In the film, Sebastian wants to preserve classic jazz music, but he is approached by a friend of his who plays in a band that modifies the sound to appeal to future generations.

Did this concept of old versus new influence your compositions in any way?

The score of La La Land isn’t really jazz—it’s a dramatic underscore, so my job was to score the picture in a way that emotionally reflected the scenes. I didn’t have any particular genre or piece of music in mind when writing the score. I was just trying to write music that I thought was emotional and full of color and texture that worked with the cinematography and the performances. When I did write jazz music for the scenes in the jazz club, it was more traditional. We thought it was a fun idea to take all the song melodies and twist them into jazz, so if you notice in the scene where John Legend’s character, Keith, comes over to proposition Sebastian about joining the band, the jazz group in the background is playing a jazzed up version of “Another Day of Sun.”