Released today, Bruce Willis stars in the film Air Strike, which is also known as The Bombing and Unbreakable Spirit in other regions. The film is about the Japanese bombings of the Chinese city Chongqing during World War II, and was filmed as a memorial for the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory.

I orchestrated this film with Penka Kouneva for composer Liguang Wang. He is the President of China Conservatory of Music, and it was an honor to work with him. This particular project was much more involved than the average orchestration job because some of the sketches we got from Mr. Wang were quite sparse, so Penka and I had an enormous amount of freedom and latitude in the arranging. On occasion we received only a melody and the instruction to “do the Hollywood thing,” which of course we have a lot of fun with and do very well. We are officially orchestrators, but it felt very much like co-composing and I’m proud of how it turned out.

The score was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra using a large ensemble of about 100 players.