Style Chameleon
Nichagarn Chiracharasporn knew she wanted to compose for film by the time she was in tenth grade. Growing up in Bangkok, she was the kind of moviegoer who tracked the music underneath scenes the way other people tracked the actors. The composers who shaped her early imagination ranged from John Williams to Joe Hisaishi, whose work across Studio Ghibli and beyond showed her what film music could do.
She came to the United States for her undergraduate degree at Juilliard, where she trained in contemporary and concert music as well as chamber works and new music. It was a strong foundation for a composer who wants to do a bit of everything in her ultimate aspiration to become a film composer.
"You have to be a style chameleon," she said.
At The Herb Alpert School of Music, she has inhabited that idea. As a Gluck Fellow — one of a select group of musicians chosen each year to perform free educational concerts at schools, libraries and senior centers across Los Angeles County through the school long-running community program — she performs with a piano, bassoon and French horn trio, an unusual combination that gives the group freedom to curate its own repertoire. She has written original music for the ensemble herself. Her thesis piece goes in a different direction entirely: a work for four harps.
While at UCLA she taught musicianship to undergraduates and collaborated frequently with directors and animators from the School of Theater, Film & Television. She's been inspired by the aesthetically diverse faculty, especially mentors like professor David Lefkowitz, and the freedom to blur some musical lines.
After graduation, she will intern at Sparks and Shadows, the Culver City studio founded by composer Bear McCreary, whose scores for "Battlestar Galactica," "The Walking Dead" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" have made him a distinctive voice in contemporary scoring.
