The Composer Chronicles

What do you get when you gather ten composers, all with different musical styles, talents, backgrounds, and areas of expertise? You get ICEBERG.

Featured pieces (in alphabetical order by composer last name):
Unfolding for strings and live electronics by Drake Andersen
Coatlicue barría la escalera del templo (Coatlicue was Sweeping the Temple Steps) by Victor Baéz
pOwer trIo for alto sax, piano, and percussion by Alex Burtzos
Decomposition by Yu-Chun Chien
RISE by Derek Cooper
Steep for strings, percussion, and celesta by Jack Frerer
Clarinet Quintet by Max Grafe
Source Code by Harry Stafylakis

When Stephen invited Brian for another episode of Game Play, he didn't expect to be faced with one of the most difficult, heart-wrenching, and beautiful games he has ever played. Lena Raine's music in Celeste is not only some of the best to listen to on its own, but it expertly aids in the game play.

There are two sides of a coin. Dakota Sauvé has spent so much of his musical career helping develop video games, but there's a different side to his career that prefers to explore the world of experimental pop.

Featured pieces:
"Mecha Mt. Fuji" from Celestial Blossoms (releasing soon)
"Dream Boom" from untitled 3D platformer game
"Phasmius" from Venture of Dark
"Moon of Etheria" from untitled VGM EP
"The Spirit" from Venture of Light

Adam Kennaugh believes that genuine communication between the composer and performer(s) is what creates honest and powerful music.

Derek Cooper is a composer with a deep passion for engaging with his audience. To Derek, the relationship between the composer, the ensemble, and the audience is one of the most important aspects of music making.

On this episode of Movie Night, Brooks Leibee joins me once again to chat about Chris Roe's score for the 2018 documentary Spitfire and François Tetaz's score for  the 2007 horror/thriller film Rogue. Grab some popcorn, dim the lights, and get comfy!

In this interview with Eric Lagergren, he leaves us with an important message: never take your art too seriously. Perfection is unachievable, especially when you’re desperate to obtain it.

Featured pieces: Quarantime | Flor de Muerto | Rhopalocera

In a world where music has time and time again been given narrative, Stephen Ryan Jackson uses his music to explore the mundane.

Featured pieces:
i can feel the universe expanding | solo voice + electronics
Tooth Necklace | flute + bass clarinet + violin + cello + piano + percussion
rinse & repeat | soprano saxophone + double bass + two percussion

Melissa Dunphy is an award-winning and acclaimed composer specializing in vocal, political, and theatrical music. Melissa is a composer who would be amongst the first to tell you that, if you want to be a composer, you need to write what you're passionate about. After the premiere of her large-scale choral work the Gozales Cantata, her career took off, and she wants to share her vision with the world.

Featured pieces:
Come, My Tan-Faced Children | Performed by Raehann Bryce-Davis, Laura Ward, Min-Young Kim, Tim Ressler
More Milk, More Milk Makes it Better (from American DREAMers) | Performed by the Singers
Tesla’s Pigeon movements III and IV (orchestral version) | Performed by Jessica Lennick and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, cond. Kensho Watanabe
Intro to The Boghouse

You never fully understand what someone is going through unless you've lived it yourself. What makes Puccini's opera La bohème so powerful is that so many of its creators went through the same hardships that the characters of the opera went through.

Humans have been looking up towards the sky for answers for thousands of years. To this day, humans have held on to the belief that celestial bodies can impact our daily lives, and Gustav Holst saw this as an opportunity for music.

The plays of William Shakespeare have been an inspiration to countless other pieces of art, and that includes composers and music makers. Giuseppe Verdi, one of Italy's leading composers in the 19th Century, was thrilled at the idea of getting to set an opera to one of Shakespeare's plays, something he would return to for the rest of his career; it all started with Shakespeare's terrifying tale Macbeth.

Let's kick off this spooky season with a Movie Night! Today, I am happily joined by author and booktuber Cameron Chaney. The film Trick 'r Treat is one of his favorite movies, enough for him to start a tradition of watching it every year with other activities; however, the music of this film is even more special. Besides setting the mood brilliantly, the music holds special significance to Cameron.

Making his debut after the release of his first album Year of the Beard, Toska Bear has been on the rise as a singer and songwriter. His unique style marries elements of indie pop, synthwave, vaporwave, EDM, indie rock, and hip-hop, and Year of the Beard is inspired by gay culture, video games, and underground music.

Featured music:
From Year of the Beard: "Year of the Beard", "Time to Let Go", "Help Me Out", and "Prom Queen Days".

Richard Fay is a composer who has absorbed the culture of his ancestors and his hometown and embedded them into his own music. With a love for klezmer, Balkan, and Irish music, he had established many various ensembles to perform these musics as well as his own.

Featured music:
From Hamosity: Music for Hard Times: New Horizons, Hamosity Horo, The Seasons, The Heron Pool, and Sean Mannion

Life can take you down interesting paths; you never know if that path will lead you directly where you want it to take you or somewhere you are pleasantly surprised to be. Kevin Graham started his career in filmmaking. With a passion for music stirred in, he turned his career into being a full-time composer.

Featured music:
From Dying of the Light: "Fireforge", "Golden Age", "Unbreakable", "Fortress", and "For the Stars"
From Enigma Machine: "Immortality"

The trumpet is an instrument that has been around for a long time, but why only within the past one hundred years has it finally started to see an uptick in virtuosic technique? Stuart Stephenson, principal trumpet of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and I discuss trumpet music and the composers that wrote for the instrument.

Silas Hite is a composer with many projects. From television to the concert stage, ambient to folk, Silas has created repertoire for himself that gives everyone a chance to hear his music!

Often when music and language are paired together, we simply get lyrics to a song, but every once and a while, a composer will use language in a much more unique way.⁣ This week, I’m joined by David Dies to tell his story, discuss the use of language in his music, and the beauty of music.

Originally designed for television, Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote a musical that just couldn't be contained to the television.

Disclaimer: This episode discusses the events of a surgery and the emotional trauma inflicted by it. 

Sometimes the score for a film or a television series is just so perfectly crafted for the show that the music is what you remember the most. In this episode of "Movie Night," I chat with Adal Rifai about the perfection that is the score to the Netflix Original series Dark.

Stephen Sondheim. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II. These are just a few names you may see shining bright on the marquees down Broadway. Spicer Carr certainly caught the musical theater bug early on, so much that he dedicated his career to writing musicals.

Featured pieces:
From Chance the Snapper: "This Town Ain't For Me", "Gravy Train", and "My Bestest Friend"
From The Rocking Boy: "Making Friends"
"This Too Shall Pass"

Chance the Snapper: Concept and Book by Rose Freeman; Book, Music, and Lyrics by Spicer W. Carr; Orchestrations, Music Direction, and Conducted by Patrick Tice-Carroll
The Rocking Boy: Book, Music, and Lyrics by Spicer W. Carr
"This Too Shall Pass": Music and Lyrics by Spicer W. Carr

Sometimes there are simply no words to describe exactly what you want to express. Erik Satie dug deep into the history of language to find words that would best describe his latest works, altering them just a little bit for his own purposes.

Why do we find the sounds of 8-bit music so nostalgic, even those who grew up in a time when video games no longer had 8-bit soundtracks? Then, it was used out of necessity, and today it is used to add a level of creativity and to evoke a sense of nostalgia. Composer and author Daryl Banner returns to the podcast to talk about his experience with 8-bit music as both a composer of that medium as well as someone who still enjoys his childhood video games.

Video game and media composer Jamal Green set out on a journey that he thought would lead him in a very specific direction, but where he ended up, he would have it no other way. Jamal has seen considerable success writing for video games and film, writing the scores to games such as Equilinox, Sizable, Konami’s Skelattack, and most recently TOEM by Something We Made. Since 2019, he has scored two films, first the feature film Aberdeen by Cloudstar Pictures, which can be streamed on Amazon Prime, and second the indie film The Game Between Us.

Featured pieces:
From Toem: "Photo of Home", "Life Through a Lens", and "Everybody That You Meet"

Life is about making the most of everything you've got, no matter how long your time is here on this big, blue marble. Lili Boulanger, the younger sister of the renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger, only lived to the age of 24, but during her short life, she was able to accomplish more than what most composers of her time could only dream of.

In order for you to be successful, all you have to do is be proud of what you put into your craft. This is one of the great pieces of advice that composer Juan Pablo Contreras lives by every day writing music. Juan Pablo is a Latin Grammy-nominated composer and Universal Music recording artist who has combined his love of Western classical music and Mexican folk music to formulate his own unique style of writing.

The world of music doesn't always have to be black and white. Genres of music don't always have to remain individualized and separate, and composers are not required to stick to writing a specific genre of music. Alan Theisen, a composer, saxophonist, author, and educator, is a man who appreciates all types of music and uses his background to meld genres of music that would often never be considered together, encouraging the new music community to be the best it can be.

It’s no secret that Pierre Boulez led a double life as a composer and conductor. Kevin Fitzgerald, a conductor in his own right, has looked up to Boulez as his hero, and he shares his knowledge about the man and his career from the eyes of a conductor.⁣

When we hear the name George Gershwin, we often associate it with jazz or musical theater, but he didn't see himself that way. He saw himself as a standard composer of his time and influenced by the sounds around him. So what does that mean for his opera Porgy and Bess? Or is it a Broadway musical?

DISCLAIMER: This episode contains acts of extreme violence, hints at sexual misconduct, and deals with racial controversy. Listener discretion is advised.

From the United Kingdom, then to the United States, and and now Singapore, media composer Pearl Yim has seen great success with her music all across the world. Pearl talks about her experience in the fields of film and video game composing and the struggles she faced in order to get where she is today.

Featured pieces:
Ellipsis (GTA V Machinima Short Movie)
"On The Run" from the Westworld Scoring Competition
The Mermaid's Odyssey

Music, much like any art form, has been a staple in nearly every culture for thousands of years. We often forget where these arts have their roots, and to better understand the music of the last few hundred years, we must go back even further... no matter how grim.

The warm, rich tones produced by the cello have been a siren to many composers, calling them to compose for the instrument whether or not it was in their best interest to do so. Cellist Steven Chen gives his professional knowledge and opinion on the cello and the pieces written for it!⁣

In the first drafts of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, there is a name that appeared as the subtitle before it was scribbled out and changed to 'Eroica'. Originally Beethoven dedicated this symphony to his personal hero, a man who would soon instigate his own demise when he crowned himself Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Brooks Leibee has dedicated much of his career to the art of film making. However, it is his scores for those films that he is most proud of. In this episode, Brooks shares his journey and gives deeper insight into his world.

Featured pieces:
"Two Wrongs" from Mire
"The Fallen Jedi" from Trial of the Fallen Jedi
Credits Suite from Aliyah
Entrance
Spring Rescore

Coming off of the success of his first two operas, young Erich Wolfgang Korngold set out to write his third. His success was so massive, that opera houses all over duked it out for the rights to stage the premier, leaving Korngold with the tough decision of who to give those rights to.

Have you ever tried recalling a tune from a film you love and have a hard time remembering what it is? Or, have you been so mesmerized by a tune that you'll never forget it in all your days? Ben Morales Frost, a composer of film scores, is a strong advocate for the use of melody in film music. In this episode, Ben talks about some of his own film scores as well as some of his favorites that have inspired him.

Featured pieces: "Swan" and "Stars" from A Beast In All But Name

The world of opera isn't all glitz and glam. Opera maker Evan Kassof has dedicated his life to telling stories in a way that gives audiences a chance to step out of the opera house and potentially stumble upon something new in an unsuspecting place. Evan voices his opinions about the opera world of the past and how he is actively pushing the art in a direction that gives more people the chance to see the artform in a brand new light.

Featured piece: Act III, Scene 1 from Ganymede 5

Mother Goose has been a staple in many a child's life. Her tales of magic and adventure inspire wonder, and even in adulthood, her stories touch us. They certainly were of great importance to Maurice Ravel, who wrote a piano suite using several fairytales, and was so touched by them that he orchestrated them and then turned it into a ballet.

Trevor Kowalski, an American composer based in Los Angeles, uses his years of training in various styles of music to compose for a wide variety of projects, collaborating with award-winning filmmakers, international game developers, theater directors, and various arrangements of ensembles. Trevor has been a part of The Composer Chronicles since day one; his music uploaded to the library Epidemic Sound has been in the background of many of these episodes. After sharing his unique career, Trevor talks about the beauty of music by American composers and their influence on his own sound.

When Ralph Vaughan Williams was rummaging through old hymnals, he discovered a tune by a composer of England's past Thomas Tallis. This simple tune would inspire Vaughan Williams to write a work for string quartet and double string orchestra, Fantasia on a Theme  by Thomas Tallis. In creating this piece he melded two worlds together, the modern with the old, clearing the dust from a long forgotten tune and bringing it to new heights.

The music of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, IV: Oblivion, and V: Skyrim turned the tides of video game music composing. Their music sets the tone for the magical worlds that the heroes of Tamriel explore in these vast fantasy games, and musicologist Andrew Shaw has been able to draw narrative connections between the three games with just the music alone.

So much of the music of Anton Bruckner was privately dedicated to the God he served, but his final work was publicly dedicated to "the Beloved God." Without a doubt, Bruckner's works are a representation of his devotion and unwavering faith, but there's a dark side to his story that is often hidden behind the blinding brilliance of his symphonies, especially his Symphony No. 9. 

Sometimes one road leads us down another that we never expected to find ourselves wandering on. British composer Barnaby Martin has been active in the music world since a young age, but it wasn't until later in life that his career as a composer led him to becoming a prominent video essayist on his YouTube channel Listening In.

William Shakespeare's beloved tragedy of two star-crossed lovers has been one of the most frequently adapted stories for musical purposes. Composers, such Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Gounod, Berlioz, and even Duke Ellington, have been touched by its heart-wrenching tale since its creation, and this episode gives you a look into the many musical reincarnations of Shakespeare's young lovers, Romeo and Juliet.