From his home outside Tumalo, with a panoramic view of snowcapped mountain peaks, composer Dave Metzger, arranger and orchestrator of multiple Grammy-winning projects, quietly writes music that connects viewers to a film.
“Sometimes I will play a scene where there’s no music at all for people and then play that scene with music and people’s jaws drop; they haven’t thought about how much of an impact the music has,” said Metzger. He has worked with Disney for 25 years, and his film credits include “Frozen,” “Moana,” and most recently 2024’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” for which he composed all 100 minutes of the film’s score.
The score signals to viewers how to feel: happy, sad, concerned or hopeful. It swells or ebbs during the most impactful moments of a movie and is a big reason why those scenes stick with cinema-goers long after they’ve left the theater.
Originally from Corvallis, Metzger began writing music when he took a choir class at the age of 12. After he saw the first “Star Wars” movie at 16, he dreamed of becoming a film composer. He took music theory classes in college and eventually moved to Los Angeles. However, when he moved back to Oregon with his family in the mid-90s, his career started to thrive.
“Southern California never felt like home to me,” said Metzger. “As soon as we moved back to Oregon, I just felt so much more creative again.”
World Class Studio in Tumalo
After living in Salem for many years, Metzger and his wife, a retired physician, moved to Bend full time in 2021. The region’s mountain views and hikes continue to be constant sources of inspiration. His home studio is a world-class facility, designed by renowned audio and acoustical engineer George Augspurger. The sound diffuser, panels of wood cut at different dimensions and depths, looks like a work of art, but it has the essential purpose of breaking up sound.
In the studio, Metzger is surrounded by instruments, including a 1965 vintage Fender bass guitar he has had since he was 17 years old and an octave mandolin he used for composing the score for Disney’s “Wish,” Metzger’s first lead composer credit. To begin the creative process, Metzger receives “prints,” or 10-minute clips, from the films he’s working on. He watches the scenes several times to get a feel for the tempo. Then Metzger writes a piano guide track in a sequencing program called Cubase that helps him decipher key themes. Like a puzzle, he decides where to place the themes and fill in the rest. When the director has approved of the segment, Metzger travels to Los Angeles or London to record the music with musicians.
“Musicians are expensive, so they sight-read everything. There’s no rehearsal or anything. It’s wild,” said Metzger.
From “The Lion King” on Broadway to “Mufasa”
Metzger’s path to “Mufasa” began decades ago. His first “big break,” as he calls it, was the opportunity to write music for the 1997 action film “Speed 2: Cruise Control.” That’s where he met Mark Mancina, music producer for the Broadway version of “The Lion King.” Metzger orchestrated the musical, making sure the music was adapted for a live theater setting.
When the President of Disney Music, Tom MacDougall, was looking for a composer for “Mufasa,” he knew Metzger would understand how to tie in original themes and create something new. In addition to using some of Hans Zimmer’s music from “The Lion King” movie and writing new material, Metzger helped save the villain track “Bye, Bye,” from the cutting room floor. In one night, Metzger, also a song arranger, used elements from his score, such as the clack of sticks on the rim of a taiko drum and menacing violins to integrate the song into the film more and recall the character Scar’s “Be Prepared.”
Metzger has also arranged some of the most well-known songs in the Disney universe, such as “Let it Go” from “Frozen.”
“I’m proud that on films like ‘Moana’ and ‘Frozen,’ I had an impact on how the songs turned out. The piano part is all there is when I do the song arranging, so everything else you hear is what I bring to it,” he said.
Despite working with people such as Lin Manuel-Miranda, who Metzger says is just as charismatic and kind as he appear, much of his work for years was as an additional composer or ghostwriter. In those roles, he wasn’t necessarily front and center, but that all changed when he got the call to be the composer for the 2023 movie, “Wish.”
“It was like a dream fulfilled, you know, and this movie ‘Mufasa’ was icing on the cake,” he said.