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Ever since acclaimed film director David Lynch transcended this wild, weird world on Jan. 16, 2025, Portland has been celebrating his life. Hollywood Theatre gifted us with the “In Heaven” film revival series. Clinton Street curated a visitation by Fire Walk With Me actor Ray Wise. Even the Log Lady was given documentary treatment, and an installation at the World Forestry Center.
Now, Lynch’s chief composer is next to be remembered when guest conductor Sarah Hicks returns to Portland on May 28 to guide the Oregon Symphony through a special program of smoldering, melodious, emotional music from the late Angelo Badalamenti’s rich catalog, including “Dark Spanish Symphony” from Wild at Heart, “Mysteries of Love” from Blue Velvet, and “Audrey’s Dance” from Twin Peaks.
Born in Tokyo and raised in Honolulu, Hicks is a Harvard graduate with a résumé as exhaustingly impressive as her work schedule. A specialist in film music, Hicks just conducted the Marvel Infinity Saga with the Toronto Symphony, and after her Portland event is headed to join the New York Philharmonic for a presentation of the soundtrack to The Empire Strikes Back. Later this year, she’ll wield the baton for King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s first orchestral outings.
“I’m on the road 36 weeks a year,so it’s hard to keep track of where I was and what project I was just doing,” she tells WW. “The travel is what comes with it. Like it or not, it is what it is. I’ve always been a crossover person and interested in film all my life. I like producing, I like working for Disney. It’s generally fun but it’s also super tiring. I’m tired.”
Very few in her field can earn a living simply conducting anymore. Hicks expresses gratitude for her opportunities. “I’m one of a very small percentage, so I feel lucky. So I’ll work as much as I can. That’s my attitude.”
This upcoming Badalamenti observance is not Hicks’ first foray into the American composer’s catalog. She conducted a few pieces in Denmark in 2019, then a full program in Seattle early last year. The Portland show should be nearly identical, though Hicks refers to it as “a little bit of a moving target” since pieces like “Llorando” from Mulholland Drive rely on specific guest vocalists. Kyle Machlachlan co-hosted the Seattle event, which leaned heavily on music from Twin Peaks. The Portland performance is set to include Lynch muse Chrystabell as Hicks’ co-host, who will “connect the threads and do some storytelling and put a narrative arc to the second half,” Hicks says. “It’s a little bit theatrical, what we do. It needs to be theatrical because Lynch created such a visual world in films and in Twin Peaks.”
Hicks’ expertise in soundtrack milieu gives her great insight into just what made Badalamenti so special. His work was so often sublime, subdued, brooding. “Like all great film composers.” she says, “he’s able to distill the essence of a scene or character into something really distinct. He does have a gift for melody. He does all the things that a great film composer does.”
Badalamenti was born in 1937, but his big break came when he was hired as Isabella Rossellini’s vocal coach during the shooting of Lynch’s 1986 career statement Blue Velvet. The two defined their working relationship in 1990 with the Grammy Award-winning “Twin Peaks Theme” and continued to collaborate until Badalamenti’s death in 2022.
Hicks finds the synergy of those two recently deceased artists something special. “I really like partnerships that last throughout a career lifetime” she says. “The output is really different just because of the nature of the relationship and that’s what I find really cool about Badalamenti and Lynch together co-creating those worlds. It doesn’t always happen. Neither of them would have been able to have those visions without each other. So I think that’s an incredible partnership.”
Fundamentally, Badalamenti’s understated, beatific music served Lynch’s uncompromising, violent visuals in a yin-yang fashion. As Hicks puts it, “You want to find that balance. Sometimes you need that dialog to be able to create the kind of vision that translates beyond the medium. That resonates with people.”
SEE IT: The Music of Angelo Badalamenti & Twin Peaks at Arlene Schnitzer Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, orsymphony.org. 7:30 pm Wednesday, May 28. $38–$102.