Back from LA, diving into a Carol

Last week I got back from my trip to the American Film Market with BBT films. Bill Humphreys (BBT producer/director extraordinaire) met with folks at a (soon-to-be-named) distributor about a series of upcoming features, and we screened his documentary about Hollywood photographer Murray Garrett. My music figured into both sets of projects and I got to hear my 5.1 score to the Garrett film in an amazing state-of-the-art screening room. Meanwhile, we caroused a fair amount with co-conspirators Brad and Tyler.

After taking the red-eye back to Maine on Monday night (Tuesday morning?)... I launched into the last weeks of my orchestration class and the first rehearsal of A Christmas Carol at Portland Stage. Boy, is that fun! I get to play the piano and hit an old car engine at the same time. Whoopee!

Junking Cues for Iron Kisses

I just got back from the second preview performance of “Iron Kisses” at Portland Stage, and the whole process continues to enthrall me. I'm doing music and sound design for this two person play by James Still, and it incorporates lots of original music and sound as well as dozens of slides projected on a beautiful rear projection screen. Particularly on my mind right now is how much I enjoy the "letting go" aspect of collaborating. I have created lots of cues for this show, over a hundred, actually. And I love each one deeply as I’m making it… then I put it out there for the director to hear and for the actors to use, and sometimes it works. Often, it doesn’t. So no matter how much I love or believe in each one of these little things, I’ve got to be ready to just junk it. Or save it for later. But it feels like junking it. And I get an odd feeling of freedom when the decision is to junk something I’ve worked on and cared for. (Someone once told me that artists need to learn to kill their babies, a terribly inappropriate aphorism for this father of two…) I think some people have a hard time with it; they are ego attached to their music. And I get that way, too, and it’s hard to stop it when it gets going. But when I bring in a cue and Risa, the director doesn’t like it, I get a certain happy feeling.
It’s as though by casting aside something you just made, you affirm your freedom, your unattachment. Or at least you get to practice it.

Back at Improv Boston

After an almost three month hiatus surrounding the birth of our lovely daughter Anica, I was back at Imrov Boston for the last two weeks, and what a pleasure it was, let me tell you. As actor Aaron Crutchfield so aptly put it, the company is like a dojo, where you practice your craft in its most immediate and tangible forms. And he’s right: in improvised theater (as in the music that goes along with it), we play out dozens of story ideas in our 75-minute shows. There’s no time to think critically or let internal editors stop us from where our instant vision takes us. “Offers” as they are called must be delivered and supported with absolute conviction and belief. It’s like being in a real-time sketch pad that washes itself away every few minutes.
Aaron played both shows my first week back along with Don Scheurman, Elyse Becker, Paul Dome, and Cliff Zawasky… a great cast of seasoned veteran fast thinkers. This past weekend’s shows included Paul again, along with Erin McGhee, Katie Proulx, Mat Gagne, Matt McLaughlin, and renowned improv guru Joe Bill.
Both weekends reminded me of what an important part of my work underscoring improv theater is: it keeps the improvisational approach relevant, and I can sense this bubbling feeling when I get back in my studio to compose music that will stick around for a few minutes. I’m not sure I can describe what the connection is, but I know that when the improv mentality is fresh, I can produce more music faster than when I haven’t been there for a while. Front and center for me is the simple idea (and this goes back to my studies with Bob Brookmeyer) that you have to have material captured in order to edit it, and you have to trust your array of editing approaches enough to be sure that you can take rough, raw material and turn it into something special. The surprising result is that often the first thing that comes out is the best anyway… but I’ve got to be in the right frame of mind to make that happen.