Ahsoka Composers The Kiners Discuss Collaboration With Dave Filoni, Revisiting Past Star Wars Themes, and a Funny George Lucas Anecdote

SWNN Probe · Oct 2, 2023

One of the most pleasant announcements to come out of Star Wars Celebration this year was the confirmation that Kevin Kiner, longtime composer of Star Wars animation, would be making the jump to live-action to write the music of Ahsoka. Kiner brought along his two children, Deana and Sean Kiner, who have been collaborating with him for 10 years (Kevin is credited with 'Music by' while Deana and Sean appear as 'Additional music by'). It's been their work on new and variations of old themes has been one of the biggest standouts of the entire show.

The trio was recently interviewed by ScreenRant about their process, particularly when it came to bringing in previous character themes but used in a whole new light. What follows are some of the highlights from the 30-minute conversation, which you can check out in full at that link. The Kiners revealed that they were over the moon about inserting in their favorite character themes in key moments of the show, while showrunner Dave Filoni was constantly holding them back and asking them to play with the emotions:

Deana Kiner: 'It really comes from great guidance from Dave Filoni, who was really helpful in giving us that insight of when we would use somebody's theme. He would be like, 'No, this isn't the time or place for this; they're in a different spot. You need to understand they’re on a different part of their journey; they're not the same person that they were 11 years ago. Their environment is different. Their emotions are different. They're going through a different thing.' It was really helpful to have that, because we would definitely fall into that.'

Kevin Kiner: 'He had to de-geek us. We’re like, 'Let’s do Sabine’s theme!' and he's like, 'No, not right now. Play her emotions; that's your job.' Then, we're like, 'Oh, yeah. I've only been doing this for 40 years; I should know that.' But we're so geeked out about using the themes.'
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(L-R): Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm's STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Kevin Kiner also talked about the indispensable input that his two children brought to Ahsoka -- the now-iconic end-credits theme was actually born out of an idea they had for a variation of the Ahsoka theme, as the composer explained:

Kevin Kiner: 'A perfect example of [progressing the music] is what these two did with my Ahsoka theme. That has its roots in Tales of the Jedi, where we did the birth of Ahsoka episode, and then the three episodes about Ahsoka. They came up with a variation of the Ahsoka theme which is now the beginning of the end credits of Ahsoka. It’s a variation of what was in Tales of the Jedi, but it's taking that melody… and we do just play the melody later on in the end credits, but at the beginning, it's a variation of that theme, and it's a new take. It has this groove in it, which we call a Ronin groove. It's a Ronin motif.'
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A big introduction to the show music-wise was the song “Igyah Kuh”, which plays over Sabine's introduction in Part One. The trio was very excited about playing around with the idea of Earth-y music in the Star Wars galaxy:

Deana Kiner: 'For such a long time, we really focused on making sure that those kinds of source music or cantina songs sounded as alien as possible--very unusual, very different. I think it's really nice to have gotten to a place where it's just like, 'Oh, we can just make, like—

Kevin Kiner: --straight-up punk, or straight-up rock.'

Deana Kiner: Yeah. It's fantasy. We can play with it and explore, and that was a big part of it. Initially, with that piece, we approached it with a very like, 'This needs to sound alien. This needs to sound unusual and different,' [mentality]. Then we realized, 'Oh, we just need to kind of make this a banger.''
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(Center, L-R): Baylan Skoll (Ray Stevenson) and Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) with Peridea bandits and howlers in Lucasfilm's STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Kevin Kiner then went on to tell a story about one of his first meetings with George Lucas, one he says he's told several times before, but that we'll repeat here for those unfamiliar with it (like myself):

Sean Kiner: 'That being said, George Lucas is the consummate experimenter, so I’m sure he would have been open to it.'

Kevin Kiner: 'I mean, he threw a CD of hip-hop stuff at me in my first meeting with him. Maybe it was the second meeting with him, I don’t know; it was 2006 or 2007. I’ve told the story a number of times: he wanted to get that into Clone Wars. There were, like, eight people in the room, and they’re like, 'This is a terrible idea. Don’t—' George walks into the room, and everybody’s dead silent, so it was on me to tell George this is a bad idea. But that’s just how he was.

I had to do what he said, so I did it, but I also had something in my hip pocket that kind of had a combination of some of those hip-hop sounds and rhythms but had the orchestra in it. I had to play him, first, the one that he asked for. It was a weird situation [because you don’t want to] do something that's a bad idea and get yourself fired, but the boss asked you to do this bad idea. I say bad idea, but he just loved to experiment.'
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They also discussed writing music for Grand Admiral Thrawn, whose theme in Star Wars: Rebels, and now Ahsoka, was written for an organ (a Dave Filoni idea, as they noted). Thrawn's introduction in the sixth episode was one of those scenes in which they really wanted to go big with the character's theme, but they ultimately realized it didn't quite fit:

Deana Kiner: 'We were like, 'Thrawn’s theme. Let’s go.''

Kevin Kiner: 'With the organ…'

Deana Kiner: '[We were doing] all the arpeggiations and everything, every aspect of it, and having it develop with the scene. But then as we went over it with Dave, he was like, 'This piece is playing the music. We need to be focused on the moment and the scene.''

Sean Kiner: 'And the point of the scene is not the music.'

Deana Kiner: 'Exactly. So, when we came back to the drawing board, we were like, 'Especially since so many people have not met this person, we need to tell you, 'This is a really dangerous, bad guy'. We need to add weight to it. We need to inject fear into just hearing that one note.' That's how we kind of developed [it]. We started to distort the organ; we found different ways to make it way more atmospheric to match the presence of his ship and make you feel the presence of this destroyer.'
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(L-R): Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen) and Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) in Lucasfilm's STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

The Kiners were also asked about the biggest differences between composing for a live-action show versus an animated series, to which they gave a simple answer: this time, they were given a live orchestra. It was actually Sean Kiner who discussed the joy that was working with them:

Sean Kiner: 'They would come up to us after the recording and just talk about the music, and we developed a relationship with not only the people, but also the people's abilities, and we got to know what their strengths were. It inspired us to write for them in subsequent episodes. We hadn't written the whole season when the first episode was recorded, and so then, we were like, 'I really want to write something for the lead viola player,' or, 'I want to really write something for the concertmaster.' That was a really neat dynamic, and that was very different in the show as opposed to the animated stuff.'
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You may find the full interview with Kevin, Deana, and Sean Kiner on ScreenRant. The final episode of Ahsoka airs on Tuesday evening, and Sean and Deana's Twitter account is already buzzing with excitement:

https://twitter.com/KinerMusic/status/1708915343786389890

Check back on Wednesday morning for our review of Part Eight and stay tuned for SWNN Live! coming on Thursday night!

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Ahsoka Composers The Kiners Discuss Collaboration With Dave Filoni, Revisiting Past Star Wars Themes, and a Funny George Lucas Anecdote

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Ahsoka Composers The Kiners Discuss Collaboration With Dave Filoni, Revisiting Past Star Wars Themes, and a Funny George Lucas Anecdote

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Review - Star Wars: Insider #225 - A Look Back at the Launch of The Phantom Menace, Ahsoka Series Companion, Interview with John Jackson Miller and Mo

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