Elaborating on one of the Bard's recent posts (and because I've been listening to The Return of the King a lot lately) today's Film Score Friday will be drawn from third installments. This doesn't necessarily mean trilogies, just third installments.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith - John Williams
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi - John Williams
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - John Williams
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - Hans Zimmer
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - John Williams
The Omen: The Final Conflict - Jerry Goldsmith
The Matrix: Revolutions - Don Davis
X-Men: The Last Stand - John Powell
Batman Forever - Elliot Goldenthal
Jurassic Park III - Don Davis (that's right, I went there)
Friday, November 30, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Rundown
The birthday was great.
Wonderful dinner with great friends at McCormick & Schmick's
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (The Complete Recordings)
Alex Ross's terrific new book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Stephen Pinker)
And cake. Delicious, succulent, homemade red velvet cake. Mmmmmm...
Wonderful dinner with great friends at McCormick & Schmick's
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (The Complete Recordings)
Alex Ross's terrific new book The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Stephen Pinker)
And cake. Delicious, succulent, homemade red velvet cake. Mmmmmm...
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Laramie Sketches
The theatre department of William Jewell College is presenting The Laramie Project this weekend. It's a powerful, moving testament of how Laramie, Wyoming (which could be any town, really) deals with the aftermath of a young gay man being kidnapped, brutally beaten and left for dead in its community.
A few months back I approached the director about writing some music for the production. He allowed me to do so with the understanding that there was a possibility that it wouldn't be used. I understood this. It was a test.
I knew immediately that I wanted to write a piano-based atmospheric score with subtle electronics underneath. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Normally my music is busy with lots of notes. I kicked all that out. I wrote simply and without sentimentality...I hope.
It didn't really hit me until we were in Colorado last month. We were driving through Loveland on our way to Longmont to visit Michael Harris. I gazed at the stunning beauty of this land, nature's music realised in landscape. Instantly I understood the irony. The juxtaposition of the brutality of the crime in a place as beautiful as this is tragedy that seemingly only human beings can create. I knew my job then. I needed to provide commentary without sentiment. Something that, like this beautiful place both real and imagined, would just be.
I hope I've done that.
A few months back I approached the director about writing some music for the production. He allowed me to do so with the understanding that there was a possibility that it wouldn't be used. I understood this. It was a test.
I knew immediately that I wanted to write a piano-based atmospheric score with subtle electronics underneath. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Normally my music is busy with lots of notes. I kicked all that out. I wrote simply and without sentimentality...I hope.
It didn't really hit me until we were in Colorado last month. We were driving through Loveland on our way to Longmont to visit Michael Harris. I gazed at the stunning beauty of this land, nature's music realised in landscape. Instantly I understood the irony. The juxtaposition of the brutality of the crime in a place as beautiful as this is tragedy that seemingly only human beings can create. I knew my job then. I needed to provide commentary without sentiment. Something that, like this beautiful place both real and imagined, would just be.
I hope I've done that.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Festival, Part II: Music Appreciation
Four concerts in a single day. If you've never done this it can be a bit overwhelming (or underwhelming, depending on the circumstances). After while one begins to experience sensory overload, but that doesn't stop me from pushing on.
The first two concerts were chamber music. The first concert was mostly interesting. There was a really great piece for percussion scored for three small drums and three pieces of metal. Very cool. There was a flute solo by my teacher that went mostly well. There was a great piano solo that was very bluesy and I expected it to break into the third movement of the Gershwin piano concerto at any minute. After the concert I thanked the composer for writing something that had a pulse (take that as you will).
Then came the Wind Quintet.
Very rarely do I feel that I don't give a piece of music the full benefit of the doubt or can't appreciate something for what it is. I even feel that I can separate appreciation of great craft from my own aesthetic and not dislike a work just because it's not my aesthetic. I also think I'm a good enough composer/musician that I can hear "through" a weak performance and get the composer's intention. But this piece was atrocious. It wasn't Serial, or serial or whatever, just dense and intellectually over-rigorous to the point of non-interest.
Concert 2 was also chamber music. There was a terrific set of piano miniatures by a composer who is a member of the education department at Truman State. One of the things I have always admired about Robert's music is that, while his music is enormously difficult, it always has a sense of being whimsical, humorous and slightly mischievous. This is especially true when the piece is entitled Vogons on the Beach after Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide. There was a terrific piece for trombone and percussion that really had to be seen to be believed, especially when some of the "percussion" are squeaky toys that are glued to a wooden board and controled by the player's feet. Awesome..and hilarious. This was the concert on which Carol played Angels and Demons. We've covered that already. The concert ended with a saxophone quartet which largely left me with a feeling of...um...okay.
Concert 3 was the already discussed performance of May Music and a series of choral works. The first two choral works were really interesting. A little too brief for the possibilities they contained but really great. The rest, unfortunately, didn't quite hold up. The remaining three pieces on the concert were nice but ultimately sounded like sketches that Eric Whitacre had been smart enough to throw away.
The last concert of the evening was of the Saint Ambrose University Community Orchestra. As these things go (community orchestras) they were actually decent. They were still better than my undergraduate orchestra. Then again there are some middle school orchestras out there that are better than my college orchestra. Anyway there were two pieces on the program. The first was a piece that was a result of the Continental Harmony Project in 2000. Continental Harmony began as a massive commissioning project that created commissions for composers in all 50 states to ring in the new millenium. It's ongoing and you can read more about it here if you want. I was lucky enough to be involved in the performance of the Missouri commission that year. Anyway, this particular piece was kind of a celebration of rural Iowa. Well you can imagine what that was like. Well maybe not. It was kind of like reheated Copland and Ives whirled together and then uninterestingly orchestrated.
The second piece on the program was a saxophone concerto. It was a really nice piece. Very cinematic. This particular composer has written a lot of film/theatre/dance music for larger ensembles and it certainly shows. Interestingly the orchestra sounded completely different on this piece than they did on the symphony. I'm positive that this is because the composer of the concerto knows how to orchestrate to make players sound not just good, but maybe even better than they are. The only distracting element of the piece was that the first movement sounded an awful lot like much of James Horner's Sneakers score which is also scored for alto saxophone soloist and orchestra. Other than that I liked the piece quite a lot.
So that's it. We didn't stay for the Sunday concerts because Davenport is a six-hour drive and we didn't really feel like getting home late in the evening. It was a good weekend though. It's always good to see this motley gang of composers who appreciate each other's work.
The first two concerts were chamber music. The first concert was mostly interesting. There was a really great piece for percussion scored for three small drums and three pieces of metal. Very cool. There was a flute solo by my teacher that went mostly well. There was a great piano solo that was very bluesy and I expected it to break into the third movement of the Gershwin piano concerto at any minute. After the concert I thanked the composer for writing something that had a pulse (take that as you will).
Then came the Wind Quintet.
Very rarely do I feel that I don't give a piece of music the full benefit of the doubt or can't appreciate something for what it is. I even feel that I can separate appreciation of great craft from my own aesthetic and not dislike a work just because it's not my aesthetic. I also think I'm a good enough composer/musician that I can hear "through" a weak performance and get the composer's intention. But this piece was atrocious. It wasn't Serial, or serial or whatever, just dense and intellectually over-rigorous to the point of non-interest.
Concert 2 was also chamber music. There was a terrific set of piano miniatures by a composer who is a member of the education department at Truman State. One of the things I have always admired about Robert's music is that, while his music is enormously difficult, it always has a sense of being whimsical, humorous and slightly mischievous. This is especially true when the piece is entitled Vogons on the Beach after Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide. There was a terrific piece for trombone and percussion that really had to be seen to be believed, especially when some of the "percussion" are squeaky toys that are glued to a wooden board and controled by the player's feet. Awesome..and hilarious. This was the concert on which Carol played Angels and Demons. We've covered that already. The concert ended with a saxophone quartet which largely left me with a feeling of...um...okay.
Concert 3 was the already discussed performance of May Music and a series of choral works. The first two choral works were really interesting. A little too brief for the possibilities they contained but really great. The rest, unfortunately, didn't quite hold up. The remaining three pieces on the concert were nice but ultimately sounded like sketches that Eric Whitacre had been smart enough to throw away.
The last concert of the evening was of the Saint Ambrose University Community Orchestra. As these things go (community orchestras) they were actually decent. They were still better than my undergraduate orchestra. Then again there are some middle school orchestras out there that are better than my college orchestra. Anyway there were two pieces on the program. The first was a piece that was a result of the Continental Harmony Project in 2000. Continental Harmony began as a massive commissioning project that created commissions for composers in all 50 states to ring in the new millenium. It's ongoing and you can read more about it here if you want. I was lucky enough to be involved in the performance of the Missouri commission that year. Anyway, this particular piece was kind of a celebration of rural Iowa. Well you can imagine what that was like. Well maybe not. It was kind of like reheated Copland and Ives whirled together and then uninterestingly orchestrated.
The second piece on the program was a saxophone concerto. It was a really nice piece. Very cinematic. This particular composer has written a lot of film/theatre/dance music for larger ensembles and it certainly shows. Interestingly the orchestra sounded completely different on this piece than they did on the symphony. I'm positive that this is because the composer of the concerto knows how to orchestrate to make players sound not just good, but maybe even better than they are. The only distracting element of the piece was that the first movement sounded an awful lot like much of James Horner's Sneakers score which is also scored for alto saxophone soloist and orchestra. Other than that I liked the piece quite a lot.
So that's it. We didn't stay for the Sunday concerts because Davenport is a six-hour drive and we didn't really feel like getting home late in the evening. It was a good weekend though. It's always good to see this motley gang of composers who appreciate each other's work.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Festival, Part I
So. Last weekend die Frau and I were in Davenport, Iowa for the 20th anniversary new music festival of the Iowa Composers Forum. As I mentioned before I had two pieces performed, one of which was a premiere. There's a link to my myspace page on this posting where you can listen to the retooled premiere of May Music (which is still its best performance).
The performance of May Music was good enough but left much to be desired. They got the big picture but some of the really important nuances got completely lost. Here's a hint: when your piece involves a lot of microcanons it's not good to play together. It finally occurs to me that while the piece is written for winds it is actually an orchestral piece that happens to be written for winds. Nonetheless I was appreciative of their efforts.
But the performance of Angels and Demons, an unaccompanied violin solo, went smashingly. Carol played the snot out of it and, I think, really impressed the other composers in the room. Then again, most of them had only gotten 'pretty good' performances. What can I say? It's good to know people. I also happen to know that she surprised several of the professional performers in the room. That's awesome
That's it for now. More about the rest of the festival later, including the possibility creating diversionary tactics like gnawing off one's arm or starting a fire in order to escape the serial composers!
The performance of May Music was good enough but left much to be desired. They got the big picture but some of the really important nuances got completely lost. Here's a hint: when your piece involves a lot of microcanons it's not good to play together. It finally occurs to me that while the piece is written for winds it is actually an orchestral piece that happens to be written for winds. Nonetheless I was appreciative of their efforts.
But the performance of Angels and Demons, an unaccompanied violin solo, went smashingly. Carol played the snot out of it and, I think, really impressed the other composers in the room. Then again, most of them had only gotten 'pretty good' performances. What can I say? It's good to know people. I also happen to know that she surprised several of the professional performers in the room. That's awesome
That's it for now. More about the rest of the festival later, including the possibility creating diversionary tactics like gnawing off one's arm or starting a fire in order to escape the serial composers!
Friday, November 02, 2007
On the Road Again...
Die Frau and I are headed up to Davenport for the weekend.
The 20th anniversary festival of the Iowa Composers Forum will be taking place on the campus of Saint Ambrose University. A good friend of mine will be giving the world premiere of an unaccompanied work for violin called Angels and Demons. Additionally the university wind ensemble will be performing May Music, a sometime noisy, somewhat postminimalist piece I wrote in a flurry several years back. Of all the music I've written so far, it's definitely one of my favourites. You can read about the works in a previous post here.
Keep your fingers crossed for good performances!
The 20th anniversary festival of the Iowa Composers Forum will be taking place on the campus of Saint Ambrose University. A good friend of mine will be giving the world premiere of an unaccompanied work for violin called Angels and Demons. Additionally the university wind ensemble will be performing May Music, a sometime noisy, somewhat postminimalist piece I wrote in a flurry several years back. Of all the music I've written so far, it's definitely one of my favourites. You can read about the works in a previous post here.
Keep your fingers crossed for good performances!
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