It's all about the music
New edge modern classical composition
You have to know the rules before you can break them... I am a classically traind musician/composer. I study the old masters and the new. I take what I learn and apply it to my own style. Whether it is Stravinski, Bach, Frank Zappa, Coletrain or the Beatles there is always something that can spark a new idea.
Below are samples of my compositions. You'll hear a traditional orchestral fanfare and a suite of short symphonic works "Symphonies Di Politica Assurda" where I inject a little humor into my music. You will also hear a few more serious chamber pieces. A sextet for wind instruments and strings as well as a woodwind quintet. And to round out this sampling I've included a suite of pieces for piano, strings and percussion called "Essays of Africa".
On Cue
Here are two examples of cues I've scored to illustrate an orchestral drama cue and the technique of Mickey Mousing for an animated cue. The Westworld cue is used with limited permission from HBO as part of a contest presented by Spitfire Audio. The Big Buck Bunny cue was created using an animation available through creative commons license.
Stargirl
Spring
This is my musical underscore approach to the inspiring animated short Spring from Blender
Escape
Westworld Cue
The Westworld cue was a great oportunity to showcase my skills as a film composer. Spitfire Audio offerd up a contest to their patrons and subscribers to score a cue from the current season of the hit HBO series. The show's underscore is composed by Ramin Djawadi. So this was a big oportunity to get my idea for the cue infront of Mr. Djawadi, J. J. Abrams the director, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan the show creaters. I hope you like what you hear. This was a fun one!
Big Buck Bunny
When I learned about the animation "Big Buck Bunny" and that it was available through creative common license to use I was so hoping I could get the video with separate audio tracks so I could write an underscore like Jan Morgenstern did as the original composer for the animation. Sadly the tracks were merged. However this presented a whole other opportunity... I decided to use a technique called "mickey mousing" to both create a musical underscore and add comic relief with specifically placed hits. This was a challenge to take the Carl Stalling approach and man was it fun. I hope you enjoy watching this fantastic animation and listening to the underscore. Be sure to stick around through the credits to not only see the great writers and animators who created this film, but to hear the short harp guitar piece I wrote leading to the big punchline.
Main Title Cue for an interactive spy film
This is a spec cue for the main title of an interactive short film I pitched on the website HitRecord. The request was a rock based spy theme with a touch of humor. I put forth my best Inspector Gadget/James Bond effort. The working title for this cue is "Moose and Squirrel"
Tears of Steel opening cue
In an effort to hone the skills I often look to other composers for insporation. One such composer currently working in film and television is Giovanni Rotondo.
Mr. Rotondo is also the author and curator for
filmscoringtips.com. A great website for aspiring composers looking for tips, tools and content for film scoring. I got the "Tears of Steel" clip
from Mr. Rotondo's wonderful site. And had a go at my own interpratation of the opening underscore to this short film. The film is a project created in support of the Blender Foundation which is focused on the development of open sorce 3D modeling software.
Live performance
Performing on the harp guitar and the good ole six string has always brought me pleasure. I hope you will invite me to perform for you so I can share my music and passion with you.
