The concert version of my score for “The Attic” received a further performance today by the Sphaera Ensemble, conducted by Alexey Kurkdjian. SESI Theatre in Itapetininga City, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. See all the photos here, thanks to Laira Fermi for these.
I just saw The North Face (Nordwand) at the NZ International Film Festival. It is a new film that’s come out of Germany, Austria AND Switzerland and is fantastic … but I’m not here to talk about the plot!! The score was by a Austrian composer, Christian Kolonovits. Oh my. It was quite something. I got it off iTunes as soon as I got home and I’m listening to it again now. Far out.
It is a fully orchestral score and he does a great job of suiting it to its 1936 setting, but still, musically it is so fresh and very relevant to today. It is very nice to hear the orchestra still being used purely by itself, with no modern technology helping it along. The BEST thing is that there is no Hollywood influence in his music, which is so refreshing. Perhaps I need to be keeping an eye out for more European film composers. In the film it adds so much to the already hugely powerful scenes, but listening to the music now, it could so easily be moulded together to create some sort of 45 minute masterpiece in it’s own right.
Here is the trailer where you get a sneak peak of the film, but as for the music … it’s a trailer, so uses other music … you might notice the opening passage is from James Horner’s score to A Beautiful Mind. This is the original trailer (not english version with subtitles):
Christian Kolonovits really did a great job. I can’t wait to hear more of his work. If anyone has heard of him or knows any of his music I’d be interested to hear from you. Go find some music online from this film, it’s worth it. Here is Christian’s website: www.kolonovits.com.
Anthony Ritchie’s Flute Concerto which I set earlier this year has been published by Massey University Music. Looks fantastic … keep an eye out for a copy.
Well I often get asked what is the difference between Sibelius and Finale, which one is better and so on. So I thought I’d post a blog to put my views down and also to share some links which I think are just wonderful.
Basically, my view is that Sibelius is a musician’s program. It is intuitive and works as you’d want it to work. Finale is a programmer’s program, it is powerful like Sibelius, but doesn’t have the same ease of use. Despite an odd but common belief, as a Sibelius user there is nothing I have not found that I am able to do. As a copyist I tend to work the program hard, and so far to great success. There are of course a few features that differ, these do tend to be in favour of Sibelius. In the past Sibelius has been dominant in Australasia, Europe and the UK, and Finale was dominant in the Americas. This is changing, with Sibelius becoming very popular in America and Finale working it’s way into the UK. Some publishers and copying houses swear by Sibelius, others with Finale, so perhaps it is becoming a fair share between the two companies. I won’t get too deep into specifics because Daniel Spreadbury, the senior product manager for Sibelius, has a superb blog which answers all possible questions on this topic. A recent entry covers the specifics on this topic, where Sibelius leads, it’s unique features, and why it’s the copyists’ choice, engravers’ choice and teachers’ choice.
www.sibeliusblog.com/opinion/why-choose-sibelius-over-finale/
What has brought Sibelius further into dominance as the world’s leading notation program, is their recently released Sibelius 6. Another great blog is Daniel’s two-part introduction to this new version. In part one he talks about the story behind Sibelius 6.
www.sibeliusblog.com/opinion/the-story-behind-sibelius-6-part-1/
In part two he describes how they approached the development of their three biggest goals, Classroom Control, Versions, and their Keyboard and Fretboard windows.
www.sibeliusblog.com/opinion/the-story-behind-sibelius-6-part-2/
Also related to this is a great new blog by Kenneth Froelich who is the Assistant Professor in Music Composition at California State University, Fresno. It is about composing with music software. He puts it that “as both a composer and a teacher of music composition, I have seen many of the missteps, pratfalls, and outright disasters that tend to come about from writing music on the computer. However, through my own personal experience, as well as working directly with my students, I have come up with several strategies and pedagogical approaches to help young composers recognize and overcome the traps that tend to hinder successful “computer composition”.” It will be an interesting blog to keep an eye on.
electricsemiquaver.blogspot.com/2009/06/overcoming-sibelius-or-finale.html
I hope this is interesting reading for all of you. Enjoy.