Music has always been a big part of Colin Bell’s life from a very young age and remains to this day his biggest motivation and passion. It was always clear for Colin that playing, teaching, and writing music at the highest possible level was the path he wanted to follow, and that has shaped his career as an outstanding composer, arranger, music teacher, and percussionist.
His professional journey is filled with many wonderful and sometimes unexpected experiences and exciting stories, but probably the most interesting of them all has only just begun. Recently, Colin Bell has stepped into the limelight as a successful film composer and his career in the entertainment industry is about to reach new heights. So, if you want to find out how the story unfolds, we’re here to give you a sneak peek behind the scenes and share with you all the captivating details about this talented musician and his big break in film scoring.
Who is Colin Bell?
Musical talent runs deep in Colin’s family. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Scotland and came to the United States right after World War II, carrying with them a rich cultural heritage of Scottish and Celtic music. After their arrival, they started touring around the country making bagpipe bands and Scottish Highland dancing popular everywhere they went, as a way to keep their traditions alive and share their unique culture with the rest of the world. The next generation followed suit, with all of Colin’s many uncles and one aunt playing bagpipes or drums.
So, for Colin, it was never a matter of going in search of his passion, as the passion for music found him instead and was part of his everyday life for as far as he can remember. Their family band was on tour regularly, often traveling to Scotland, and Colin was taking in all these experiences as a child. In fact, he was only two weeks old when he attended his first Scottish music festival in Montreal, and many other similar experiences followed after that.
At the age of five, Colin was already playing drums, just like his father. His talents were also noted at school where he got into the school band, doing drumline, marching band, and drum corps. He later decided to take his passion further and enhance his talent with formal education, so he started studying music education at Kean University, all while touring with a drum and bugle corps called the Boston Crusaders and playing gigs. After getting his degree, he went on to launch a freelance career as a composer and music arranger.
Don’t Look Down – a turning point in Colin’s career
One event that changed Colin’s life and professional trajectory came when he was offered the opportunity to work with actress and musician Janina Gavankar. Gavankar is a trained pianist, vocalist, orchestral percussionist, and actress, best known for her roles in The League, True Blood, The L Word, and The Mysteries of Laura. She wanted to do a rendition of a Martin Garrix and Usher song called Don’t Look Down, and Colin was quick to accept the offer.
The project required a massive amount of work, as they were on a very tight schedule. Colin wrote the entire piece in one night, and four weeks of concentrated work and several 18-hour recording sessions later, the music video was ready to hit the screens.
However, this was not the only time Colin and Gavankar would put their creative minds together. A couple of months later, Colin and Janina got back in the studio to arrange a piece of music that she was going to perform with drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The collaboration saw the three artists playing together on stage at Carnegie Hall.
Working with director Khoa Le on his latest film project Bezos
Colin’s collaboration with director Khoa Le for the much-awaited Bezos biopic put him on the map as a gifted film composer. The movie, based on the book Zero to Hero, covers the early years of Jeff Bezos starting Amazon, and Colin had the amazing opportunity to work alongside visionary director Khoa Le and create the musical score that accompanies the film.
It all started when Colin met Le at an event that the filmmaker was hosting. The two talked for a while and exchanged cards. A few months later, when Khoa was looking for a composer for his movie, he asked Colin if he would be interested in the project, and that’s how he became involved in his first film scoring project.
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Here’s what director Khoa Le had to say about the experience of working with Colin Bell – how he first met him, what he thought about him, and what he liked about working with him.
I met Colin at one of my mixer events, and there was something about him that I liked. I liked his personality and his approach to how he thinks, and there were a lot of commonalities. So, after I made the movie, he reached out to me at the right time when we were looking for a composer. For me, it’s out of sight, out of mind and he put himself in my sight. I remembered him and then I went to his website, I heard his music and thought he was incredibly talented. As a musician myself, I know who’s talented and who’s not, and he was extremely talented. I didn’t have to read anything about him, I just knew that he knew his stuff. So, I asked him if he was interested, took him to the producers, they liked his stuff, and then he was hired for the job.
One of the things that I was looking for in any composer is whether I can connect with them and whether they are easy to work with. And he’s absolutely that. During the process, he came to the studio multiple times to talk to me. He didn’t want to do anything virtually. I don’t think we ever did a virtual event, we just did a phone call, but he would come into the studio, and he would write down everything, every note from me, on what I might be looking for, what I don’t know and then he would help fill those voids. And he’s extremely thorough around trying to get the vision across.
So, during that process, he was given a very short amount of time to make this work, I think it was four weeks. That’s not a lot at all, it’s massive stress. I think he likes to work under pressure though, he pulled it off under pressure. And because he was under pressure, I was also giving him a lot of feedback. I mean, the first drafts were ok, good, but we were not there yet. So, I would give him feedback, he would follow up and say “explain to me more, what you think” and so on. I would do my best to explain, and he would give me another version, and another version, and then once we were done, he was on to the next scene. He would do the same sort of process, scene after scene, fully patient, never out of his character, keeping his composure, while still trying to reach a deadline.
I can tell you that’s one of the hardest things to find. Finding the most talented person might not always be the answer either. Finding a person that you can work with is more important than talent in my opinion. But the fact that he’s actually really talented and he’s easy to work with was a blessing. And I had met him by him making an investment of his time, of his energy, to meet with people that he didn’t know, and look for an opportunity that he didn’t know would ever come to fruition for him. And here we are, he’s the composer of the Bezos movie, he got to work with me closely, and I think he’s on the cusp of blowing up and getting deals after the movie, as he keeps up with everything.
Bezos will hit the screens soon, so stay tuned if you want to check out this amazing collaboration between Colin Bell and Khoa Le.
