On another note: our much admired and respected Web Design Master for this  web site, Chris Stevens, has implemented a new Audio button on the top right of each page on this site, so that at any time you can just jump to a separate page and listen to the songs that we have posted.  Brilliant idea.

And so, the big news!  We are back in the studio on February 20, 2012 to record ‘Under Her Spell’ (Cue 10, Act I).  The orchestration for this song, completed by Mark Buys, is just fabulous and we’re really excited about how it is going to sound.  We will post the song within a day or two after the vocal session.  Hang tight, we know it’s been a long time coming.  All good things are worth the wait!

I’ll return to themes and ideas started on the History of Mexican Music and also the use of Aztec music instruments in MMO shortly.  Right now, I have to go back to work on Cue 30.

By the way, the image used for this post is the extraordinary Flamenco dancer, Carmen Amaya, as photographed in 1963.

Take care,

Kevin

What is fascinating about the work, beyond the incredible guitar playing, is the way in which the orchestral accompaniment has been thought through by Amargós to accompany the solo contributions by both Tomatito and his daughter, Mari Ángeles Fernández Torres (Vocals).

Ultimately the work loses ground under the inertia created by the sometimes overly dense orchestral texture – as stylish as it is on occasion – rather than setting out to simply underpin and support the musical framework outlined by the soloists.  Here, however, is the rub.  This CD is a great accomplishment, because getting an orchestra to work seamlessly with a solo guitar remains one of the monumental challenges for any composer and/or orchestrator.  I don’t think it matters whether the guitar playing is classical in style or, as it is here, flamenco-based.  There is nothing more or less complicated about adapting the compás in flamenco to an orchestral setting than there is in setting an idiomatic Jazz work within an orchestral framework.

The real problem is that we don’t have many, or nearly enough, examples of this type of work at this point of time to compare, dissect and examine.  What I do believe is that orchestrating in the style of de Falla, Ravel and other fin-de-siecle orchestral colourists is not the way forward in writing music for flamenco guitar and large ensembles in the 21st-Century.

As an aside, I did, much to my own surprise last year, see another score of a ‘flamenco’ guitar concerto in Los Angeles by the flamenco guitar pedagogue, Oscar Herrero, but I didn’t get to look at it long enough to see what it was really like – and I can’t remember the title of the work either!  Note to self: must follow that up!

Oh, and welcome back!  It’s 2012.  Work resumes on The Mapmaker’s Opera on Jan. 25.  I know I have said this before, but I promise we’ll have a new track up on the web site soon.

Best to you all,

Kevin

Oh, the picture?  It’s just a bit of seasonal silliness that we thought everyone might find humorous.  No offence intended!

Victor, Mark and me will be taking a short break between Christmas and Jan. 24,  2012 whilst we head off in different directions for our respective Summer vacations.  My wife and I are off to France and Spain to explore some towns and villages that we have never previously visited.  Also, I need to get some guitar practice done, so I’ll be taking my new concert guitar that I am picking up tomorrow from the wonderful British guitar-maker, Robert Russell.

Rob’s artisan guitars are breathtaking and heart stoppingly beautiful sounding.  Not numbered, but individually named in the great tradition of European Luthiers, my guitar is one of a pair (as is often the case) named the ‘White Hart’.  The other is known as ‘The Black Pearl’.  Any association with a certain certain pirate sailing ship is, I’m sure, coincidental!

Apropos, the location of Rob’s workshop in North Wraxall, Wilts. easily vies for one of the most beautiful places on God’s green earth, and is close to one of the best B & Bs in the UK – Ridley’s Cheer – run by the delightful Sue and Antony Young.  For the garden lovers amongst you who regularly read this blog, this would have to be one of the 100 places to see before you die, or better still, get Antony to landscape your garden.  Not to be outdone, Sue is a Le Cordon Bleu trained chef whom you definitely want to enveigle to prepare some culinary masterpiece to enjoy.  Ah, the memories of wonderful food stay with you forever (and “the added girth around the waistline” I can my wife saying!)

Take care and see you back here in 2012.

Kevin

There are, in actual fact, very few decent, informative or useful web sites devoted to the creative impetus behind writing new works for the musical stage.  In this instance, the creator of Make Musicals is Brisa Trinchero (pictured, and before you ask, “No I don’t know her”).  The following short bio. excerpt is taken from her ‘About’ page:

“Brisa founded Make Musicals and the Running Deer Musical Theater Lab in order to support new musicals at all phases of development. Through Make Musicals, Brisa hosts numerous writing teams at the Lab, maintains a blog addressing the art and business of new musicals and serves as a consultant to new musical festivals/developers around the country.”

I like this a lot.  It’s worth reading.

Take care,

Kevin

I begin with a disclaimer.  As you probably know, these posts are predominantly about annotating the creative compositional journey in adapting Béa Gonzalez’s wonderfully evocative novel, ‘The Mapmaker’s Opera’ (Thomas Dunne Books, 2005) into a musical stage version.

The musical composition journey started out with a detailed investigation into Flamenco (especially the Siguiriya) – a lengthy and quite humbling investigation into learning to adapt my classical guitar training and technique (see the early posts) – then followed by my current immersion in unraveling the idioms of ‘Mariachi’ music and, finally, in the not too distant future, we’ll look into those aspects of Aztec and Mayan musical cultures that we can glean from the very limited sources available.

This is not an academic exercise in research  per se, but a recognition that composing within different musical styles necessitates some effort in understanding the milieu being appropriated for such dramatic purpose and intent as required in each scene.  Consequently, I am not trying to be ethnomusicologically precise (at least not to the detriment of the lyrics and/or book) but merely attempting to provide an appropriate evocation of the period and setting of the novel’s stage adaptation.

Most of the information in this series of posts come from the following sources:

Apel. Paul. H. (1958). Music of the Americas, North and South.  N.Y.: Vantage Press, Inc.

Pan American Union. (n.d.). Music of Latin Americas.  Division of Musical Arts. (originally published In Literature, Arts and Music of the Club and Study Series. 1942, III. No. 3.)

http://www.mariachieducationresources.com/ (The web site of Laura Sobrino in Los Angeles) – an invaluable resource on all things ‘mariachi’.

It is also worth noting that in the last few days, UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list has added both Mariachi Music and the doleful Fado songs of Portugal to it.  I mention this because, akin to the loss of natural species underlying the narrative of Béa’s novel, promulgating the future of indigenous musical forms; their artists and creators, is so very important in this world in which we live.

The characteristic dance of the Yucatán is the Jarana (merry patter) and the words sung are often in the Mayan language.  It comes close to the melodic-rhythmic foundation of ancient Mexican songs.  Ancient tunes of the Mayas, Toltecs and Aztecs; existing before the Conquest, were based on the 5-tone scale, something like this: A C D E G.  This is important, because the Musical will open with music derived from this scale.

Interestingly enough, Cue 3 (‘Sunday in the Square’) which I have just finished composing for the Musical, actually makes extensive use of the ‘Son Jaliscience’ form which alternates between 6/8 and 3/4 time and has a really amazing bass line structure to it.

From the academic perspective, the composer, Manuel Ponce (1882-1948) is considered the pioneer of nationalism in México, having systematically investigated and used all types of mestizo folk music (corrido, jarabe, huapango son etc.).  He also, by and by, wrote a very fine Concerto for  Guitar (‘Concerto del sur’ from 1941).  See the video excerpt below.

Andrés Segovia performing the first movement of ‘Concerto de sur’

Carlos Chávez (1899-1978) the most influential early 20th-Century Mexican composer, has been particularly successful in assimilating elements of music based on ancient indigenous music.  In his works of Ámerindian character, such as ‘Los cuatro soles’, ‘Sinfonía India, or in his most abstract compositions, such as his last three symphonies (great pieces not nearly enough performed by the way) his highly personal style and Mexican identity appear so intimately connected that his music has been described as ‘profoundly non-European’.  Chavez also had a career as a conductor, founding the Orquesta Sinfónica de México in 1928.

Next in the series will be an overview of other Mexican composers of note from throughout the 20th-Century.

Muchos saludos,

Kevin

Well, I’ve finished Aunt Marta’s Song in Act II, entitled ‘There Was A Time’, and I have sketched the opening of the Musical to the tune of several hundreds of measures to work on further with Victor Kazan.

The opening scene is, well, a ‘scene’ in the truest sense of the word.  Promisingly, it looks like our young hero, Diego Clemente, is going to have a rollicking, fun, number supported by the eponymous Mariachi band in full swing (the ‘band’ appears regularly throughout the Musical in different guises and combination serving to underpin a variety of dramatic situations) and supported by the company, as we are introduced to most of our dramatis personae.  This type of expository opening is always tricky to pull off in a Musical, so we’re sweating over it a bit right now.

Anyhow, I thought I better just update everyone and offer surety to some of you more dedicated MMO fans that nothing is amiss.  I’m expecting to be back on deck proper next Monday.  Also; and as revision to my previous post, I would expect either ‘Under Her Spell’ (Cue 10) or ‘There Was A Time’ (Cue 26) to be the next songs to appear on the web site.

Take care and thanks for your all your kind emails of support for the project.  We’re getting there!

Kevin

In a previous post, I indicated that I would give a quick overview of the process of how we put together the audio of the songs being composed for MMO.  I thought I would start out by making a quick video, showing how the originating piano part of the piano/vocal chart for a particular song is input (in real-time) into a computer sequencing software program (for better or for worse, I’m currently using Apple’s Logic 9).

Once the piano part is recorded (as MIDI information), we use the performance as the tempo map upon which the full orchestration is rendered.  The show is being scored in another software program (Sibelius 6) and then all the individual lines exported and merged into this basic piano-only sequence file in Logic 9.

I’ll explain in greater detail how this is done in a forthcoming post and also how we get the instruments to sound ‘somewhat’ realistic as a representation of how the music would sound if performed by human musicians (a situation that is always and entirely preferable).

Thanks for dropping by.

Kevin

p.s. Song #3, ‘Under Her Spell’ from Act I for Diego is not far away.

This second song for Sofia Duarte is derived from page 115 in the Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martins Press Imprint) of the novel – Act II, scene i [In a Mérida square].

In the Musical, this is Act I, scene ii [in Sofia's bedroom] where, in the presence of her friend Patricia, she is recounting seeing Diego (Edward Nelson’s new assistant) for the first time earlier that day.  Patricia soon realises that Sofia; normally adverse to the advances of all would-be suitors, has been ‘smitten’ by the good-looking Spaniard.

On this recording, the role of Patricia is spoken by our dear friend, and wonderful Australian actress and singer, Maureen Andrew – who will later be heard singing the role of Aunt Marta (look out for this!) – and the charming Maddie Featherby reprises her role as Sofia Duarte.

MMO’s orchestrator, Mark Buys, did the score and the audio was mixed by Chris Scallan.

Click on the audio icon to hear the song.

Best wishes,

Kevin and Victor

More soon,

Kevin

Before anyone further asks: I’m able to knock all this work over in a short space of time because of the assistance of several highly accomplished and gifted music colleagues – in this case, Mark Buys and Vladimir Martinka – who manage to translate my ‘sketches’ into miraculously beautiful renditions in a short space of time (sometimes ‘very’ short!) And yes, I do sleep…occasionally.

Recently, I’ve also had the pleasure of being introduced to, and an opportunity to collaborate with, an audio engineer in Melbourne; Chris Scallan, who has wonderful ‘sonic ears’.  Recommend Chris highly!

Also news that I am making my first trip to México in mid-November and visiting the Yucatán Peninsula as well as México City.  More on this later.

Most importantly, the second song to be released on this site will happen by mid next week.  It is Cue 7 entitled, ‘When He Looked at Me’, for Sofia Duarte in Act I.  It’s all finished and we’re just waiting to get back into the recording studio to do the final mix.  We hope you like it?  Thanks also to everyone for their kind comments on ‘Home Sweet Home’.

Take care and back soon.

Kevin