Actor/director Paolo Costanzo, who plays Evan R. Lawson on the USA Network series Royal Pains, needed a collaborator to bring to life his vision: a musical production number to cap a five-episode summer 2013 series on the show’s website. Working with composer/arranger/producer Charlie Barnett, Costanzo wrote and filmed “Shine,” a Disney-style musical daydream about a hotly contested village council election.
Last Christmas, the pop star Beck blew me away by releasing an album on sheet music only. His stunning Song Reader inspired professional and amateur musicians all over the world to record their own renditions of his songs…and it inspired me to publish a sheet music collection of my own. Chaise Lounge fans have made a few transcriptions in years past (notably, an all-female barbershop version of “A Man Who Can Cook”) but this is the first time I’ve published official charts. The new collection contains 20 songs arranged for piano-vocal, with guitar symbols above the vocal line. The work includes some of Chaise Lounge’s most-requested tunes, of course, along with numbers such as “I Know Him,” a stoical torch song from my off-off-Broadway show, The Last Days of Cleopatra; a song of longing and heartbreak called “Internal Bleeding”; and a gospel-inspired road tune called “Brick and Mortar.” The cover folder was beautifully designed by Adriana Cordero of DesignCordero.
I recently wrote some cues for an upcoming episode of Archer. Have you seen this? It is a cartoon on the FX network–but calling it “a cartoon” is like calling Neil Gaiman “a comic-book author.” Archer is dark and funny, and its humor bounces back and forth between urbane, fully adult humor full of current arty references and equally funny, but absolutely puerile and downright raunchy jokes. The music is a combination of faux-spy-thriller and Mad Men. Of course, since I live in my own delusional world of a perpetual 1962, replete with narrow lapels and Sammy Davis Jr. arrangements, this was not a problem for me.
I’ve been arranging three arias for San Francisco soprano Andrea Plamondon, an artist in many genres whose voice has been called “both atmospheric and entrancing.” In December, we’ll record these three operatic works with full orchestra as part of her forthcoming album. The best musical surprise for me has been Andrea’s choice of the song “Nella Fantasia.” It is actually a film cue written by the famous composer Ennio Morricone for the 1986 drama The Mission. Chiara Ferraù wrote lyrics to it, and it is beautiful. I can’t thank Andrea enough for introducing me to this wonderful piece of music.
As you may know, I am the musical director for Gia Mora, the brilliant writer and producer of a one-woman cabaret show called Einstein’s Girl. In this show, Gia has managed to take the latest concepts in theoretical physics, the Big Bang, and the experience of falling in love, and come up with a unified theory that ties them all together. We have been performing the show coast to coast, garnering rave reviews (including perhaps the only ink I’ll ever get in Scientific American). We will be back in New York at the Metropolitan Room this Saturday, October 12th. Then on Friday, October 18th, we’re playing in my hometown: Easton, Pennsylvania. If you come, please introduce yourself! By the way, the CD of the show is out on my label, Modern Songbook Records.
The CMJ jazz chart, which tracks airplay on college, NPR, and community radio stations, has embraced the new album by my band Chaise Lounge, Dot Dot Dot. We debuted at number 23 last week, and this week we were up to number 12! I don’t think we will be challenging Miley Cyrus’s place in the pop pantheon, but it is nice to know that there are spots win the world where people are listening to music like this.
Three weeks ago, I had no idea that a television show called Royal Pains existed. It is a dramedy on the USA Network, and it’s one of the highest-rated shows on cable! Shows how much I know. But I got a call from one of the producers, and for the past two weeks I have been engrossed in writing a song for a webisode starring and directed by actor Paulo Costanzo, who plays businessman Evan R. Lawson on the program.
This has been an extremely satisfying television experience. First of all, the producers are smart and effective—not something you can take for granted in any business. Secondly, the cast is amazingly down-to-earth. Many of them sang on this piece, even though none except Paulo and Reshma Shetty (who plays physician’s assistant Divya Katdare) are trained singers. Still, they gave some terrific performances. And it has been great fun collaborating with Paolo, who had a very strong vision for the webisode and the song. I’m used to being a lone wolf when I write, and it was refreshing to try to put myself inside someone else’s head and channel what they were hearing.
The recording sessions all took place at Soundtrack studios in NYC, where the engineers were super sharp and seemed truly hungry to work on music. It turns out that 99% of their work is “production work,” i.e., overdubbing (also called ADR), sound effects, etc. One of the engineers confided to me that the reason he got into audio engineering was to record music. Hmmm? I was under the impression that all audio engineers got into the business for that.
When giving me a tour of Soundtrack, the engineers were quick to point out the spaces that used to be big rooms for recording orchestras. Now they are cut up into small production rooms. Pity. Their “big” room is smaller than Studio A at Cue Recording in Falls Church, the studio where I spend so much time. Still, the recording experience was wonderful. I mixed down the song (with the help of one of my go-to guys at Cue), and they are going into production on their dream-sequence music video for the web. I can’t wait to see what it looks like when they are done!
Another benefit: Now I know about Royal Pains. It is an entertaining, mile-a-minute show. Beautifully shot. Strong acting. Intriguing story lines. I’m hooked.
I recently scored a feature-length documentary on post World War II printmaking in the American Midwest. Somehow, in my mind, Midwest printmaking meant clarinet. And that meant I got the pleasure of recording the principal clarinetist from the Kennedy Center’s opera orchestra, David Jones. What a delight it was working with such a talented multi-instrumentalist. We used clarinet, flute, tenor sax, and bass clarinet in the studio, and David managed to give me every tone color I needed. I could have dug through every synth patch I have to score this and never come up with what that David was able to give me in one beautiful recording session. The film, Midwest Matrix, directed by Susan Goldman, was screened last month in Milwaukee.
If you’re a composer, there is a moment when you are laying out ideas for the first movement of an orchestral piece that has serious consequences for all the following movements. You must decide whether you want to use a contrabassoon. Or a bass clarinet. Or a piano. Decisions like this can affect who will eventually play, or even look at, your piece.
I’m told there is nothing more infuriating to a conductor than finding out that the composer has written for contrabassoon for only one movement–and that the part is crucial to the overall feeling of the score. This means that the other movements will feature a fully paid contra player sitting on his hands in the woodwind section. For most of the orchestras that play my work, this is a couple hundred bucks that could be used for something else. I have learned my lesson: I don’t include a supplementary instrument in a piece unless I am going to use it throughout.
As for piano, I have found that most rehearsal halls for community orchestras do not have pianos, and that many concert halls have horrible pianos. Including piano in your score–no matter how Copland-y you are feeling–could preclude having the piece chosen for a performance. You are generally better off writing for marimba or harp.
I resisted using Sibelius notation software at first. I was very happy with my Judy Green score paper and Judy Green pencils. But the software has some features that help me keep music directors happy. Chief among them is the program’s strong preference for consistent orchestrations in a piece. If you try adding instruments midway through, you are asking for a world of trouble. Ten years of Sibelius–and even longer working with the conductors of academic, regional, and community orchestras–has made me a better, more consistent, and more user-friendly composer.
Starting an album is easy. Finishing it is hard. After some really fun and completely exhausting work, we’re done recording and mixing the next Chaise Lounge CD. The album, Dot Dot Dot, features some of our most-requested songs, including “The Coolest Car,” which has already been played on NPR’s Car Talk, and “My Losing Streak,” a show-stopping instrumental featuring our sax player, Gary Gregg. Along with nine of my originals, the CD includes covers such as Leonard Bernstein’s “Cool” and a terrifyingly fast version of Jerome Kern’s “Old Man River.” The album should be making its way onto record store shelves by mid-May. Oh wait…there aren’t any more record stores. But you’ll be able to find the CD at chaiseloungenation.com.