Composing anchors my musical life, but sometimes it’s only the beginning of my creative journeys. The 2019-20 season has plenty of focus on my compositions, but it also has me storyboarding an animated film; creating a multimedia installation for the Kennedy Center’s new campus; and DJing in a variety of clubs and art spaces. Here’s an overview of the season ahead:
Philharmonia Fantastique
One of the biggest musical events of my life happens this spring with the premiere of Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, for animated film and live orchestra, by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. This is a dream project, the result of years of creative work and fundraising. The work explores the connection between creativity and technology with the help of a capricious Sprite, who flies through instruments as they’re played.
Director Gary Rydstrom of Skywalker Sound is a legend in sound design, having won seven Oscars for his work with Spielberg, and he has also directed several Lucasfilm animated films such as Strange Magic. A few years ago, I approached him about making an animated film that would journey inside the orchestra without words, using purely images and music to showcase the wonders of musical engineering that make up the orchestra. Gary brought in famed animator Jim Capobianco, whose Aerial Contrivance Workshop has created animation for Disney and Pixar films, and we’ve been working at Skywalker Ranch over the past year.
In the film, you’ll airwaves sliced by flute keys and trumpet values…you’ll fall inside a cello as it’s vibrating…you’ll perch atop a timpani head while its being struck. Additional commissioners include the National, Pittsburgh, and Dallas Symphonies, as well as the Goldman Foundation. It will subsequently be released in theaters and on TV, but you should catch it live first!
Kennedy Center
Of my guiding lights as composer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been the integration of ambient information into my concerts. In things such as my KC Jukebox series, the audience is immersed in a fluid and social environment amidst projected imagery and information, a 21st century update on the program book. The opening of the Center’s new REACH campus takes this one step further with a week-long installation in the Skylight Pavilion, where I’m creating a series of immersive environments responding to a variety of musical styles, from Renaissance choral music to Detroit techno. The KC Jukebox series itself, which recently featured the composers of the Netflix hit Stranger Things alongside a tribute to composer Johann Johannsson, continues in its fifth year with appearances by DJ Juan Atkins, Get Out composer Michael Abels, and many others. Also at the Kennedy Center, the National Symphony Orchestra will perform several of my works, beginning with Warehouse Medicine from The B-Sides and continuing later with Resurrexit.
Opera & ballet
Later this season, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs comes to the heart of the tech world with performances at San Francisco Opera in June/July 2020. This is a major event in the life of this opera. It’s been thrilling to see audiences embrace the work from Santa Fe to Seattle to Indiana, but there’s nothing like bringing an opera to the locale of its setting. My initial inspiration for the piece was the Bay Area’s legion of creative technologists, whose work is changing the way we interact, create, and live. Jobs remains a fascination for techies and non-technics alike, someone whose personal challenges and contradictions are the stuff of opera. San Francisco Opera has been a phenomenal partner from the start of the commissioning process, and they’re bringing back the original cast that won the 2019 Grammy for Best Opera, led by baritone Edward Parks and mezzo Sasha Cooke. Also onstage this season are several ballets, from Aszure Barton’s stunning work at the Houston Ballet to a work by Joffrey Ballet’s Nicholas Blanc, who reprises a work he recently created for NYC Ballet.
Resurrexit and popular works
Performances of new and popular symphonic works continue throughout the season, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra touring my new biblical opener Resurrexit. Inspired by Maestro Manfred Honneck’s focus on spirituality in music, the piece animates the classic narrative of the Resurrection with propulsion and theatricality. Pittsburgh is a world-class orchestra that has played more of my music than any other, so it’s thrilling to have them tour the work from Hamburg to Vienna.
Another new works gets featured this season when the Colorado Symphony records my recent oratorio Children of Adam, which was just released by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra under Steven Smith. Colorado’s music director Brett Mitchell is a leading light in American music, a master of repertoire old and new, and it’s been a joy to get to know him over several seasons. Other popular works such as Alternative Energy and Mothership continue all over the place – just check out my calendar to see where.