Chipping in on Out of Silence

On Friday I finished a few weeks of work preparing Victoria Kelly's glorious arrangements for Neil Finn's new album, Out of Silence. Here's one of my favourite tracks, Second Nature:

These are my favourite projects because, aside from working with two totally amazing people, ridiculously good musicians, and in an absolutely gorgeous space... I get to follow through the whole process from receiving arrangement mockups, to transcribing, typesetting and preparing them, to printing and taping them, through to saying "hello!" to the musicians at the session and handing them the music. There is something so completely special about that.

This was one crazy idea. Each Friday in August Neil streamed a live recording session online, so everyone could see the album take shape. Here's the final week where it was a complete run of the album:

This must be about the 5th collaboration between Neil and Victoria that I've had the privilege of working on. Always inspiring. Be sure to check out Victoria's post on the project.

Everyone likes to see beautiful looking music. Right? Here are some pics I took along the way:

Oh, and if I could forget. Unfortunately Victoria fell ill before the final session, and so I stepped in to conduct the final rehearsal. What. Fun. Photos by Adrian Malloch and Steve Dykes:

So, check out the stunning work by these super talented people.

Recording Mission Ferrari

Back in October 2015 Rhian Sheehan asked me to help out on the music he was writing for a new rollercoaster ride at Ferrari World in Abu Dhabi. Yesterday it all came to fruition with five hours of recording down in Wellington with some of NZ's finest musicians. There was a 10-piece brass section and 19-piece string section from Stroma FilmWorks. Absolute credit must go to these amazing musicians who perform at such an incredible level, yet between cues are so friendly and enjoyable to work with.

Rhian Sheehan wrote the music, the brilliant Tane Upjohn-Beatson came on board as co-writer and co-arranger, the legendary Graham Kennedy and John Neill recorded and engineered the session, and I conducted, with some co-arranging, orchestration and music prep along the way.

Speaking of that small job of music prep, here are some stats for those delightful few who appreciate such things:

29 musicians, 16 cues, 48 scores (3 copies of each), multiple layers totalling 305 different instrumental parts, equalling 494 copies of the parts, 551 copies of scores and parts combined, don't ask for the number of actual pages, and thank goodness Jetstar didn't weigh my carry-on.

By far the best part of my involvement in this project was following it right through from early stages to recording. So often I prepare everything and then pass it on to be printed and conducted, but this time it was great to be printing and taping parts, and then seeing it on the stands and taking the musicians through it. Need more of this, it's good for the soul.

So, now we just need to go to Abu Dhabi to experience it.

Scores for Modern Maori Quartet with NZSO

It's not often you score a nationwide tour with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, but that's just what the Modern Maori Quartet have done and they're going all out commissioning arrangements from several fantastic New Zealand composers: Claire Cowan, Chris Gendall, Anonymouz, Gareth Farr, Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper, Robbie Ellis and Mark Dennison, I have thoroughly enjoyed preparing five of these new arrangements - those by Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper and Anonymouz, along with some additional orchestration.

They're touring to 12 centres in February and March. It will be impressive, get a ticket here.

A week in LA and London

I would never give up an opportunity to travel. So when it looked like I could take a week to make it to London (to meet my wife before our Spanish adventure...!), I went for it. First stop, Los Angeles. There I met with some very fine people in the music biz that until now I've never been able to meet in person. The aim of course to keep strong connections and talk possible future work.

There's things to love about LA, and things to drive you completely loopy, but what you gotta admire is the vibe that anything is possible. Most people are there to make their dreams come true, not surprisingly mostly as actors, but what's awesome is that there is so much opportunity for that to happen. And for the bulk of whom are still waiting, they're still friendly, still optimistic and still driving Ubers - and they're okay with that.

Also while there I managed to catch the LA Phil in concert. Sadly I missed Gustavo Dudamel, but instead I saw Santtu-Matias Rouvali conduct Mosolov 'Iron Foundry', Dvorak 'Cello Concerto in B minor' with Johannes Moser, and Sibelius 'Symphony No. 1 in E minor'. Amazing.

I then travelled to London and hung out with the legendary (and delightful!) music copyists Jill Streater and Ann Barnard at London's Air Studios. There they worked me hard collating parts (or 'running around the table' as we called it!) for the Kong: Skull Island score being recorded there. Being a music copyist in New Zealand is rather solitary most of the time so to meet and hang out with such legends is wonderful, and reassuring too to know that how I do things is pretty much how they do things.

I first worked with Jill in 2012 when she was the Supervising Music Copyist for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. A year or so later I visited and observed her work at Abbey Road Studios. What fun.

Finally, I met up with several friends in London to catch up on times gone by and to round off my time there... oh, and I saw the musical Aladdin.

As much as I'm a great fan of working remotely, basing myself online and sending music all over the place, there's still nothing like a face-to-face meeting to strengthen relationships and to get inspired by others' passion for what they do. For this reason, I hope it isn't long until I next head away to catch up with some of the amazing people I get to work with.

Preparing for Mahana

I had the great pleasure of working on the Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper and Tama Waipara score for Mahana - a new feature film opening in cinemas on March 3. It's directed by Lee Tamahori and based on the Bulibasha book by Witi Ihimaera. The best place to read more about it is probably the movie Facebook page, so check that out. I was doing the music preparation, some orchestration and also flew to Wellington for the main day of recording to ensure everything worked a treat.

The score is really stunning, has a unique New Zealand flavour and it's so great to see new voices coming through in New Zealand film scoring. It was my first time working with Mahuia and I definitely hope not the last.

Each new project brings new challenges and things to be learnt, and it's always a great sense of achievement to be a part of such projects, even when in the scheme of things my contribution is only a small one.

Do ensure you get along to the film, I've seen most of it and it really is a goodie and of course quality New Zealand filmmaking needs to be supported.

Here's the trailer:

And here's some images from the recording:

Bringing together the classic Porgy and Bess Overture

Pretty special few days typesetting the glorious Porgy and Bess Overture, arranged by Russ Garcia for Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's 1957 album, 'Porgy and Bess'. The access and digitisation of the score was courtesy of his wife, Gina.

Check it out at the Auckland Symphony Orchestra's 'Jazz!' concert, Auckland Town Hall, on July 26th.

Going digital with forScore

While conducting the wind band at the recent Bay of Plenty Music School I finally had the chance to test using digital scores. I’ve always been intrigued - have already blogged about it twice - but only with a new iPad have I had the chance of taking the full digital leap. Here are my thoughts... GETTING UNDERWAY

An iPad Air 2 sits, charged, ready for action. I already had some of the scores as PDFs which was a great start. Then I scanned the rest using Scanner Pro which kindly then drops the file into my Dropbox. Then in comes forScore - a sheet music reader app and the absolute hero of the equation - I import the files straight from Dropbox and then it’s all ready to go.

WHAT I LOVED

• Magnetic to stand - my iPad lives in an Apple Smart Case and to my surprise it latches itself to a metal stand so you can place it nice and high and it won’t fall off if knocked.

• Markings and highlights - I had loads of fun marking up my score, highlighting and bringing out the important info (see photo).

• Linking - okay, so we’ve got repeats and codas and so on - I set up links so you just click on the spot and it will take you there immediately. Fantastic.

• Metronome markings - not so much during the rehearsal, but while I was looking at a score in downtime, I really appreciated having the built-in metronome set on the tempos for each score.

• Setlist - once I knew the concert order I made a setlist and everything was there ready to go and flows from one score to the next. You can even remove title pages from each score so it’s just what you need.

• Plenty more features to explore in the future - you can bring up an onscreen piano to perhaps play a passage, you can click to record your ensemble playing, and much more.

WHAT I LEARNED

• No auto contrast - we rehearsed in a room with loads of natural light. During a massive climax in a piece the sun went behind a cloud, the room went dark and so did the screen on the iPad... couldn't see a thing. Lucky I knew the score, and I turned off the auto contrast after that.

• Battery life - to be honest, if the iPad isn’t on WIFI then that battery will last for ages. But, I took this for granted and late afternoon I needed an emergency trip back to the motel to pick up the charger.

• The screen size - I understand this will be an issue for some, but it really didn’t bother me. While it is obviously a little smaller than an A4 page, the clarity of the retina display made everything so clear and with the annotation, you can easily highlight what is important or write on the score in any colour of the rainbow. And of course with a quick gesture you can easily zoom in to more closely analyse a chord, rhythm or whatever.

WITH OTHER HATS ON

• As a composer/arranger and general creator of many (many!) scores, I used to print them constantly just to take to rehearsals for reference and to write on. I’d then look at the comments at home before putting it straight into the recycling. Not anymore… used digital scores at a recent rehearsal with the Auckland Philharmonia and it works a treat.

• As a teacher, having a variety of material available to students is important as well as having reference scores and so on. The close integration forScore has with Dropbox (or Google Drive or iCloud Drive) makes this usage even more trippy.

FINAL VERDICT

I thought there would be issues, but that the connivence of it would outweigh them. But, apart from those obvious things to consider with any digital device, it’s a dream. It's fast, effective, a little flash, and I think the best thing is that, as I briefly mentioned, I once printed excessive amounts of music at home - but now I print barely anything. Yay, save the planet! I'm a complete convert.

Musical adventures in Europe

If you have been following my twitter page you will know that I have just got back from an absolutely wonderful seven weeks in Europe. While most of the time my wife and I were doing our best to elegantly float from historic building to museum to gallery..., we did manage to make the most of the amazing musical offerings that Europe provides. We saw two orchestral concerts - the first being the London Symphony at the Barbican playing Brahms' 3rd symphony and 2nd piano concerto (photo above). Daniel Harding was at the helm with Emanuel Ax on piano. The second was the Czech Philharmonic in Dvořák Hall of the Rudolfinum. Jiří Bělohlávek conducted Martinů's "What Men Live By" and then Dvořák's Slavonic Dances. Such a thrill to hear Dvořák played in his own concert hall by an orchestra that he conducted the first concert of in 1896. Amazing also to hear how two of the world's top orchestras can sound so completely different.

We of course also snuck in the obligatory West End show - The Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre. While it certainly impressed we couldn't help but notice a lack of spontaneity and freshness that comes with performing a show every... single... day of the year. However, it WAS great, and we loved checking out West End and neighbouring Covent Garden.

Perhaps one of the most special offerings was my afternoon spent at Abbey Road Studios. Through my work on two of The Hobbit films I met with the legendary Jill Streater - she has worked as music copyist on about 102 films including The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Casino Royale, Alice in Wonderland, The King's Speech, The Chronicles of Narnia and Gravity. I got in touch and she happened to be working on a project at Abbey Road while we were in London. It was so wonderful to meet her in person, chat about music prep, check out the studios and then observe the session. Oh, and I tried really hard not to have a 'crazy-teenage-fangirl' moment in the corridor as I passed Alexandre Desplat. Such an incredible place and so special to be able to spend some time there.

Everything else in this post will seem completely insignificant after the last paragraph, but I will continue... While we may not have seen concerts at these venues, we made sure we checked out the most impressive of the concert halls, including the Berlin Philharmonie - where we missed a Sir Simon Rattle led rehearsal by about 5mins (oh, the heartbreak, seriously), Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Royal Albert Hall in London and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

Musical instrument museums were in abundance - the one beside the Berlin Philharmonie was particularly impressive, as are the statues of the greats which make a great photo spot. I think we got to Strauss, Schubert, Bruckner, Mozart and Beethoven. We got to some old homes too - Handel's apartment in London, Mozart's apartment in Vienna, and his birth and childhood homes in Salzburg. It seems Vienna and Salzburg have a battle going on about who owns Mozart - either way, he earns both cities a lot of money as you can buy Mozart ANYTHING, from stress balls to underwear, chocolate to coffee, and of course the obligatory coasters and tea towels.

Well, let's leave the commercialisation of music and return to two final experiences that were absolute highlights. We'd been told to head up the hill in Florence to the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte where each evening at 4:30pm you can listen to the monks from the adjoining Olivetan Monastery singing in the crypt. While people came and went, we couldn't help but stay for the whole 50mins or so - we were absolutely captivated. Who knows what they were saying, but musically it was incredible.

Finally, in Salzburg on Christmas Eve we waited in the freezing temperatures to get a spot at the Midnight Mass in Salzburg Cathedral. It ended with four soloists singing "Silent Night" (which was written in Salzburg) by candlelight, accompanied by acoustic guitar, and with interludes from the divine organ and church choir. You could have heard a pin drop in the capacity-filled cathedral. Magic. As was every taste of music we had, and the whole trip.

Prepping music for The Hobbit's "The Last Goodbye"

I was delighted to play a small role on the final song on the soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. As was the case in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the tremendously wonderful Victoria Kelly was called on to write the arrangement and orchestration for the final track, “The Last Goodbye”, and so I landed the music preparation role.

This time around there was a lot of going back and forth with revisions, tweaks and rewrites so there was plenty more time to enjoy the process, as opposed to the work-through-the-night-marathon of the first film.

So from a combination of audio and MIDI parts I transcribed and prepped the vocals, horns, choir, harp, dulcimer, piano, acoustic guitar and mandolin (both as TAB and notation), and strings for the recording. What a ridiculously amazing job I have.

It was such a pleasure to work with Victoria once again and to be involved in such a special project.

The song is sung by Billy Boyd (who plays Pippin in The Lord of the Rings), who co-wrote it with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens. It was recorded in Wellington and Auckland, and then the orchestra at Abbey Road in London.

You can read more about the song here (Billboard) and here (Entertainment Weekly).

Recent performances, awards and successes

Here's an update on happenings over the last little while - mostly other people's successes that I played a small part in. It was great to see a recent post on the SOUNZ Facebook page about the recording of Robert Burch's "Essay to the memory of Dmitri Shostakovich" in Wellington (photo above) by Richard Mapp (piano) and Andrew Joyce (cello). I typeset this back in January for SOUNZ and I can't wait to hear how it has come together with these two amazing performers.

Back on October 30th was the annual APRA Silver Scroll awards and it was a huge pleasure to have worked on the scores of two of the finalists for the SOUNZ Contemporary Award - "Inner Phases" (for the Forbidden City Chamber Orchestra and the NZ String Quartet) by Michael Norris and "Solstice" (recorded by the NZSO) by Leonie Holmes. Congrats to Michael for taking the title! Also, Victoria Kelly well-deservedly won best score for "Field Punishment No.1" - a score I worked on through the night, tucked up in an Auckland hotel - long story.

The Show Me Shorts film festival was recently in NZ and the Sideways Productions film, "Sounds Perfect", continued its run at festivals - following appearances at Cannes and Austin earlier this year. Meanwhile, I've been working with the guys on a new film which I'll keep you posted about - it's a goodie!

Two years ago I had the pleasure of seeing the results of an extraordinary feat by Josiah Carr... writing a musical... while still at school. Well he's done it again with "Ganglife: The Musical" and this time I helped him out with the part preparation. The show was fantastic and here's one of the parts in action.

Ben Hoadley is a master bassoonist but also a master composer and I've set a number of his works over the past few years. Two recent ones were "Midsummer Night Music" (clarinet, oboe, piano) for Sydney's Omega Ensemble and "Black Forrest" for bass oboe and harp.

Finally, thanks to everyone who has let me know of my appearance in the December Air New Zealand magazine. When opening a feature article on Taupo it mentions my work "Moana Ataahua" which was written as part of the SOUNZ Community Commission initiative and premiered by the community at the 2010 ERUPT Lake Taupo Festival.

That's all for now. I'm so lucky to work with incredibly talented people and seeing them succeed highly is so, so, so great.

Merry Christmas

And just like that, another year is coming to an end. Thanks so much to everyone who has supported me in some way this year - that may have been with work, with ideas or just with conversation.

It has been an incredible time of music making for me with many wonderful opportunities, inspiring people to work with and some stunning ensembles and musicians to bring the music to life. Some of these include:

Auckland Philharmonia, New Zealand Symphony, Auckland Symphony, Christchurch Symphony, Auckland Youth Orchestra, St Matthew's Chamber Orchestra, Manukau Concert Band, Victoria Kelly, Neil Finn, NZTrio and Horomona Horo, Tecwyn Evans, Michael Norris, Leonie Holmes, John Rowles, Ben Hoadley, Val Landi and Scott Hunt (USA), Bluebird Avenue, Fatcat & Fishface, Alexandros Pappas (Greece), Sideways Productions, Elizabeth Mandeno and David Kelly, the Polkadots, the KBB Music Festival and The Big Sing.

Next year is going to be a big year and absolutely business as usual so get in touch to get me involved with your projects - either as a music preparer, typesetter or editor, or as an arranger and orchestrator.

Over Christmas and New Year I'll be fishing and eating too much near here, chill-axing and probably still eating too much here, and then tramping and working off the Christmas food here. I'll be back working full-time on Monday 6th January, but feel free to get in touch over the break.

To leave you with some music, earlier this year I received the New Zealand Symphony recording of my original work, Rakaia. Auckland Symphony commissioned it in 2007, the NZSO workshopped it in 2008 and then this is their recording from 2010:

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Enjoy, and have an absolutely wonderful Christmas!

Preparing for Neil Finn's live webcast

Last Thursday and Friday I prepared Victoria Kelly's stunning arrangements for Neil Finn's upcoming acoustic tour "Neil Finn: An Intimate Night of Dizzy Heights" with shows in London, New York and LA. I first worked on these in February for his "Dizzy Heights" album are they are now re-written for a live 9-piece string section.

Neil, Victoria and the strings did a live webcast from Roundhead Studios featuring four of the songs as a sneak preview. Here's some of the music ready to go:

If you're interested in checking out the webcast, you can view it here: