Category: music composition

Music composers have often found cities to be inspirational – Elgar and Vaughan Williams focused on London, Mozart wrote a symphony for Prague while Puccini’s opera Tosca is set entirely in Rome.

Popular music in all genres has long been celebrated in song as well – from Will Fyfe’s ‘I Belong To Glasgow to ‘New York New York’ by Frank Sinatra.

But Scottish pianist and composer, Euan Stevenson stayed close to his roots, reflected on the happy times he had growing up and just what his hometown, Falkirk still means to him for an album that has just been released.

‘Sound Tracks’ by Earthtones Trio is a suite of nine, accessible contemporary classical music pieces influenced by the Central Scotland town’s people, places and landmarks plus the area’s rich history and culture.

All of this moved Euan, who was born and raised in Falkirk with family living there for many generations, to create the music for the Earthtones Trio comprising the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Principal flautist, Katherine Bryan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s Principal cellist, Betsy Taylor, with Euan on piano.

While honouring family, community and familiar places, world famous landmarks such as the Roman Antonine Wall and the modern-day iconic structure that is the Falkirk Wheel also inspired the music, which was commissioned by Chamber Music Scotland and Classic Music Live! Falkirk.

“I was honoured to be asked to compose a body of work relating to my hometown,” said Euan, who now lives in Surrey but heads back to see family in Falkirk most months.

“Sound Tracks is like my personal love letter to Falkirk but I think it will speak to many other people as well.

“There’s no doubt that working on the music increased my fondness for the town and made me feel so glad I was brought up there and involved with people who cared about me.

“Growing up there, performing at a young age at the church, going to school and playing tennis, all of it laid my foundations for my career as a musician and composer, and I’m hugely grateful.

Euan – he is also a highly acclaimed jazz musician and has written and released albums with Jazz FM Vocalist and Jazz Act of the Year, singer Georgia Cécile – started working on the project during the summer UK lockdown of 2020. With no concerts to play he was able to concentrate entirely on crafting the new music.

“As lockdown restrictions eased, returning to old stomping grounds of course stirred up childhood memories and emotions and inevitably a sense of nostalgia and melancholy found its way into the music,” said Euan.

The music, which also celebrates the award-winning Falkirk Core Path Network – some 300 miles of interconnecting pathways in the area – was motivated by the stories and imagined feelings of the myriad of people and communities who used the original pathways to travel to and from the region throughout the centuries.

“The album embodies my own feelings in many ways, but it also dares to capture the travellers’ feelings and stories, celebrating the people who have played a role in Falkirk’s fascinating history while shining a light on the present and the future,” said Euan.

Although he said the music wasn’t written to accompany any pre-existing visual elements, all the pieces on the album are cinematic in quality.

“In the manner of a film composer, I wanted to encapsulate in music the feelings and thoughts of a range of characters,” said Euan.

“These included me as the composer, as a young boy/adolescent and subsequently a parent, to Roman Centurions, Dark Age tribes, early 20th Century Italian immigrant families and even an 18th century female aristocratic composer who once lived in Callander House.”

Falkirk’s own multicultural heritage allowed Euan to draw from a diverse mixture of musical styles from across the globe so the album, released on the new Scottish label, iOcco Classical, is a vibrant mix of styles. “There’s a healthy dose of Scottish folk, jazz and western classical music which remain my core influences,” said Euan. “I start by improvising at the piano until a seed of an idea takes hold and then I gradually develop the idea into a finished composition.

“Writing music inspired by my formative years has been a revealing and extremely musically nourishing process.

“I owe gratitude to this community. In writing and recording this music, I hope to give something back to the people who came before me and to those who have helped me, and continue to help me, with my musical journey.”

Sound Tracks is available to stream and download and a limited number of signed CDs are available to purchase. Concerts are planned to promote the album throughout next year www.euanstevenson.com/soundtracks

9 December 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

It’s also the anniversary of David Arnold’s game-changing score and singer k.d. lang’s landmark closing titles anthem Surrender. Both Arnold and lang spoke to Yahoo about creating the score, working with the Bond producers Barbara Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and EON Productions, and what tracks from the film — and 007’s musical registry — still resonate.

“I was starting Godzilla when I got a phone call about Tomorrow Never Dies,” Arnold recalls to Yahoo.

Read more: Lee Tamahori looks back at Die Another Day at 20

The musical mind behind five Bond scores to date, Arnold is one of cinema and TV’s top composers and producers, and it was Pierce Brosnan’s second 007 adventure that saw the rising composing star handed the unique musical baton that was once held by one of his key musical influences: John Barry.

Despite his Bond covers album Shaken and Stirred – The David Arnold James Bond Project making a critically-lauded stamp on the Brit pop charts of 1996, it was not that collection that first beckoned Arnold into Bond’s jukebox web of spin.

“I’d sent some of these tracks [from Shaken and Stirred] to Barbara and Michael at EON — so I wasn’t treading on toes in terms of intellectual property, and because I wanted them to hear them,” he recalls.

“They were making the films and I loved the films — so it was a thank you.”

Read more: 16 actors who could be the next James Bond

With Shaken and Stirred allowing the Bond bosses to ‘hear where my head was it with Bond music’, Arnold says it was his work on Stargate (1995) and Independence Day (1996) ‘that definitely eased things in terms of making a decision’.

And the small detail that Bond music legend John Barry ‘had heard the record and liked it and was very kind about what I was doing.’

When discussing Bond’s producers, Arnold asserts: “the great value of Michael and Barbara as producers and what makes them special and different is that they hire people on the strength of what they do. And they let them do it. They don’t hire people and tell them what do to.”

Story continues

Arnold suggests the sibling pair are like “the safety bumpers in a ten-pin bowling alley to stop your ball leaping into a place it shouldn’t be. We are all heading in the same direction and there are lots of ways of getting to the end, but they’ll keep it on track.”

Read more: Every James Bond film ranked

However, such a dream job for Arnold still had its initial terrors. “When I got asked to do it, it was a brief second of elation followed by an absolute panic,” he muses. “All of a sudden, you’re not thinking about doing it, you’re now doing it. I’ve actually now got to do it. And that is mildly terrifying.

“But they did lead me into it very gently and let me score the opening pre-title sequence as a separate standalone just to see how we all got on. It was a lovely thing for them to do.”

One of the striking successes of the Tomorrow Never Dies score is how it represents a perfect Venn diagram of Moby, Alex Gifford, The Propellerheads, Sheryl Crow, lyricists Don Black and David McAlmont, Arnold and, of course, k.d. lang.

It was as much a Brit Pop 1997 moment as Goldfinger’s music by John Barry, Anthony Newley and Shirley Bassey were in 1964. Like Arnold, Bond music resonated with k.d. lang way before Tomorrow Never Dies.

Read more: David Arnold shares his favourite James Bond cues

She remembers how “musically, I loved Nancy Sinatra’s song You Only Live Twice because of the musical theme the strings played in the song. I thought that was indelibly memorable.”

But lang’s top Bond anthem “beyond doubt is Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger — to me that’s the quintessential Bond theme.”

Songs are important to David Arnold. And not just Bond songs. “I do think radio is the greatest,” he declares, “and I think songs are the finest of all art forms.” When it came to score versus song, Arnold suggests he is “such a huge fan of the interpolation of the song into the score and for it to hold hands with a composer… whenever I listen to a John Barry song, I feel the movie and the entirety of it.”

Arnold wanted the same with Tomorrow Never Dies and because his work on the film would come “from a perspective of someone who loves these things and who loves Bond songs and loves the scores, I am going to write a song. I had no idea whether it would get used. It didn’t matter.”

Read more: Bond producers share update on Bond 26

That song was Surrender. Co-written with legendary Bond lyricist Don Black and singer David McAlmont and gifted an exemplary and not easy vocal from k.d. lang, Arnold “wanted people to somehow see the movie in that song.”

Twenty-five years later they still do. “I’d read the script,” he continues “I’d seen some rushes, I’d spoken to Roger Spottiswoode, I’d spoken to Pierce and Barbara and Michael, and I had an idea about where it was heading. I knew we were coming off GoldenEye which re-ignited the franchise. If we were going to kick a door in and say ‘we’re back’ then I wanted the song to do that… And that became the main central thematic core of the score which appears in the opening sequence.”

When it came to casting Constant Craving singer k.d. lang for his vocal, Arnold says it was ‘always her’ without hesitation. “I don’t know anyone else who could have done it, if I’m being honest. It is the velvety way she finds her way in and around the song.

Read more: Mat Whitecross talks The Sound of 007

“Before you know it, you are encased in her vocal. You start off being at the front of it and you finish being inside it.” lang herself remembers how “it was a very challenging song to sing. It really stretched me.”

She continues, “I just thought the outcome was stellar, and I thought it was worthy of the Bond family. I was proud to be a part of it.”

Arnold goes further about his first and crucial Bond song appointment. “She’s got an extraordinary technical ability. And the amount of interpretive and genuine emotional heft that she can deliver in a vocal is very moving. And it was one of the easiest recordings I’ve ever had. She starts singing and you just shut up and record it. It was like two or three takes and that was it. Every single thing was gold.”

A less golden moment was a last-minute decision to move Surrender to the end-credits of Tomorrow Never Dies. Sheryl Crow’s non-Arnold song of the same name ultimately accompanied the opening titles.

Read more: Every James Bond theme song ranked

Competent and playful, the song arguably pales in comparison as it tries to be the film-defining Bond song that Surrender already was. k.d. lang confesses how “it was super disappointing to me because I thought I was doing the opening song.

“I honestly don’t know what happened, and I can certainly theorise, but I’m still very proud to have participated in the Bond theme world.”

Twenty-five years later, I ask David Arnold what are the cues and beats of his Tomorrow Never Dies score he most proud of? Without pause he replies, “I still do really like Surrender. I think it’s great. I tend to like the things I do with other people, because it makes me not think about what I have done so much.

“So, Backseat Driver was good fun. And the Kowloon Bay cue with that melody – which is like an electric guitar – before it goes back into a warm, medicated version of the melody of Surrender with that fretless bass.”

k.d. lang is also proud of her place in the Bond Music Hall of Fame. And she likes the film. “It was a good one! I mean, they’re all good, and everyone has their favourites and time can shed different aspects of your opinion on them. But I definitely loved it, as I do all Bond films, essentially.”

I tell her how the Bond and film music fan world continue to hold Surrender in high regard. “It’s nice to hear that. It’s really nice to hear that people appreciate it,” she adds. “To me, it sounds like a Bond theme and, again, that’s such honourable company to keep.”

Having never really left the Bond music world through various collaborations, anniversary concerts, event advice, documentaries and sidebar composing, Arnold ponders how he “was just thinking the other day about Bond retrospectively and in a world of huge budget, studio movies I’ve had k.d lang, Chris Cornell, Scott Walker, and Garbage all in that fold…

“I am thinking that is a pretty cool bunch of people to have in a Bond movie.”

He concludes, “if you do it honestly and enthusiastically with a real sense of knowing that the film is king and an awareness of its history — but also the possibilities of its future that you can do your best stuff.”

A two-disc, 25th anniversary reissue of the Tomorrow Never Dies score is now available from La-La Land Records.

Many thanks to David Arnold and k.d. lang.

Watch: The five best James Bond movies

Fortaleza, Brazil, December 5, 2022 — Premiered at the end of September on YouTube, Brazilian musician and composer Ricardo Bacelar’s documentary Immerse explores the intricacies of the production of his first fully immersive album entitled Congênito. The album was created in Bacelar’s own Jasmin Studio, one of the most advanced Dolby Atmos-certified residential facilities in the world. Working together with recording engineer Melk Dias and multiple-Grammy award winning mixing engineer Beto Neves, the documentary explores the creative and technical processes behind Bacelar’s work on the album and reveals some helpful tips on how they created the immersive tracks.

Creating and composing music has always been Bacelar’s greatest motivation and passion. From his early, when he used to listen to his paternal grandfather recording Rodas de Choro on his Philips tape recorder, to starting to play music instruments at the age of 14, then joining a band named Hanoi Hanoi when he was 18, Bacelar has always had a strong link with recording.

Now one of Brazil’s most renowned multi-instrumentalist and composers, Bacelar’s dream of being close to music the way he wants to be finally became a reality last year, when he built his own Jasmin Studio, designed by US acoustic design firm WSDG in with recording and mixing engineer, and immersive audio specialist, Daniel Reis, helping to select the right equipment.

The first album produced there is Congênito, a mix of pop, world, jazz, and fusion which Bacelar produced alongside Melk Dias, and sang, and played every instrument and which he wanted to record as a “truly human album”.

Beto Neves, an award-winning mix engineer, was also invited to mix on the album. Being a pioneer in immersive, surround sound in Brazil, Neves’s role was to help turn Congênito into a full-scale Dolby Atmos project. “The songs are filled with an array of rhythmic, harmonic and melodic possibilities. Maybe it’s one of, or even the first album in the world to be recorded as an immersive Dolby Atmos album, but with analogue processing,” he explains.

According to Neves, listening in Dolby Atmos is akin to HDR on a TV, where you can see even the small pockmarks on someone’s face. “It’s the same thing for audio in Dolby Atmos. You have resolution and space, not just the space between left and right, but 360 degrees of sound to add even more information and open up the possibility of painting this canvas and truly express the richness of the album’s sound in the recording,” he adds.

One of the tricks used when recording the Maracatu drums of Caetano Veloso’s song A tua presença morena, was to record some of them twice. “This creates the sensation of volume, of size,” reveals Bacelar.

“We wanted to give the impression of a percussion group playing, but as Ricardo is playing alone, we created the powerful sound of a huge amount of percussion. We add to this by using a Neumann KU 100 high up so that we can record the sound of the room. The explosion of the drum in the room and the multiple recordings achieves this sensation,” adds Melk.

“It’s like in cooking,” says Bacelar. “Sometimes need more seasoning or extra ingredients.”

Bacelar is never satisfied with his first recording, and says a composer should always have in mind that they have to know and look for what the song needs: “You can hear something that’s technically really good, everything’s perfect, but there’s something missing and you don’t know what it is. That something is always emotion. It’s what moves the listener. They can feel it and so can I.”

Click here to watch full documentary.

# # #
​
​About Jasmin Studio
​Ricardo Bacelar is a composer, arranger and producer based in Brazil. His Jasmin Studio was designed by renowned studio architects WSDG and includes state of the art equipment including a Solid State Logic 48-channel Duality Delta SuperAnalogue recording console. It is equipped and certified for Dolby Atmos Music production and incorporates a facility-wide Dante network infrastructure.

Latest posts by Hummingbird Media, Inc. (see all)

Rimas Publishing, the publishing arm for the Puerto Rican-based Rimas Entertainment label, has signed Yensanjuan to a global publishing agreement.

The musician, born Roberto Rivera Elias, has collaborated with several of Latin music’s biggest names including Alvaro Díaz, Feid, Rauw Alejandro, Sebastián Yatra, and Young Miko. He most recently appeared on Alejandro’s “Trap Cake, Vol. 2,” which earned a Latin Grammy nomination and a nod at the 2023 Grammy Awards for best música urbana album.

“I am living one of the most exciting moments of my career, enjoying the process and achieving many important recognitions. I look forward to this new chapter, joining Rimas Publishing as part of a family of musicians and colleagues that I greatly respect,” commented Elias.

The artist joins Rimas Publishing’s stacked roster of artists including Bad Bunny, Eladio Carrión, Súbelo NEO, Lennex, Pailita, Mora, Cris MJ, Marcianeke, Corina Smith, Tempo, DJ Negro and Lizzy Parra, among others.

“As Rimas Publishing continues to grow, we are excited to welcome Yensanjuan to our star-studded roster and look forward to a thriving future together,” said Emilio Morales, director of publishing at Rimas. Morales was featured in Variety’s 2022 Hitmakers list for his role in the success of Bad Bunny’s “Me Porto Bonito” and “Tití Me Preguntó.”

+ Melanie Ainsworth is Position Music‘s new chief financial officer, according to an announcement made by Tyler Bacon, president and CEO.

Prior to joining Position Music, Ainsworth served as the financial controller for Big Machine Label Group (BMLG) in Nashville for eight years. She was responsible for managing the daily financial operations of Big Machine Records, the Valory Music Co, BMLG Records, and John Varvatos Records as well as BMLG’s publishing arm, Big Machine Music.

She also helped guide the reconfiguration of the organization’s financial structure after Big Machine was acquired by Ithaca Holdings LLC in 2019 and again in 2021 after Ithaca’s merger with HYBE America.

Ainsworth will join the executive team alongside Bacon, Mark Chipello (VP, head of A&R), J Scavo (GM, recorded music / VP of marketing), Jake Versluis (VP, A&R and interactive media), Emily Weber (VP, head of synch), and Frank Handy (VP, head of administration).

+ Jason McColl has joined Sony Music Nashville as senior director of A&R. He will report to the senior VP of A&R, Taylor Lindsey, and will oversee A&R for a number of artists(Corey Kent, Jameson Rodgers and more), as well as sign and develop new talent and maintain publisher relationships.

McColl was previously director of A&R for Warner Nashville where he worked on campaigns for Bailey Zimmerman and Avery Anna, among others.

+ Warner Chappell Music Mexico has signed an exclusive publishing deal with singer-songwriter Danna Paola.

The Latin pop star boasts collaborations with Sebastián Yatra, Mau y Ricky and David Bisbal, among others. Most recently, Coca-Cola tapped her as one of three female artists set to perform Queen’s “A Kind of Magic” for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, and she is currently on her “XT4S1S” tour across Mexico.

“I am thrilled to be part of Warner Chappell,” said Paola. “I’ve been waiting for a music partner like this for a while now and couldn’t be happier! As a songwriter, I’m glad to be part of a company that supports and respects their artists’ creativity, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to create magic together!”

Since the inception of cinema, Bollywood musical duos have taken charge of the Indian music industry and taken it to great heights. Starting from Kalyani Ji- Anand Ji, Shankar- Jaikishan, Laxmikant- Pyarelal, Nadeem-Shravan and Jatin-Lalit to Salim- Sulaiman, Vishal- Shekhar, and Sajid- Wajid, musical duos have redefined rhythms by giving the country some unforgettable melodies. Adding to the list are Sachin and Jigar, a musical duo, who in a short span of time, has become popular among the millennials.

From composing television jingles to arranging music for hit music directors like A R Rahman, Amit Trivedi, Anu Malik, Vishal- Shekhar, and Pritam, Sachin Sanghvi and Jigar Saraiya became household names with their songs from ‘Shuddh Desi Romance’ and later, ‘Badlapur’ and ‘ABCD 2’ (‘Any Body Can Dance 2’).

The duo recently composed music for Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon starrer Bhediya. “The entire album of the film is a package of all kinds of songs. There are songs for a road trip to a jungle song, a romantic number to an item song,” said Jigar and added that creating an original album takes a whole lot of effort.

© Provided by Free Press Journal
Musical duo Sachin Jigar talk about their latest music composition in Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon led Bhediya, nuances of composing music, upcoming concerts and more

Talking about the process of making music for the film, Sachin shared, “Every script is different and according to the narration, we decide the kind of music that we should create for the movie. The horror genre is a great challenge but at the same time, we wanted to keep the music of the movie relatable.”

For the duo, it all started in 1992, when Sachin heard the music composed by A R Rahman for the film ‘Roja’. And for Jigar it was a live music jamming session when he was 15-year-old. “That was the moment that I decided to pursue music,” said Jigar. The young musicians also share that they learnt the nuances of music gradually as they started working. “We were not aware of the intricacies of music direction but we had the passion and burning fire that made us learn everything,” added Sachin. While Sachin has an expertise in Indian music and singing, Jigar on the other hand has expertise in western music and instruments like guitar, percussion, and piano.

When asked about their creative differences they said they do have disagreements over many compositions. “Definitely, we do disagree and have varied ideas but there are merits in creative differences as they lead to growth. We always go with the idea that is good for the song. We always like to challenge ourselves to do something different. The fact that we come from a similar background makes us easy to sync with each other,” shared the musical duo.

Apart from Bappi Lahiri’s ‘Jimmy Jimmy’ song, here are 5 Bollywood songs which became sensation on foreign lands way before

They have just finished composing a special song  for the film ‘Govinda Naam Mera’ starring Kaira, Vicky Kaushal and Bhumi Pednekar  and songs of a Gujarati film, ‘Aum Mangalam Singlem’. “There is another movie that stars Vicky Kaushal again and Sara Ali Khan, and there are many other projects as well, so there is a lot of music coming,” confirms the musicians.

“It’s always good to work with Arijit Singh and would want to collaborate with him again. We like Lucky Ali and love K K. We would be doing more collaborations with independent artists in the future,” said Jigar. 

As most of the Sachin-Jigar’s fans are eagerly waiting for their concerts, and when asked about the same, they concluded saying, “Yes, we are planning public concerts soon which will start from Ahmedabad and proceed to other cities.”

Music of the dunes