I have been working on finalizing the soundtrack for Acts, the 3-Man show, and I am pleased to announce that it is now available for purchase as a digital download through CDBaby, Amazon, and iTunes.  It is also available as a physical CD through the Acts website.

Here are the notes for the album:

Acts, the 3-Man Show tells the story of the earliest days of the Christian Church when it faced eradication on every side. This play opens with the stoning of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, and follows the unlikely spread of the faith throughout the Roman Empire to the very throne of its ruler, Nero. This official soundtrack embodies much of the story and journey that the characters travel through the show. Mingled with monologues from Peter and Paul are the voices of opposition in Herod and Nero. The music tracks are expanded versions of the music heard in the live production, and they flesh out the musical material and the atmosphere of the music.

Many of the tracks feature the sound of the Duduk which is a nearly 2000 year old Armenian instrument. Its mournful wail has become the cinematic voice of the Middle East and of the ancient Western world. Related to the oboe, it has a unique, almost human-like, sound. For this recording, the renowned soloist, Pedro Eustache provided his talents and helps to take the listener to a much older world. His playing fills the world of the scenes in Jerusalem and surrounding areas.

As the action moves toward the capital of the empire, the sounds of the lyre is evoked through the modern harp. Joining the harp is Los Angeles bassist John Hester whose eerie sounds help add a touch of insanity to the beautiful lyre. The music reflects the opulence and beauty of the Roman capital with the unpredictable violence and cruelty of its leader.

The final piece from the show is an a cappella setting of an ancient latin translation of Psalm 51 performed by the Grace Community Church choir and conducted by Bill Brandenstein. The music intones ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness’. The latin form of this Hebrew prayer may well have echoed in the ears of the Apostles Peter and Paul as they awaited execution in Rome. The unaccompanied choir builds to a great moment of penance and faith in God and resolves with an ‘Amen’ as the sound of a church bells rings 7 times signifying the start of the church from the blood of these martyrs.

Two additional tracks round out the collection with the first a solo piano arrangement of ‘O Sacred Head’ from a collection of piano works that follow the arc of the Christian classic allegory, Pilgrim’s Progress. Initially written to accompany an upcoming release of an interactive iPad retelling from StudioIgo, this piece accompanies the moment when the Pilgrim approaches the cross and has his burden fall away.

The second additional track, Song of Job, was originally released in 2007 on the album ‘From Darkness Into Light’. Written for string orchestra, it is conducted here by Marcia LaReau leading the Hartford VIrtuosi. This piece opens with the sounds of frivolity and the chatter of daily life only to be unexpectedly interrupted by unforeseen devastation. Following the biblical account of Job, the world crashes down around as Job is filled with fear and despair. However, the music begins to build as Job comes to understand his experience as the work of a sovereign God of whom Job says, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him’. From this point of faith, a hymn rises from suffering and leads to a musical treatment of the hymn ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty’. As the hymn unfolds, it mixes with the sounds of life from the opening as Job’s faith begins to fill all aspects of his life. It eventually leads to a musical proclamation of the hymn ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’, and comes to a conclusion of hope and assurance.

I have been meaning to share this next link for several weeks, but am only now getting around to it.  This is my setting of a well-known hymn text from the author Henry Lyte.  As indicated on Wikipedia:

“Abide with Me” is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte, most often sung to William Henry Monk‘s tune “Eventide.”

Lyte wrote the poem in 1847 and set it to music while he lay dying from tuberculosis; he survived only a further three weeks after its completion.

As indicated in the above, this text is a poet’s intimate and vulnerable plea to God that, at the moment of his greatest need, implores God to be with him. It is a profound meditation on the moment that every one of will face now or in the future when we look into the impenetrable dark of our mortality, and wait to be flung beyond the grasp of mortal thought.  Utterly disarmed of any will or strength or certainty, we will all be stripped bare to our soul’s greatest moment of humility, powerless to stop it.  It is into this darkest moment of human existence that this powerful poem speaks.  I stumbled across this text in early 2010 when I was preparing for my second Orchestra Unleashed concert, and I wanted to end the Mirrors of the Soul concert with something that would strike a universal tone…and to my thinking, there is nothing that we all, universally, share more than our births and deaths.  This is my musical meditation led by this text (slight abridged from the original):

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

The music starts with the irregular heartbeat of a dying person (an homage to Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration)  This leads into a few repeated episodes of overwhelming despair in the face of inexorable oblivion.  The music swells and dies away into the first moment of desperate grasping for the grace of God: Abide with me.  The first two stanzas paint the picture of an ever changing and decaying world with the singer reaching out to the unchanging God.  These moments of agony give way to a transition that travels from the depths of lonely mortality to the assurance of the presence and mercy of Christ through both ‘cloud and sunshine’.  From this mountain peak of hope and confidence in the unchangeable character of God, the singer sings of triumph that echos St. Paul’s taunts of death ‘O, where is thy sting?’.  From here, the body begins to fail in the wake of boundless hope and joy.  The music begins to fade as the unsteady heartbeat begins to fail with the singer’s last plea: Abide With Me.

This performance is a recently re-mastered recording from the 2010 Orchestra Unleashed concert with soprano Lori Ann Piscioneri singing.

Been working on completing the soundtrack for Acts, the 3-Man show.  Here’s one more track that comes from the first scene where the emperor Nero appears.  Nero is a man with no moral center, and the music sways with the same ambivalence…is it lyrical and haunting, or disturbed?  This performance features my good friend John Hester on double bass.

With 2012 upon us, Acts, the 3-Man Show is gearing up for a series of shows across the country.  In preparation for that, I have been remixing some of the incidental music used during the play, and expanding it to make a soundtrack that folks can get after the show.  Here is one of the tracks.  It is filled with the energy and optimism of the apostles as they face difficulty and persecution with the hope of the eternal value of their labors.  I hope you enjoy it.

Link to You Tube
In November 2006, after having just moved to LA, I set myself a little challenge in an effort to hone my abilities to create large volumes of music in a short time frame.  As I though about a project that I could invent to challenge my skills, I had the thought of creating a short firm for myself to score in two weeks.  I had always loved the epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for its epic scale, supernatural elements, and deep melancholy.  After first reading the poem, I became acquainted with a riveting series of engravings by the 19th c. aritst Gustave Dore.  His engravings really capture both the epic, supernatural elements, as well as the more intimate human moments embodied in the work.  So, with my handy-dandy Dover edition of the poem with the engravings in hand, I set about scanning the images and began to record a reading of the work.  Unfortunately, not being gifted vocally, the audio of the text was weak.  However, I was able to take the audio of the reading, and merge it with a Ken Burns effect approach to the engravings, and create a short film that needed an infusion of depth to bring it to life.  Thus was the clock ticking on my effort.  I sat down with my composition software, and in 10 days, I had created the initial score of this work.  It was scored for full orchestra and ran 30+ minutes.  In a sense, it was woven from a single thread of inspiration.  I got the sampled instrument library audio laid down, and proceeded to merge it all together into a film.  

That ended the project for a few years until last summer, as I contemplated the program for the Orchestra Unleashed concert in Sept., I thought about the work again and determined that it could be performed live with static slides of the images, an expert narrator, and the power of a live orchestra, and so it was.  TOU performed the work in our Sept. 2010 concert accopmanied by the amazing gifts of professional actor Bryce Lenon.  The audience seemed to be really moved by the combination of passionate acting and powerful orchestral texture.  We recorded the work, but unfortunately, technical difficulties made the recording less than we had hoped, so I shelved the recording and the project for a while.  Then, last month, I went back to the recording and worked a little magic to try to eliminate some of the noise artifacts that were so distracting in the initial recording.  A nudge here, and tweak there, and viola! I was able to get rid of many of the pops and noises in the original recording.  However, the narration is a bit less prominent that I would have hoped, but I was able to get a less distracting rendition put together.

That brings us to this post.  With the updated soundtrack of the live performance in hand, I revisited the original video that I created from the engravings.  They were a bit static before, so I spent some time updating the editing to make the visuals more engaging.  I have now posted the updated video on YouTube in seven parts corresponding to the seven sections of the the original poem.  It is a total of 40 minutes…but you can watch it in parts if you don’t have enough time to see the whole thing at once.  Anyway, I realized that through no particular foresight on my part, this is nearly the 5th anniversary edition of the original work.  Funny how life works out sometimes!

Well….it’s been a few weeks since my last post.  I recently went on a trip to visit my father, and I was reminded of a composition that I wrote while at his house one year ago that has been performed a few times.  It is called Tears.  I wanted to write a piece that reflected a certain state of sorrow, namely the helpless grief that happens when we watch the passage of time and events and are completely powerless to alter them.  Whatever things we can change about our circumstances that differentiate us from others (e.g. wealth, health, career, friends), all people are equally yolked to the inexorable progression of time, and its attendant entropic ravages on our bodies and our world.  This is a piece about the sorrow of irreversible decay and loss.   Yeah, it’s a perky one…

This performance is from last fall’s Elements concert by some of The Orchestra Unleashed players:

• Sara Andon – Flute
• Don Baird – Clarinet
• Gail Acosta – Violin I
• Shelly Ren – Violin II
• Joshua Heaphey – Viola
• AJ Fanning – Cello

It has been a slow and painful entry into the digital world, but I have resolved to make a better effort to share my artistic musings and work with those who might be interested.  I frequently spend so much of my available time in creating music, that I am not very good about sharing it.  Thus, this post.  I have determined to talk about the creative process as well as sharing some of my particular aesthetic perspectives…

First…a new link. 

This is a piece that I composed for Acts the 3-Man show.  It is a work for unaccompanied choir (a capella) that is a setting of the latin translation of the first lines of Psalm 51

Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericoridam tuam

Forgive me, O God, according to your great mercy

This music underscores a scene of martyrdom at the hands of Romans, so it seemed appropriate to use a latin text as that would have been the language in the air around the victims.  The choice of text reflected the cry of a christian in the humility of impending death again requesting complete reconciliation before the end.  This recording was made with the help of Bill Brandenstein and the Grace Community Church choir.

I have been hoping to get my website updated for a long time, and now able to put some time into it.  I will be re-vamping the samples and bio information here.