Disney Silly Symphony

Disney probably has the largest fan base in the world, and it’s because they take very good care of their fans. The D23 Expo is a massive exposition with three full days of “inside-the-magic” experiences fans can’t find anywhere else. For the expo I got to transcribe the score to a very old Silly Symphony cartoon which was then played live by the orchestra in perfect sync with the film to a huge audience. Old cartoon music is HARD stuff! It was a blast and the show was fantastic.

Recording a new opera

I was orchestrator and co-producer for a new Opera by composer Mark Abel. We had an all-star cast of musicians and the album will be released on the Delos label in 2016. It was a deep collaboration between Mark and I which lasted about a year, and it was a real pleasure to work on. The session was conducted by Benjamin Makino and the musicians were contracted by Timothy Loo.

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Honu By The Sea musical

Honu by the Sea is a Hawai‘i-originated Broadway-styled fantasy musical about Kainoa, a teenage Hawaiian surfer-beachboy, who finds a magical sea star that makes his wish to spend a day underwater come true.

In Disney-esque tradition, writer-composer Johnson Enos has created a family-friendly theater show with tunes that depict a happy under-the-sea community faced with a contemporary environmental reality: humans are making a mess of the ocean, threatening life beneath the waves.

The show alternates between Tokyo and major US cities. It was playing at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach for International Children’s Day, and while the cast was here in Los Angeles they made some recordings at East West Studios. I was one of the music copyists for the session yesterday with Brian Benison.

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Working with Randy Waldman

Randy Waldman is a Grammy Award-winning American pianist, arranger, composer and conductor. At the age of 21 he became Sinatra’s piano player and ever since has been working with the some of world’s best loved artists including Barbara Streisand, Celine Dionne, Michael Bolton, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Vanessa Williams, Patti LaBelle, Michael Jackson, and many others. He is producing a big band album of his own work, and with Brian Benison I helped to prepare the sheet music for those sessions.

The $99 Orchestra

The $99 Orchestra is a new business venture in Lisbon, Portugal, which sells orchestral recording session time slots in smaller segments and at lower prices than ever before. Not everybody needs or wants three hours with an orchestra, and even fewer people could afford it. Their intention is to make orchestral recording available to the masses with highly flexible shared sessions.

I just finished orchestrating some music for composer Robert Charlton which will be recorded using this new orchestra at the end of the month for a music library. I am very eager to hear the quality of their performances and production, because if it’s good enough this orchestra has the potential to democratize orchestral recording and make MIDI recordings less common. Wouldn’t that be nice??

Stewart Copeland projects

Stewart Copeland is working on several ambitious projects, and I continue to work with him as his orchestrator and music engraver for G. Schirmer. We’re currently working on a new opera, finishing a new symphony, re-orchestrating his older opera “The Cask of Amontillado”, and adding repertoire to his classical crossover ensemble ParCo. All will be completed in 2015, so it’s a busy and exciting time.

Recording at United Recording (Ocean Way)

Amritha Vaz is a composer for film and television and multi-instrumentalist. Today we were at United Recording (previously JJ Puig’s room at Ocean Way) recording my orchestrations of her arrangents. We were tracking for two different album projects, one by Ensign Broderick and another by Lisa Cuthill. We had a spectacular union orchestra contracted by Peter Rotter, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Both albums are slated to be released in late 2015.

Orchestrating TWO operas

In a strange twist of coincidence I find myself orchestrating not one but TWO operas at the same time, both of them about 90 minutes long. I am confident this will never again happen in my career. Together they represent several thousand pages of orchestration and score preparation. One is by Stewart Copeland, a project that we began in late 2014. The other is by Mark Abel, also begun last year.

This month we made a big push to finish Mark’s opera because we will be producing a full orchestra recording of it in July of this year. The scores are now in three massive books, the piano reduction in another book, and our planning for the recording sessions is beginning in earnest. It will be very fun to hear this piece come to life in a few months! It will be conducted by Benjamin Makino and the musicians will be contracted by Timothy Loo.