience, but vice versa it can turn a great story and film into just one of those films…
I know it’s hard to imagine, but we, at Berklee, experimented a lot with different music cues under the same movie scenes and the results were fascinating, even amazing. The same scenes could have even totally different meanings with different music. Not to mention what well-written music score can do for the film as a whole, for its development, structure etc.

So what more did you do to get know?
After being relatively very successful with my music in the Czech republic and some other European countries such as Portugal, Greece and a few others, I decided to open a new doorway for the distribution of my music.
We called it the Dream & Dream company and started a global business with therapy music. At the moment we have a couple of therapy titles and are working on more. We’re still at the start, but hopefully as the community of fans keeps growing, it will make more sense.

I even think about occasionally offering custom-made recordings to one specific patient or customer. I think it may be a very interesting activity for me, although I have no idea about how well this “service” will be received by the people in the real world:-) We’ll see.
The website of this business is www.dreamanddream.com and I hope it is one of the answers to the total decline of cd sales. I’m afraid there simply are too many cds, there’s too much music everywhere that is too easy to be made. So one has to have a clear picture what to offer and to whom.

Next to this, I lately started working on iPhone and iPad applications too. The first one is called Prague Friend, and it’s going to be an “insider” or “secret” guide over my town, about keeping away from the mad-making crowd. If it shows a functional way, we would like to continue in other cities.
The website for it is www.travelingiphone.com and I’d like to invite people that have profound knowledge about their hometown and an interest in working on such things to join us. And perhaps not only this sort of knowledge, any knowledge that may address iPhone and iPad audience is welcome. Knowledge is the most valued commodity and cooperation and sharing are the themes of today’s world and the future. Hm, sounds almost smart, doesn’t it?

What can you tell about your studio, the technique and instruments you use..
I’m a long time fan of both the Kurzweil and Apple companies. Unfortunately for Kurzweil, the music technology went the direction towards VI and so I use my K-2500 just rarely and rely fully on VI on my Macs. I use, of course, the Vienna Symphonic Library, a Kontakt Sampler, EW Symphonic Choirs, Kore and some solo VIs. In addition, I’m finally about to get the Hollywood Strings. All is run by Digital Performer 6, MOTU ADDA and my beloved B&W loudspeakers filled by ventilatorless superquiet Mr. Harman Kardon AVR 8500.
It’s all fine and nice, but when it comes to the real pleasure for music, I know now that you must collect some really good musicians, write notes and sheets and let them play things live. Only then, music sounds the right way. And I hope to have as many opportunities as possible to experience that in the future again. Wish me luck 🙂

You’ve just finished work on your last album “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”. What made you choose this concept, what did you envision for its music, how did you approach the music and start composing…
Well, the older I get, the more I get fascinated by our history. History tells us so much about who we are, how easily we’re able to repeat even the most stupid things, again and again etc. But it also tells and reveals us what fascinating things human mankind can do. I’ve always been curious about who we are, how come we’re different from animals (the older I get the more I believe, we’re in majority not that different at all:-) and this all naturally leads to the ancient cultures, the Middle East, Aztecas, Mayas… and… of course Egypt.

In recent years I studied the beginning of Christianity and, logically, ran into the Jewish legends, which closely relate to Egypt again. Then I studied the Pharaohs, their fascinating architecture, the whole symbolism, and realized that so many things, symbols are still used in our everyday lives, it actually shocked me. What even more shocked me, was that Egyptian hieroglyphs of over thousands years old were found in Australia and Americas. Strange, isn’t it? As Woody Allen would say: Everything’s Else 🙂
So I was trying to learn even more about what was going on before the pharaohs and why it seems that people somehow lost track in a certain moment of their development. What had happened?

I found just a few answers so far, but the whole process of learning, thinking, realizing and sensing was so intense and inspirational, I simply had to compose something about it. I didn’t want to compose an ethno album though, I wanted to compose something that would, in symbols, tell the story of how tightly we’re connected to our history that seems to be so far away. Because, after all, it isn’t that disconnected and far. Egypt (and all that was here before it) is us. We just don’t know about it. The connection seems to be lost, but I think it can be fixed. All the legends and symbols that our churches are using were already used in Egypt and probably before. Only the key, the philosophy, the concept of life and death was in Egypt very, very different from how we think about these things now. Unfortunately for us. But new times are approaching and perhaps this will get fixed too…

“The Egyptian Book of the Dead” is a fascinating collection of ancient documents that then became the leit-motive of the project. I wanted not just cover the historical periods between pharaohs and today, but also musically encode symbols that I found interesting. For example, one composition’s theme is based on the Great Pyramid of Giza geometry. Many forms, beats, intervals of this album are a musical translation of symbols, either Egyptian or from Kabbalah or plain numerology.
Very few things on the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” album are simply just my general inspiration, most of it has a certain symbolic source translated into music.

Final question: I heard you also seem to be involved in a forthcoming live-event…
It’s actually a few days ago I’ve read this article about how much less likely it is to reach your goals when you talk about them in advance. So, I’m a bit afraid to tell you much about it, but there are a few things I can say about it .
There are negotiations going on right now about a big concert of my composition that would take place in “one of the greatest churches of Prague”. But I really cannot tell you which one fornow. The place is unique and so is the reception of my partners that I’ve asked to collaborate with me. In addition, the famous boys choir Boni Pueri promised to take part in the event as has the Musica Florea mediaval orchestra.

My vision on it based on “The Egyptian Book of the Dead” project and the composition “Illumination Voices”. It’s supposed to have a couple of levels, and incorporating several stories: the story of the history of Prague, the story of human history, the mediaval symbolism, hermetism, the future and the connection among it all. It would be an electro-acoustic continuation of “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”. There’s still a long way to go, but so far everything seems to support the idea.
My record label seems to be interested in supporting it too, so the only remaining question is the church management. In general they seem to be supportive too, but we didn’t yet reach any firm agreement about the dates and conditions under which this even may take place. I hope though, fingers crossed, that things will end up positive. If not, we would like to present it elsewhere, but this very place we’re talking about right now is by far the most mystical choice available.
As said previously, I cannot share more details about it at the moment, but I will spread the word right after the final decisions have been made.
If all goes well, I would like to make a little tour over Europe with it, but that’s another matter. But as you can understand, for now I’m fully focussed on making it happen here in the first place…

Meanwhile, me and my friend PhD Maskova have started organizing some little concerts in the Prague planetarium, based on the “Space Voices” cd. Even this is in pre-production, but if all goes well, I will be pretty busy the forthcoming months…

Selective discography:

* Five Tibetians (Pět Tibeťanů) (CD, 2004)
* The Forest Voices (Hlasy lesa) (CD, 2004)
* The Sea Voices (Hlasy moře) (CD, 2005)
* Relaxing Music For Babies (Relaxační hudba pro miminka) (2006)
* Space Voices (Hlasy vesmíru) (CD, 2007)
* Signs Of The Zodiac (Znamení zvěrokruhu) (CD, 2007)
* Sweet Dreams (Sladké sny / Hudba pro miminka) (CD, 2008)
* Music For Sleeping (Hudba proti nespavosti)(CD, 2009)
* The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Egyptská kniha mrtvých)(CD, 2011)

Website: www.filmmusic.cz