The Man Behind the Music
San Diego local Aaron Zigman has masterminded many of your favorite cinema soundtracks
By Karen Pearlman

Marvin Zigman was not happy.

It was 1984, and his youngest child, Aaron, just a year away from a history degree at UCLA, had just broken the news to the typically upbeat Marvin and his wife, Bebe, that graduation was not forthcoming.

Bright, hard-working and always successful in school, Aaron was suddenly done with college. The Zigmans’ other offspring, Eden and Josh, didn’t go that route. Bebe and Marvin both graduated from UCLA. What’s this about a career in music? The troubling news hit Marvin hard.

“I was ready to kill him,” recalled Marvin, 73. “He’s going to leave school?! For a career in music? As far as a life in music, I was concerned about his survival.”

But call it “women’s intuition,” a bond with her baby boy, or an innate wisdom that only a fellow musician would have, Bebe Zigman understood.

A gifted piano player much of her life, Bebe knew what it meant that then 21-year-old Aaron had been invited to write, produce, arrange and orchestrate music for clients of Almo Irving, a Los Angeles-based publishing company.

“Aaron always has been passionate about what he does,” said 73-year-old Bebe, a member of the Board of Trustees for Seacrest Village Retirement Communities. “He is a perfectionist who’s always dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s.”

Fast forward 22 years to April of this year as the Zigmans were part of a La Jolla movie theater audience under the auspices of the Cinema Society of San Diego while their son answered questions about the score to one of his latest ventures, “Akeelah and the Bee.”

That private screening of “Akeelah” coupled with an earlier visit this year to the Newman Scoring Stage at 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles to watch Aaron conduct the 85-piece Hollywood Studio Symphony for the soundtrack of “Flicka,” a movie set for release this year, seems to have finally won Marvin Zigman over.

“The music for ‘Flicka’ was lush, fantastic,” he said. “We were sitting in the sound area and the music director came over and told me that (Aaron’s) music is of the quality of the very best composers that had ever come into that recording studio. He told me, ‘Your son is going to be one of the top composers.’ And the sound engineer said, when Aaron was conducting, ‘You know, there are not many people in this town that get to be on that podium.’ At that point, really for the first time, I was fully impressed with his abilities.”

Yes, Bebe and Marvin’s son has beaten huge odds in the highly competitive music world and has officially “made it.” Without the UCLA diploma.

The boy who had his Bar Mitzvah and was confirmed in downtown San Diego at Beth Israel Synagogue and who spent a few childhood summers at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu, won an Emmy last year for most original song, “Sim Shalom,” used in the Showtime feature “Crown Heights,” which blended Hebrew and gospel music.

Aaron’s resume of artists he’s either written for, produced or arranged is filled with some pop music gems: Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs and Natalie Cole. Fellow Jews Carly Simon and Adam Sandler. Sting, Phl Collins and Dionne Warwick. Even Alvin and the Chipmunks. Aaron co-wrote the chart-topping song “Crush on You” for The Jets in 1986. More recently, he has arranged and orchestrated for Seal and Christina Aguilera.

Zigman’s name appears on several movie soundtracks including 1986’s “Nothing In Common,” 1994’s “Reality Bites” and 1998’s “Mulan.”

And as is seemingly “beshert” for a nice Jewish boy, Aaron, a member of the Reconstructionist temple Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, got his main break in the industry because of his love of Judaism and concern for the state of Israel’s well-being, and because of his desire for the continued stability of the Jewish people.

In 2000, film director Nick Cassavetes heard the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony’s rendition of Aaron’s 35-minute symphonic tone poem, “Rabin,” which was Aaron’s emotional and highly personal response to the murder of Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“It was shocking to me,” said Zigman, who worked on “Rabin” for almost six months. “It was a shock that a fellow Jew could kill another Jew. I then got excited to learn everything I could about him and about Israel forming as a state, really learning about his world.”

Cassavetes was so moved by what he heart that he befriended Zigman, then hired him to do the orchestration for 2001’s riveting “John Q.,” followed by 2004’s poetic and deep 1940s period piece “The Notebook.”

And beyond working for Cassavetes, Zigman’s been focused and busy working with other filmmakers and films, orchestrating for “Alpha Dog,” “ATL” and “Take the Lead” in the past year.

Aaron began piano lessons at age 6 and while Bebe, married to Marvin for 50 years, says her son “wasn’t a prodigy,” there was good reason Aaron gave up a promising go of it on the juniors tennis circuit (where as a 12-year-old he was once ranked as high as No. 7 in California) to concentrate on music.

“At 14 or 15, I started writing lyrics and music of all styles, from jazz to classical and pop music,” said Aaron, 43, who currently resides in the Los Angeles area with his yellow Labrador retriever, Molly.

A friendship that started in his teens with fellow Point Loma High graduate Jason Scheff, a bass player and singer for the pop group Chicago, who was already in Los Angeles, helped 20-something Aaron get his feet wet in the music industry.

Aaron, who played classical music on the piano as a child, was in his early 20s when he began studying with his third cousin, George Bassman. Bassman was Benny Goodman’s arranger and wrote the scores for “Marty,” for the original version of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” and did much of the orchestration on “The Wizard of Oz.”

So with that varied background, Aaron wasn’t quite sure where his career was headed. The kid who grew up with Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder knew that working in pop music would continue to earn him a good living. But his heart was with jazz and with the likes of John McLaughlin, Weather Report and Herbie Hancock.

Even moreso, however, Zigman was driven toward classical music. He was moved by Ravel, Debussy, Beethoven, Chopin and Stravinsky.

“In my later 20s, I started wondering where I was going musically,” Aaron admits. “Then I started to get my music shifting toward classical. I began listening and studying the classical artists. I’ve always been very honest in my writing. My voice has always had an honest feel.”

Zigman, who said one of his favorite scores is from the evocative and insightful “Chinatown,” worked on in “John Q,” and so began the foray into feature film orchestration.

“I’m in a really good place with my writing, especially orchestral writing, and even though I’m too young in my career to say, ‘I want to do this’ or ‘I want to do that,’ there are other things I want to do musically,” Aaron said.

Whatever those things are, Aaron is now assured of full support from Bebe Zigman - and from Marvin Zigman too.

The Wonderful Wizard of Song A Tribute to Harold Arlen by his son Sam On June 1, 2, and 3, Los Angeles’s Ford Ampitheatre will welcome a tribute to one of the greatest songwriters in American history: Harold Arlen. Arlen, who won the 1939 Academy Award for Best Son in a Motion Picture for “Over the Rainbow,” is also the man behind such greats as “Stormy Weather,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” and “I’ve Got the World on a String.” The Jewish Boy from Buffalo who made it big will be honored with an American tour featuring his son Sam Arlen and a 12-piece orchestra. The younger Arlen is a saxophonist who attended NYC’s High School of Performing Arts and majored in music. When his father died in 1986, he set up a publishing company. S. A. Music Co., to assure the continued promotion and publishing of Harold Arlen’s music. “Nothing makes me prouder than to represent my father’s catalogue of music,” Sam Arlen has said. “I’ll always honor his work and treat his creations with the respect they deserve.” The Wonderful Wizard of Song: A Musical Journey Celebrating Harold Arlen will take place June 1, 2, and 3 at the Ford Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. For tickets or more information, log on to www.FordAmpitheatre.org or call (323) GO 1-FORD.

For feedback, contact editor@sdjewishjournal.com.