The trailer for A House With A Clock In Its Walls was released by Universal Pictures today, featuring Jack Black and Cate Blanchett. The book was a childhood favorite of mine, so I’m very excited to be orchestrating the film score with Penka Kouneva for composer Nathan Barr. It’s a family-friendly spooky film and will be released in October.
Ensign Broderick drops five albums in 2018
Canadian glam rock artist Ensign Broderick has dropped five albums in 2018, and I have small contributions on three of them. He’s based in Toronto and largely recorded there, but we recorded some string orchestrations for a handful of songs at Capitol Records. He has been slowly building his catalogue since we first collaborated in 2015, and now he’s putting it all out at once to make a big splash. All of the albums are on the Toronto-based label Six Shooter Records. Amritha Vaz was the lead orchestrator. I did some additional orchestration and was the music copyist for the recording sessions. Peter Rotter, the head of Encompass Music Partners, was our music contractor for the sessions.
LA Times compliments my orchestration (indirectly)
This is probably the best orchestration compliment I could ever hope for from the LA Times’ recent review of The Invention of Morel:
“Scored for a 16-piece band that often sounds as if ballooned into something 10 times its size, the music hectored the audience persistently, often at odds with the contours of the vocal lines.”
I worked on this for two years with Stewart Copeland to get that big sound out of a little orchestra, and the shows at the Chicago Opera Theater and the Long Beach Opera have been close to sold out. SUCCESS!!
The Invention of Morel comes to the Long Beach Opera
Here’s Stewart Copeland at last year’s premiere explaining why opera is a lot like South Park, and why there’s nothing about opera that a good new opera can’t fix.
On March 17, 24, and 25 the Long Beach Opera will present The Invention of Morel in its west coast debut. I orchestrated it for composer Stewart Copeland, and it took about two years to complete. It was premiered last year by the Chicago Opera Theater. Conducted by the great Andreas Mitisek and with a brilliant cast, you’ve probably never seen anything quite like it. I highly recommend it.
LA Weekly wrote a great article about it, and there’s more info on LongBeachOpera.org.
Lisa Cuthill album release
Today, Calgary-based singer Lisa Cuthill released her album “Love & Other Catastrophes.” Much of the album was recorded at OCL Studios just outside of Calgary, but we recorded the string orchestra at Capitol Records in Los Angeles. Amritha Vaz did the orchestrations, I did some minor additional orchestration, and I was the music copyist and librarian for the session.
Skyscraper movie trailer
Today, Universal Pictures released their trailer for Skyscraper, a big summer action film that I will be orchestrating with Penka Kouneva for film composer Steve Jablonsky. Starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, it promises to be everything you could want from a big-budget action flick. I’m looking forward to orchestrating the film score very much.
Penka Kouneva’s new album Rebirth of ID
I have been honored to be a part of Penka Kouneva’s orchestration team for many years now, and the quality of her work is always inspiring. Her most recent venture is a full-length orchestral album released today by Varèse Sarabande. It contains four tone poems of four movements, each telling its own story in a different genre. It is a pure art project intended to display the full extent of her considerable depth as a composer and orchestrator, and it does not disappoint. The compositions are evocative, the orchestra is exquisitely controlled, and the album is emotionally sophisticated and deeply moving. The music is entirely hers from top to bottom, but I had the honor of helping her with orchestrations on two of the tracks.
Dare To Drum: A Documentary
Previously released on Amazon and just just released today on iTunes:
A fascinating documentary called Dare To Drum about a daring 3-year musical endeavor, the creative process, and the week of chaos that nearly killed the premiere concerts.
In 2011 I worked with composer Stewart Copeland to put on a concert that combined a full Indonesian gamelan orchestra with a traditional western orchestra. A whole new custom gamelan had to be built to manage the disparate tunings, and I needed to invent a lot of new notation for the vast array of percussion which is traditionally not written down.
Three years of instrument building and artistic work went into the whole process, the percussion ensemble D’Drum was commissioned to bring it to life, and then the premiere with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra was nearly canceled due to freak snow storms in Texas. The whole city was snowed in Thurs-Sun and it looked like everything was going to fail miserably, but luckily the last show on Sunday night happened and it was a brilliant success.
Stewart’s music is fantastic as always, the guys from D’Drum are brilliant musicians, and Jaap van Zweden was a fierce conductor just right for this ambitious endeavor. I highly recommend this documentary to all who have an interest in world music, alternative uses of the orchestra, and real-life documentary drama.
The film’s website is DareToDrumFilm.com.
I was primarily the music copyist and engraver for Stewart Copeland and G. Schirmer, but I also had a little bit of input as an additional orchestrator.
Orchestrating for International Dota 2 Championships
Every year in Seattle players of Dota 2 converge in Seattle for one week at a massive championship gamer playoff called The International Dota 2 Championships. The competition is streamed via Twitch and watched all over the world. This year the total prize pool was $24,787,916, with first place winning $10,862,683 and each of the top 20 getting over $100k. To say that it’s a massive event is a massive understatement.
Naturally, part of the festivities during the week is live entertainment. The game music band Critical Hit put together a long arrangement of music from Dota 2, and I helped to orchestrate the music for the Seattle Symphony to play. It was an orchestral/rock hybrid and featured soloists throughout. My colleagues on the music team were Adam Gubman, Penka Kouneva, and Joris Daniel Hoogsteder.
This performance was on August 12, 2017