Kris Bowers' parents hoped that he would be born loving music, so much so that they played it for him when he was still in the womb. At the age of 4, he was taking piano lessons, and by the time he was 10, he was studying classical music. "Looking back, music and the piano specifically was an emotional vehicle for me," Bowers says.
"I was a very shy, introverted kid who didn't feel like I had many spaces to express emotions, especially as a young Black boy," he reflects. "I remember it became this secret between me and my instrument, that I was expressing this very specific thought and feeling. And I think I was drawn to film scoring as a job where you can translate this emotional experience through music."
Bowers was 12 when he decided to become a composer. "When I was a kid, my hero was John Williams," he says. He graduated from The Juilliard School with a bachelor's in 2010 and then a master's in 2012 in Jazz Studies. He composed his first feature score for 2016's Little Boxes. In the years since, Bowers has been the composer on such Oscar-winning films as Green Book (2018) and King Richard (2021).
Bowers earned his own Oscar nomination for the 2020 short film, A Concerto Is a Conversation, which he co-directed with Ben Proudfoot. The filmmakers reteamed for the short film, The Last Repair Shop, about the importance of music in public schools. The Last Repair Shop won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film at the 96th Oscars.
"I'm excited to blur the line between expression visually and sonically in how I can tell story," he says. "For me, my unique way of doing that would be making sure that music, and musicality, and sound has a huge through-line through every component of the storytelling. That's what I'm most excited to explore as a filmmaker."
Below, Bowers shares with A.frame five of his favorite films.
Directed by: Steven Spielberg | Music by: John Williams
Going back to my childhood, E.T. is probably my favorite John Williams score of all time, and it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I was probably eight when I saw it for the first time, because I remember watching it and then also going to ride the ride at Universal Studios. It was so interesting how that movie had a big impact on my childhood, and then it wasn't until I got older that I realized that it came out much earlier than when I was born.
I met John Williams briefly at the Hollywood Bowl, actually. Kobe Bryant introduced us. That's a pretty wild experience. It was a very brief meeting. We went backstage and I talked to him for maybe 10 minutes and took a picture, but it was pretty awesome.
Directed by: John Cassavetes | Music by: Bo Harwood
My dad's favorite movies were from this era of big, really commercial Hollywood movies, so that's what we grew up watching. Then when I became a young adult and went to college, I really got into indie films and obscure older films and stuff like that. I remember watching A Woman Under the Influence in particular and being so arrested by this brutally honest depiction of a family, and a couple going through this unimaginably difficult experience. It did not end on this happy note, but ended in the way that life does, where you're left still trying to figure out how to navigate the situation. So, that really opened my eyes to that style of filmmaking.
Directed by: Ingmar Bergman | Music by: Lars Johan Werle
Around that same time, I got deep into Ingmar Bergman. I remember watching Persona and it reminded me of the first time I listened to really modern jazz, where I didn't know why I felt emotionally moved by it, but there was something about it that made me feel deeply moved. The older I get and the more that I learn, the more that I'm blown away by that film and a lot of the subtext and the things that it's saying. But just filmmaking-wise, it's so stunning to look at.
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola | Music by: Nino Rota
It's really cliché, but The Godfather is definitely one of my favorite movies. I was 17 when I saw it for the first time. It was another movie that I watched by myself, and it almost felt like I was indoctrinated into this club. It wasn't something that my dad shared with me, or some older male figure, but I definitely remember watching it and feeling like, 'Oh, I get it now. Now I understand why so many people have this relationship with this film.'
Directed by: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert | Music by: Son Lux
Everything Everywhere All at Once is more recent but that's up there now. That was an amazing movie to experience. The way it toed the line of absurdity with really deep emotion was just really, really well done.
