Stewart Copeland – The Invention of Morel in Chicago

For the last two years composer Stewart Copeland has been working on a new opera based on the book The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was commissioned jointly by the Long Beach Opera and the Chicago Opera Theater, and the world premiere was last night. It was a fantastic success, and the reviews are wonderful. I’ve been Stewart’s orchestrator and music copyist since 2010.

Chicago Tribune: “A brilliant piece of musical surrealism”

Chicago Sun Times: “winningly haunted and haunting … alternately unnerving nightmare and beautiful fever dream”

The opera will play in Long Beach one year from now.

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Overwatch video game recording sessions

Overwatch, the first-person shooter video game from Blizzard Entertainment, is only about 9 months old but it’s HUGE. In the first week it already had 7 million players, now it boasts about 20 million players, and it has become the highest revenue-generating non-free-to-play game for personal computers in 2016, earning over $1 billion in revenue.

Neal Acree is one of the composers for Overwatch, and he’s extremely well suited for it because of his experience scoring the video games World Of Warcraft, Diablo, Revelation Online, Starcraft, and many other games. Late last year I was part of the music team and orchestrated some of the new music for Neal. At our recording sessions the orchestra was another massive one with as many players as we could ever hope for, so it was awesome to work on. The new music is energetic, epic, inspiring, and rolled out to players with a patch update recently.

As always, many thanks to Penka Kouneva for bringing me onto the team.

SMASH – massive percussion with Daniel Belardinelli

SMASH is a concept album by composer Daniel Belardinelli which is driven by live organic drums and percussion. Today we had our recording sessions at United Recording Studios with a huge truckload of percussion and some of the best session players in Los Angeles. I organized the many layers of the compositions into parts that made sense for the individual percussion players, and then did the music copyist work of preparing the score and parts for the sessions.

Stewart Copeland – The Invention of Morel workshops

As Stewart says: Opera is the most fun a composer can have with his clothes on.

For the last two years composer Stewart Copeland has been working on a new opera based on the book The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was commissioned jointly by the Long Beach Opera and the Chicago Opera Theater.

This week we had two day-long workshops with members of the Long Beach Opera. These were not show rehearsals, but rather workshops so that we could hear the composition and orchestrations live and make adjustments as needed. Led by Andreas Mitisek and Kristof Van Grysper, the ensemble was extremely talented, and also very supportive while we listened and altered the orchestrations in real time. I’ve been Stewart’s orchestrator and music copyist since 2010, and it’s always a pleasure to work with him.

The opera will be premiered by the Chicago Opera Theater in two months, February 2017.

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Orchestrating for Christine Hals

This week I was orchestrating again for the wonderful Norwegian composer Christine Hals, who is scoring an animated series called Aero Origins by Desertski Films directed by Arturo Vargas. We produced the film score using the fantastic Budapest Scoring orchestra. The end product is otherworldly, textural, and beautiful in a way that’s very unique to Christine.

At the same time we also recorded another stunning piece of hers titled Calling The Aurora. To make this video she stood in -5°F in a mountain stream for an hour and a half while calling to the aurora borealis. All the best artists are crazy! But it’s always a pleasure working with her.

Arranging for David Arkenstone – 28 shows with 8 orchestras

Three-time Grammy nominee David Arkenstone began his Winter Fantasy tour last night. This year he’s combining his unique folk-inspired sound with 8 orchestras in 28 shows throughout December, collaborating with Cirque de la Symphonie to bring Cirque de Soleil style performances to the concert hall. I had the honor of writing some of the orchestral arrangements for David, and it was real pleasure. Check out his album, and if you’re in any of these cities check out the live show.

Our show is playing with:
San Francisco Symphony, CA
Atlanta Symphony, GA
Phoenix Symphony, AZ
Portland Symphony, ME
Grand Rapids Symphony, MI
Hartford Symphony, CT
Milwaukee Symphony, WI
Midland Symphony, MI

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Kennedy Space Center – Heroes and Legends exhibit

Heroes and Legends is the title of the Kennedy Space Center’s new $30M multimedia exhibit which includes the Rocket Garden and Astronaut Hall of Fame. The one-hour exhibit experience tells the story of early space missions and the astronauts who took part in them through 3D films, installations and Augmented Reality. It’s highly interactive, with 36 individual mini-docs seen in the interactive pods representing qualities needed to be an astronaut. The Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex receives 1.5 million visitors a year and this exhibit will live on for decades. It’s an honor to be a small part of it.

The brilliant composer Penka Kouneva has long been focused on sci-fi, space, and astronauts, and she was perfectly fit to be the sole composer of the exhibit. Based here in Hollywood, Penka wrote an epic and inspiring suite of music which is used throughout the whole exhibit, and I co-orchestrated with music with her. It was recorded with an orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the music was mixed here in Los Angeles by audio mastermind John Rodd.

This is a behind-the-scenes video which reveals some of what went into creating the exhibit. Penka discusses the music at 7:43.

Stewart Copeland’s percussion concerto in San Antonio

Stewart Copeland‘s percussion concerto Tyrant’s Crush premiered last February with the Pittsburgh Symphony, and it played again last night with the San Antonio Orchestra, again featuring Stewart as the soloist. I was his music copyist, prepared the final engraving of the manuscripts for publication with G. Schirmer, and made some minor contributions to the orchestration.

This review from Classical Voice America discusses the orchestration with some detail.

With four other percussionists playing a massive battery of percussion, it’s a highly energetic and engaging piece. The reviews of the show are coming out today, and (unsurprisingly) they are very positive. Stewart’s music is always very playful, and it’s always a pleasure to work with him.

 

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Amadeus Live

The multi-Academy Award winning film Amadeus tells the incredible story of Mozart’s final years. The production Amadeus Live presents the film on a vast screen accompanied by a live full orchestra and choir. It will be presented at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto, conducted by Richard Kaufman. I was in charge of the printing and binding for Richard, and it’s bound to be a really fantastic show.