I attend a monthly documentary club in the Twin Cities, where directors screen their works-in-progress. When Kyle Whitney shared his footage of interviews with nuclear bomb survivors in Japan, my jaw dropped at these stories he captured.
I just finished a retro video game score for Demon's Hymn 2: Prelude of Night. Will Tice of unTied Games decided to take on the LOWREZJAM challenge again this year and make this 64x64 pixel sequel to the original Demon's Hymn. It's an incredibly ambitious game for just 2 weeks of work. For my soundtrack, I started with the same sound palette of church organ and ghostly synths as the first game, and I introduced more orchestral (but bitcrushed) instruments like French horn and alto flute.
Two films I scored will be airing on Twin Cities Public Television in September as part of their MNTV lineup: "This is Home" by Jason P. Schumacher and "Beneath the Ink" by Cy Dodson (I co-scored this with Stephen Letnes).
I just received some very exciting news. I wrote an orchestral piece for the Banaue International Music Composition Competition, and I found out I'm a semi-finalist! As one of the 20 composer-fellows chosen from around the world, I get to travel to the Philippines for a composer immersion program in July. My piece, Balitúk: the Divided Child, will be rehearsed with a full orchestra and traditional Ifugao instruments from that region.
I recently scored an intriguing documentary by prolific director Melody Gilbert, called Silicone Soul. It features people (mostly men) who develop relationships with their life-size silicone dolls. It's one that will likely make you uncomfortable at first, but by the end you may have more empathy for the subjects than you might expect.
In the final episode of Composer Quest, Mitchell Johnson challenged me to put out an album of my solo songs that I've been collecting over the years.
I was inspired by my interview with Cyriak Harris to create a piece of music purely by visually entering MIDI. Although Cyriak listens back and tweaks the notes as he goes, I decided to take it to another level and turn off my speakers until I was totally finished. I also tried to avoid anything I would normally do to make it musically "right," and just make visually-interesting patterns.
Last night I got to hear a wonderful performance of a new quintet composition of mine. I wrote it in hopes that I'll be picked for a trip to Cuba through the American Composers Forum. The ensemble Third Sound is going to perform pieces from a few lucky composers, who will also travel to Cuba.
Challenging yourself to rearrange a piece of music is a good way to practice your composing skills without having to start from scratch. This week, I made it my goal to transform a cheesy soap opera theme into something that I'd actually want to listen to. In the end, it turned into an old-school video game track.
Last week, my friends Franco Holder and Charles Asch recorded this cello and piano duet I wrote for them. They're incredible performers, and they make this sound like the best composition I've written.