Mark Isham

Mark Isham (born in New York in 1951) began his jazz career in Scandinavia as a trumpeter in Art Lande’s quartet. He then accompanied Van Morrison on five albums.

Group 87 was formed in 1978 by Peter Maunu (guitar and violin), Mark Isham (keyboards and horns), Patrick O’Hearn (bass and synthesizer), and Terry Bozzio (percussion), all very young musicians (Isham, the oldest, was twenty; O’Hearn and Bozzio made up the rhythm section of Frank Zappa).
The occasion is purely one of fun. The trio takes a break from their bold and demanding solo projects and plunges, without inhibition, into pop with almost hard-rock sonorities in Sublime Feline and One Night Away From Day, “songs” in which electronics can blossom into symphonic anthems. The strongest influence seems to be the jester-like bandmanship of Frank Zappa (especially in Moving Sidewalks).
Magnificent Clockworks (Isham) is in fact a project not very different from that of Peter Gordon’s contemporary Love Of Life Orchestra: erecting a melodic fantasy (in this case led by the synthesizer) on solid, dance-oriented rhythmic foundations (a funky guitar and a drum machine at full volume). The trick lies in keeping the melody in continuous, overwhelming transformation and closing with a thunderous apotheosis.
O’Hearn, on the other hand, represents the quiet, meditative side, with his Frontiers cradled in hypnotic bass and guitar chords against a background of impalpable electronic swirls. And Maunu is the philosopher of the group. His compositions foreshadow an apocalyptic future for humanity, torn between primordial instincts and futuristic aberrations. Future Of The City begins like a funeral fanfare before a sudden rhythmic surge transforms it into an electronic symphony. Bedouin is a mournful psalm with an obsessive cadence, and perhaps, in conveying the meaning of desert nomads’ lives, Maunu proposes an allegory for human destiny.
The second album is essentially a duo by Isham and Maunu with the help of an outside percussionist. The style has crystallized into an instrumental jazz-rock that is catchy and danceable, omitting the happy digressions of the previous album. The sounds of Pleasure In Progress are, however, a bit too frenetic and aggressive, and the trumpet refrain in The Apple Bites Back is almost too strident. The only track also credited to O’Hearn is the title track, marked by a funk that is slightly more atmospheric and a melody that is slightly more enveloping. Maunu’s mysterious and dramatic tones prevail in the most evocative pieces: the tribal and playful Postcard From The Volcano, the sensual and baroque Angels And Obelisks, and that imitation of film-score music that is The Death Of Captain Nemo.

In 1983 Isham recorded Vapor Drawings, accompanied only by a percussionist and by himself on synthesizer. Many Chinas and In The Blue Distance are hypnotic, hallucinatory jazz-rock pieces in which the trumpet moans slowly and solemnly—bored in the former and funereal in the latter. In Sympathy And Acknowledgement Isham also tries his hand at the minimalism of Steve Reich. The martial and pompous crescendo of On The Threshold Of Liberty speaks a blasphemous language, as if Carla Bley were playing Ravel’s bolero; Raffles In Rio adapts minimalism to samba (or vice versa); in Men Before The Mirror tragic and menacing orchestral melodies repeat cyclically. The program verges on the farcical when Isham intones the Nippo-Caribbean fanfare of Mr Moto’s Penguin. Minimalism and free jazz are thus reworked to expand their vocabulary, especially toward the sounds of the Third World.

Since those early beginnings Isham’s music was hazy and dreamlike, made of ethereal swirls, mannerist echoes, minimalist nightmares, hallucinatory crescendos, and Morricone-like marches.

Suddenly, however, Isham embraced the contemplative atmospheres of new age music and became a specialist in theatrical and film soundtracks: the environmental watercolors of Never Cry Wolf (1983), taken from his first soundtrack; the chamber minimalism of Mrs Soffel (1984); the electronic fanfares of Times Of Harvey Milk (1985), another soundtrack.

For the soundtrack of The Moderns he turned to the sophisticated jazz of the 1920s and 1930s.

In Castalia his style is refined into an atmospheric cool jazz descending from film-noir soundtracks, but updated with the jazz-rock of Weather Report (A Meeting With The Parabolist), the world music of David Sylvian (Grand Parade), the nocturnal blues of Miles Davis (A Dream Of Three Acrobats), and the solemn marches of Morricone (Gracious Core).

The logical consequence of this turn toward world music is the two suites that make up the soundtrack of Beast: Badal (opened by an Arabic lament, ripped apart by a maniacal riff, lulled by a Hassell-like trumpet over swampy rhythms, submerged by jungle noises and swallowed by arcane rites with a nostalgic Miles Davis–style trumpet) and Nanawatai (a Jon Hassell–like delirium over floating vocalizations, followed by a metronomic nightmare with Oriental cadences).

This new direction culminates in the ambitious, monumental five-movement symphony of Tibet, orchestrated for a rich chamber ensemble (including Bill Douglas on flute, and Peter Maunu and David Torn on guitars).
However manneristic and redundant, this work distills the most crystalline and introspective sounds of his career, absorbing Tibetan inspirations ranging from the proverbial bells to liturgical chants, and blending the most disparate instrumental timbres into an elegant and homogeneous flow of tonal music. The most immediate atmospheres are perhaps those of the fourth movement, where the jazz-rock preciosity of his trumpet is wedded to a metaphysical suspense, while the movements that best convey the suggestion of Tibetan ceremonial rituals are the first and the last (precisely those in which Isham is most absent).

The self-titled album of 1990, instead, opens unexpectedly to singing. Assisted by David Torn (masterful in the grand finale of Turkish Delight), Isham turns into a poor man’s Miles Davis (the magical atmospheres of Ashes And Diamonds and Toward The Infinite White) or into a rich man’s Chuck Mangione (the sentimental ballads Marionnette and Honeymoon Nights).

Songs My Children Taught Me collects four instrumental suites (composed in different years as part of a children’s series) that musically comment on four famous fairy tales: Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Emperor And The Nightingale, Thumbelina, The Emperor's New Clothes. The average duration is around eighteen minutes, giving Isham plenty of time to showcase his classically hypnotic qualities.

The following year, Isham became famous thanks to the soundtrack for *A River Runs Through It* (a kind of Celtic suite), which went on to receive all sorts of awards. Among his other soundtracks are *Mrs Parker And The Vicious Circle* (early-century jazz), *The Public Eye* (1940s big band), *Quiz Show* (Count Basie style), *Home For The Holidays* (Modern Jazz Quartet style), and *Romeo Is Bleeding* (avant-garde improvisation). Even in live performances, Isham tackles jazz with this propensity for total identification, targeting a famous style from the past each time. It is therefore unsurprising that Blue Sun is a jazz quintet album dedicated to the legendary Kind Of Blue by Miles Davis.

Five Stories for Trumpet and Orchestra (1992) was his first classical composition.

Isham is the natural link between jazz-rock, minimalism, and world-fusion, a master at using elements from all musical cultures to build refined and sinister atmospheres. With his pan-ethnic electronic fantasies, he has positioned himself as the Ry Cooder of underground cinema (particularly for the films of Alan Rudolph).

Isham's soundtrack-scoring career picked up speed through Alan Rudolph's Trouble In Mind (1985) and The Moderns (1988), Reversal Of Fortune, Billy Bathgate, Nell (1994), Education of Little Tree (1998), Afterglow (1998), and eventually led to high-profile engagements such as October Sky (1999) and Crash (2005).

Bittersweet (2009) documents a collaboration with Australian pop star Kate Ceberano.

He kept wasting his talent in Hollywood soundtracks: Running Scared (2006), The Black Dahlia (2006), The Mist (2008), The Crazies (2010), The Conspirator (2011), Warrior (2011), The Accountant (2016), Soul on Fire (2025).