Manafonistas

“David Torn’s music has always tilted toward the atmospheric, and in the 1990s he started creating film soundtracks. He played on the scores to “The Big Lebowski,” “Traffic” and “A Knight’s Tale,” among others, before starting to compose entire soundtracks himself in the 2000s. It was during this period that he suffered a life-changing brain injury, and lost the ability to hear in one ear. It was a great hardship, but Mr. Torn treated it as just another part of life’s ongoing improvisation.“

 

“Life is a continuum in most ways, so an interrupter can be a part of the continuum,” he said, explaining that he had to relearn how to listen to music. “I think my great love of distortion became very fine-tuned.”