Interview with Joe Twist

Joe Twist has received wide acclaim for his music for film and television including the successful animated series Bluey, as well as arrangements and orchestrations for many major motion pictures produced in Hollywood.

In June 2023 Victorian Opera presents a new production of his 2015 commissioned work The Grumpiest Boy in the World at Arts Centre Melbourne. Content producer Evan Lawson sat down with Joe Twist in the lead-up to this new family-friendly production.

Tell us about your involvement with Victorian Opera

Victorian Opera reached out to me back in 2014 to collaborate with playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer, and we adapted his delightful children’s play The Grumpiest Boy in the World into a new children’s opera. It was an immense delight to work with Finegan, Victorian Opera’s staff, singers and director Cameron Menzies on the original production which picked up a Helpmann Award. I’m so excited that the show is getting another run.

What are some of your favourite operas or musicals?

I remember the moment I heard Sondheim’s Into The Woods – I was transfixed. There was something so colourful and expressive yet so clear and direct about the way text, music and story intertwined and unfolded. I find the same qualities in Benjamin Britten’s operas like The Turn of the Screw and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (all his incredible operas actually!). I‘ve often also indulged in the outrageous comedy in Kombat Opera’s Jerry Springer The Opera and their other reality-TV-parodies which they’ve juxtaposed delightfully with operatic singing. It might not be obvious at first, but the music Richard Thomas writes for those shows is actually delightfully sophisticated!

How did you first get into composing music? 

I’m actually a huge film score nerd, and I feel like there are technical and stylistic connections between operatic writing and Hollywood film scores.  Star Wars is really an opera with no words, in my opinion. I was brought up with this music on TV and VHS and I’m fascinated by the ‘background’ narrative provided by an orchestra in film. I wanted to learn all about it and make up my own and tell my own stories. As I grew up I also became a huge choir nerd and have spent decades singing in all kinds of choirs. Opera is one of my favourite genres to write for, because it is sort of a marriage of all my other musical interests, and ultimately it is one of the most profound expressions of what I’m particularly interested in: story telling through music.

You’re taking your friend to the opera for the first time. What opera do you take them to and why? 

Depending on the friend, I’m inclined to suggest something that might not feel too unfamiliar for most listeners such as a work by Sondheim; whose works have been adapted into blockbuster films after all. But I actually think that attitude underestimates audiences and does a disservice to the artform overall. Surely a performance of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten will always be a spectacle, so I’d love for that to be someone’s first. Alternatively, there are so many stunning productions of early opera out there, and I have every faith that an expressive performance of Handel or Purcell can move audiences of all backgrounds. I think it’s worth taking a risk and never patronising or underestimating wider audiences.

What is your favourite snack to have during an interval of an opera?

Do they have choc tops at the opera? If not that should totally be a thing 😋

The Grumpiest Boy in the World plays 23 – 24 June at the Playhouse at Arts Centre Melbourne.

By Evan Lawson.