Winning an Emmy Award for outstanding music composition for a series (original dramatic score) with “The Dragon and the Wolf” last year was a highlight of composer Ramin Djawadi’s illustrious run with the hit HBO series “Game of Thrones.”
“When I look at the Emmy, it will forever remind me of how great the show was to work on,” Djawadi said during an interview at his Santa Monica studio in early September, where he was feverishly putting the finishing touches on his third “Game of Thrones” Live Experience Tour.
It was just weeks before the 2019 Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles and Djawadi’s trophy from 2018 now has company as the 45-year-old L.A.-based composer just picked up another one in the same category for “The Long Night” from the final season of “Game of Thrones.”
Though the popular show ended in May after eight action- and emotion-packed seasons, Djawadi will continue to take the “Game of Thrones” Live Experience Tour on the road. The current run winds through the U.S. before ending with a pair of shows in Southern California including FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine on Oct. 4 and the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on Oct. 5.
The live experience features an orchestra and vocalists performing selections of music from each of the eight seasons of the show, all set to visual montages from the series. Of course, fans are encouraged to turn up to the event dressed as their favorite characters from the show.
“Something that I didn’t think about much before doing the live shows, and I realized the first night on stage, was you hear the crowd cheer or boo when you play certain pieces or when a certain character shows up on the screen,” he said. “I’ve realized how interactive it is with the fans reacting and I look at the musicians on stage and they’re all smiling, so there’s that connection. Fans really do show up in costume and they go out of their way to dress up so it’s become really a fun night.”
The show includes pieces like “Game of Thrones: Main Title,” “House Themes: Medley,” “The Rains of Castamere,” “White Walkers,” “My Watch Has Ended,” “Hold the Door,” “Winter is Here” and now, “The Long Night.” As much as fans cheer for their heroes and boo at the villains, Djawadi said he’s also watched the audiences get emotional with specific scenes and pieces of music.
“The concert is about that connection and with the music in the foreground now, there’s cheering and laughing, but there’s also some crying, which, it’s totally OK to cry,” he said. “The Hodor scene in particular, people get really emotional with it and it’s perfectly OK to let those emotions out.”
Getting to play the Hollywood Bowl is another big item for Djawadi to check off on his life and career bucket list. He took his wife and their 5 1/2-year-old twins to the iconic venue to see fellow composer John Williams perform memorable selections of his movie scores on Aug. 30.
“I did sit there for a moment and think, ‘Wow, I’m going to be performing here,’” he said with a smile.
The score for “Star Wars,” which Williams composed, and Elmer Bernstein’s score for “Magnificent Seven,” were among Djawardi’s biggest inspirations. Though he is definitely into classical music, he said in the ’80s he was big into heavy metal, especially Metallica. He likes to put on the classical stations while driving around downtown, but he gets outvoted by his kids who demand to hear some Post Malone or Billie Eilish.
” And I do like that stuff too,” he admits.
Condensing eight seasons of the “Game of Thrones” score was a difficult task. He has modified the tour each year to reflect the new music, and was sure to get the best of the final season into the live show. However, he has had to lift out or shorten some pieces to make room in the performance, though someday he would like to make the tour two nights in each city so he could properly showcase each selection.
“We had to think about how to capture all the big moments and we work with great picture editors on this, too,” he said. “There are some pieces I play in real time with how it was on the show, but most we have to sort of summarize because there is so much content. Once we got the hang of it, it became really fun. With this, the music is in the foreground, but we do use a little bit of dialogue here and there, usually at the beginning of the piece or throw in a key line or words that are so famous now, but otherwise it’s the music telling the story.”
Much like the die hard fans, Djawadi was sad to say goodbye to “Game of Thrones.”
“I love David (Benioff) and Dan (Weiss), the showrunners and everyone around it,” he said. “It was such a family, so it was hard to part from that. I feel like this tour still keeps that connection and the music out there. I did notice the first time we did this tour, it’s kind of fun to go back to season one and remind yourself how these characters started out and how the story has developed. It really is a nice little recap.”
Djawadi has also done the scores for shows such as “Prison Break,” “Women of Interest” and “Westworld.” The more he’s toured with “Game of Thrones” the more he said he’d like to jump in on a tour around the music from “Westworld” as well.
“I have a ton of ideas for it and I could see myself doing a ‘Westworld’ thing now that I have the experience that I do with this,” he said.
‘Game of Thrones’ Live Concert Experience
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Oct. 4
Where: FivePoint Amphitheatre, 14800 Chinon, Irvine
Tickets: $32.50-$112.50 at 800-745-3000 or LiveNation.com
Also: 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5 at Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave., Los Angeles. Tickets are $47-$450 at 800-745-3000 or Ticketmaster.com
