Marcus Norris On Infusing Ghostly Elements to 1960s Baltimore for His Score of ‘Lady in the Lake’

I have not been able to shake Alma Har’el’s Lady in the Lake since I tore through the screeners. There is something recognizable intertwined with something sinister and forbidden as we watch two women from two seemingly opposite worlds inch closer to one another. Dr. Marcus Norris’ score knocks the wind out of us as we try to get our bearings and grapple with the truth. There are moments of dazzling, mournful beauty and others that feel like we are being doused in ice water.

Norris’ score really complements the stellar music supervision of Lady in the Lake. While we recognize songs by Peggy Lee or Louis Armstrong, his score taps into something personal for the characters played by Moses Ingram and Natalie Portman. Baltimore in 1966 is a very specific time in history, and Norris leaned into the spirit of the artists of the time.

“I will admit that I don’t have as much experience with Baltimore directly,” Norris says. “I didn’t spend the time out there that Alma [Har’el] did and I came in on post-production. Alma talked a lot about these black women musicians and this being a love letter to them. Nina Simone was a huge influence that we share. When I think late ’60s music, I think a lot about Motown, and I am from that area. These are my gods, you know? I work in a lot of different mediums and genres and people always ask me what my favorite is, and I always joke that it’s Black folks in a room. That covers Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Nina Simone, and Aretha Franklin. I tried to lean into the notion of ‘how did they make music?’ What was the spirit behind what they wanted to tell?”

Har’el’s series is impeccably balanced, and the score never sacrifices the emotional intelligence when the story slides into horror. With its strong strings assault, “My Idols Are Dead (featuring Jackson Symphony Orchestra) feels so inspired by Hitchcockian glamour and terror that you might find yourself looking for a terrified Janet Leigh in the background. It avoids this because the storytelling never loses its humanity, and, by extension, neither does the music.

“For me, it was about never letting the music be emotionally simple,” he says. “I never wanted the score to tell you how to feel. It might be about taking a piece of music that is familiar to you but then making it a little weird and creeping it up a bit. Sometimes it’s about not giving you a foundation to stand on and making you really, really want it. In some of the more surreal moments where it’s like the first path we can give you a firm foundation of music, but then I wondered what it would be like to take that bottom out from under you. Sometimes the audience is asking us subconsciously to tell them that it’s okay or tell me that these characters are doing the right thing. I didn’t want to do that–you have to unpack all of these feelings for yourself. Alma really encouraged me to take big swings to make some weird stuff. I was down for making people uncomfortable.”

The main title theme is a perfect encapsulation of how Norris’ work twists our expectations, but I love this title sequence for how the aural and musical elements layer on top of one another. The whistling almost becomes unnerving as the humming marries with it. The highest pitch of that whistling takes us to the bring of insanity, before it lowers itself back into reality. It prickles our sense and keeps us locked into how the story will unfold.

“I had the benefit of coming to this late, and I saw the rough drafts of the entire series before I started working,” Norris says. “I knew that these stories seem disparate, but I knew they were tied together. I wanted the theme to reflect that and have these weird elements that you feel like shouldn’t go together. There is humming, virtuoso violin, whistling, claps and then big brass and trumpet. Those don’t go together on paper, but I wanted to make something cool. Some of the sinister nature of it musically comes from the whistling starting off-key, and then it goes in and out of harmony. In both of the chords, it’s not in the harmony for half, and it makes you wonder if it’s right? It’s sometimes off but sometimes on. I tried to incorporate a lot of human elements like body percussion, clapping, and whistling to highlight the humanity of this off-kilter story.”

One of my favorite tracks on the Lady of the Lake soundtrack is “I Don’t Want Your Love, Mvmt II (featuring USC Faculty Chamber Ensemble,” and Norris reveals how that particular track came from a personal place. There is a tremendous moment when the piano gives way to an alarming string section. It’s stunning.

“That was actually a piece commissioned by the University of South Carolina from 2020 or 2021 where the prompt was to respond to those times,” he says thoughtfully. “I wrote a piece called “I Don’t Want Your Love” after the death of George Floyd and we were seeing people in the government kneeling or people wearing Kente cloths and things like McDonald’s Black Lives Matter. I’m half-joking, but I mean there was a lot of corporate pandering that was happening at the time without the efforts to help in the communities. That piece was my response to that with this two movement chamber piece for piano, upright bass, cello, and violin. Alma loved the piece, and it was one of my classical pieces that ended up being in the show. I thought it fit amazingly into the score and what we were doing, and it felt like a part of that.”

Fans of Har’el’s style might want to take closer consideration to how the end credits are listed on the series’ soundtrack. Instead of having a larger orchestral piece repeat at the end of every episode, Norris separates the musical elements before letting them come together for the finale. It’s a testament to how every section can stand on its own but then can come together like pieces in a mysterious puzzle.

“What I ended up doing was setting up a portable editing studio in the editing suite for Alma and I to work,” Norris says. “One day during lunch, I must’ve finished early, and I was playing the piano. Alma told me that she thought that it was the end credits. I kind of worked in the half-step theme from the titles, and I thought each end credits could be its own solo instrument but then, at the end, they would fit together without telling anyone. The final credits is everything put together but then I added in some of the thematic elements like more of the whistling and some of the themes that happened throughout. It tied into one of the main things that this story had for me which was that it feels like these two worlds are very, very separate, but, by the end, they’re not. I wanted the music to feel like that as well.”

Lady in the Lake airs its finale on August 23rd on Apple TV+. You can listen to Dr. Norris’ score on Spotify.