Teese Gohl

Cut to opening night at SOB’s. The place was packed with celebrity New Yorkers like David Byrne and John Zorn. The terrified Teese didn’t know what to do. The music started and as Teese puts it, “Instead of playing looking down, I looked up. I listened. It was the first time I ever really created music on the stage.”

The experience was so profound for the young Teese that he stayed with Nana for six years until landing in New York, wondering what to do next. The answer wasn’t long in arriving. Aware of his composing and arranging proclivities, prominent film and theater composer John Corigliano asked Teese to do a simple synth sketch for his opera, Ghosts of Versailles, premiering at the Metropolitan Opera House. Teese responded with a three-and-a-half-hour-long synthesizer rendering of the entire opera done completely on his Yamaha DX7, Korg M1 and Akai S900. (You must never, never complain about your limited palette again.) The effort so wowed the Met that to this day he remains their Synthesist-In-Residence.

Teese’s conjoined passion for film and theater music soon found him handling production chores for Elliot Goldenthal, the visionary creator of scores of films like Interview with the Vampire, Batman Forever, and Heat. The duo clicked and before long Teese and Elliott were doing theater scores by day and film scores by night. The two racked up hit after hit: Pet Semetary, Alien 3, and Frida, for which Elliot won the Academy Award, and the upcoming Across the Universe. Teese’s role transcended simple producership. He became the liaison between the composer, the director, and the producer. Soon his niche-skillset joined him again with John Corigliano, for his Oscar-winning score for the Red Violin.

But man does not live by film alone. In 1988, during a performance of Serpent Woman, Teese was spotted by Carly Simon who asked him to come to New York to play on her next album. It began a 19-year collaboration that’s borne sweet fruit most lately in Carly’s new album Into White.

Teese is all over it: brainstorming, arranging, and providing fundamental keyboards throughout. Much of the strings, percussion and all the pianos, basses (all Yamaha Motif) and kalimbas are Teese doing what he does. Since the album is elevated lullabies, you don’t hear balls-to-the-wall virtuosity. What you do hear are perfect parts, beautifully played.

In his spare moments, Teese manages to pick up little composing projects of his own like Ken Burns’ 8-part PBS documentary, The West and the indie film Nine Good Teeth. To energize his high-octane musical lifestyle Teese has studios in both his New Hampshire home and his downtown New York loft.

See what I mean about career envy?