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.

Steve Caporale Album

Steve Caporale is the leader of a San Diego based band called The Captured which balances a retro rock feel with modern vibes. I orchestrated the brass arrangements for his newest songs and his upcoming album recording.

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Silicon Valley Symphony

Dr. Pablo E. Furman, a composer originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a professor of music at San José State University. He was recently commissioned by Silicon Valley Symphony to compose an enormous piece. Orchestrated for a massive orchestra plus full choir, his piece “The Singing Icons” is an impressive work and was programmed next to Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells”, an equally large-scale piece. I did the music copyist and engraving work for his score and prepared all the parts for the performance.

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Working with Lisbeth Scott

Lisbeth Scott is a vocalist & composer who has performed and written for many huge film scores such as Avatar, The Chronicles of Narnia, Spiderman, and many more. She is currently contracted as co-composer and lyricist for two Broadway musical productions, one of which she is co-writing with film composer Nathan Barr. Over the last few weeks I have been working with Lisbeth and Penka Kouneva, transcribing and notating Lisbeth’s songs so they’re ready for rehearsals. I can’t announce the show title just yet…

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The Americans Season 3 begins

The Americans is an American period drama television series from the FX television network. Set in the early 1980s during the Cold War, it’s a period drama about the complex marriage of two KGB spies posing as Americans in suburban Washington D.C. during the Reagan administration. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 97% approval rating, which is basically as good as it gets.

The 3rd season begins today, and a little bit of my work will be heard every week from now on. In May I transcribed and notated the orchestral main title theme music for composer Nathan Barr so that it could be re-recorded for this season.

At the same time that I worked on the theme music with Nathan, I also prepared some sheet music for this song, which was written by the legendary Pete Townshend from The Who specifically for the episode of The Americans released on April 30, 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InGj5CVmBnI

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Andrae Crouch memorial

Pastor Andraé Edward Crouch was an award-winning gospel musician influential in the Christian Music movement since in the 1960s, and he died on January 8. His memorial service was today, and I am honored to be a small part of the music team that is creating new tribute music in his memory. I worked with Pastor Michael McCurtis to prepare sheet music for the memorial service of new music written in his honor.

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ZMX signs Neko Case

ZMX Music has just signed singer songwriter Neko Case, and we’re very happy to add her to our roster of ZMX artists. We will be creating sheet music for her most popular songs and publishing them through our own channels, on her website, and on MusicNotes.com.

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Ben Hur Chicago a huge success

The recent show showing the 1923 version of Ben Hur, with a new Stewart Copeland score played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra was a great success, and more opportunities are coming from it. The thousands of pages of music in our second edition print were trouble free and didn’t prompt a single question from the orchestra, which I’m very happy about. We got overwhelmingly positive reviews from publications such as BMI, CSO Sounds, Chicago Splash, The Chigago Sun Times, and The Examiner.

I was Stewart’s orchestrator and music copyist, and I did all the score prep for the premiere in Norfolk, VA at the Virginia Arts Festival in April 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ9AEVjQGek

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Ben Hur will play at Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Our performance of Ben Hur was so successful at the Virginia Arts Festival that now we’re doing the show with one of the best orchestras in the world, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The film is beautifully restored, the orchestra very tightly synched with the film, and the orchestra impressive. This is a small video segment from our show in Norfolk. I was the music copyist and engraver for Schirmer and Stewart Copeland.