excerpted
from arts section of 3/22/04 issue of
Born in Northern Arizona, brought up in both Yarmouth, Nova
Scotia and Tucson, Arizona, people ask Haddon if he was raised
in a military family. "No, they're just psychologists"
he says with a grin. "Even so, many wars were fought."
Haddon
is now at home in the local theater and indie film scene,
where he does both sound design and musical composition.
I met Haddon at his home studio. Inside it, furniture connects
to sound equipment like puzzle pieces. Seated at his keyboard,
surrounded by buttons and controls, it felt like a spaceship
cockpit. I squeezed into a chair behind him, a co-pilot on
this journey through music and sound. We stare ahead at the
image of Katie, Haddon's wife, lying in the grass laughing,
the huge screensaver drawing us in like a portal to another
world.
H addon approaches musical composition always from a dramatic
standpoint rather than a musical one. He feels that music
is critical to setting a scene and conveying emotion. he describes
a new play he's writing music for, a historical drama depicting
a infamous american trial and it's resulting miscarriage of
justice. "I envision a steady, rhythmic pulse as the
heartbeat of the society that puts this man on trial"
he says. "Over the course of the show this heartbeat
will devolve into chaos, as all the pieces of the puzzle come
apart" despite the importance of music in a show importance,
he adds, "...the score must not step on the dialogue
or do anything to detract from the story. rather, it should
come and go like a ghost."
Haddon starting picking away at the piano in his Nova Scotia
living room at age five. Later that year he wrote his first
song. At age 17, he released his self-titled cd, Haddon
S. Kime. according to a review on cdbaby.com, the cd is
"piano and keyboard based-electrifying piano pop glittering
with the elements of rock, folk and country blues."
"I don't know who wrote that," he said, somewhat
embarrassed. "I was a tad more full of myself then, and
just tried to make each song vastly different. "Hey look
everyone, I can do this, and this, and this... I suppose I
still do that in some ways, though i'd never reveal it to
the press."
I n the end, Haddon possesses an uncanny ability to conceptualize
objects musically. Itested him, and asked him to musically
describe one of his least favorite things. "that would
either be our current president, or antique wooden furniture"
he says. "how about our current president sitting on
a creeky ornate antique chair!." With that, he turns
to his keyboard and plays an impromptu piece at once tragic,
imposing and suffocatingly rich. More than enough to make
me confident that he could write
a score for anything, tangible or otherwise: love, the upcoming
presidential election, maybe even peanut butter.
- Angela Dombrowski
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