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Orchestrating for video game Diablo III: Rise Of The Necromancer

Out today: Diablo III Rise of the Necromancer is the lastest expansion pack for the dungeon crawler action role-playing video game from Blizzard Entertainment. Diablo has sold 30 million units and has 3 million daily players.

Necromancer adds a new class to the gameplay, new weapons, new armor, and of course new music! As with all Blizzard projects the resources available to us are massive, so we had another very large orchestra to work with. This time around I was orchestrating with Penka Kouneva for composer Erik Desiderio, a fellow composer here in Los Angeles.

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Orchestrating for Christine Hals, live concert in Bulgaria

Three weeks ago I was orchestrating again for the excellent Norwegian composer Christine Hals. Tonight she is conducting the music in a live concert in Ruse, Bulgaria. The piece is called Storms of Freya, and it depicts some elements of the Nordic weather of her home country. We spent a lot of time depicting the weather with very specific and experimental textures, and the end result is just as good as we imagined. Christine was conducting the Rousse Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the Los Angeles Film Conducting Intensive (LAFCI).

You can see a video of Christine conducting Storms of Freya piece here.

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The Son starring Pierce Brosnan

The Son from AMC Studios is a multi-generational epic telling of the story of America’s birth as a superpower through the bloody rise and fall of one Texas oil empire. Starring Pierce Brosnan, it’s halfway through the first season. Episode 10 came out today, for which I was on the music team working with Penka Kouneva as orchestrator and music copyist for composer Nathan Barr. Much of the score is recorded here in Los Angeles in Nathan’s studio.

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.

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