In a feat of inefficiency I managed to release a single last month and fail to post about it here! The release date was planned, came and went, and I was busy working on other projects. Hey ho.
Regardless, Ugly Little Robots is available on all reputable streaming services, and quite possibly some disreputable ones too.
You can even stream it from the comfort of this post.
Enjoy!
Around 10 years ago I was holed up in a room on Broadway busy writing a new musical. It wasn’t THE Broadway, but rather a practice room at NYU - alums get some privileges for forking out the exorbitant tuition fees after all.
The new tunes were to be part of an 80s inspired musical ‘Spandex’. It found it’s way to an Off-Broadway theatre a few months later. Actually, the theatre was already booked at this point, and I had to get the songs written, and the score complete in time for rehearsals to begin in March
After the run closed the musical sat around for a few years, did some workshopping and resurfaced for a short run in Minneapolis. When the pandemic hit in 2020 it got turned into an audio-musical to be savored from the comfort of your favorite chair.
Which brings us to today… Director Liz Piccoli and the show’s originator Daniel F. Levin decided to create a tongue-in-cheek music video for one of the songs from the show, and the resulting cinematic frolic is doing the rounds at festivals.
The World Premiere of the full video is showing at the New York Indie Theater Film Festival later this month, but in the meantime the song has just won Best Original Song at the Paris Film Awards. Hence my tooting of horn.
I’ll let you get back to your regularly scheduled programming of dog videos now.
Photo: Daniel Albanese
A couple of months ago (back when it was shorts and t-shirt weather) I visited the wonderful Denizen Theatre in New Paltz to see the final performance of their summer production ‘Grounded’.
As I chatted with the Artistic Director after the show we discovered we had lots in common, including having lived in uptown Manhattan, recently relocated to the Hudson Valley, and most of all, shared an affection for our trusty Subaru Foresters.
Whether it was this, or my accent I’ll never know. But either way, he asked me if I’d like to sound design the next production at the Denizen, and I replied with a hearty ‘yes, but I’ve never used Q-Lab before’.
A handful of YouTube videos, and a bunch of atmospheric time stretched creaks later, and the show has opened! ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ is a stage production of the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, performed by the excellent Sean Meehan (The Normal Heart, Madame Secretary).
Designing the atmospherics for this piece was an adventure in found sounds and processing (thank you Izotope). Plus I got to learn how to program a new bit of software!
The show runs Thurs-Sun from now until the end of October. For more info and tickets head over here.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of working with the wonderful director Cynthia Silver on her short film ‘The Shallow End’.
Set in the 80s, the film reflects ‘the sunny glow of Reagan’s America’, and the soundtrack was the result of much guilty-pleasure research listening, and a hefty dose of misplaced childhood.
The film premiered at the 2019 Adirondack Film Festival, and went on to play many other festivals and garner a slew of awards.
And as of September 15th 2022, you can stream the soundtrack for your own guilty-pleasure listening. It’s short but fun; kind of like a garden gnome.
Directed by Cynthia Silver
Written by Wendy MacLeod, based on her one-act play of the same title
Produced by Julia Kennelly
with Zoe Wilson, Zoe Manarel, Parker Winston, Sanai James and Trevor Brooks
Executive Producers: Paul Marcarelli & Cynthia Silver
Associate Producer: Aaron Dean Eisenberg
Co-Producers: Alisa Lessing & Marianna Murphy
Director of Photography: Jenelle Pearring
Editor & Post Supervisor: Will Mayo
Production Designer: Caryn Novak
Art Director: Valeria Brenes
Composer: Julian Blackmore
Wardrobe Stylist: Wlaa Elashkar
Hair & Makeup: Heidi Bowles
Casting Director: Erica A. Hart
The Shallow End premiered at the 2019 Adirondack Film Festival.
Remember summer? Back when days were warm, nights were long, and the grill never stopped churning out hot dogs?
During that time I was lucky enough to partner with British director Lee Morgan on his short ‘The Piano’. Adding on to my ‘normal’ duties as composer, I also did sound design and editing, plus mixing, for the film.
A cut was put together in time for the Portabello Film Festival in August, and the film went on to win Best Comedy in the festival. Toot toot!
On a technical note, I made the brave (for me) move of editing and assembling the audio in Pro Tools - a program that until relatively recently I shied away from. Now I’m all about moving those clips around the page!
Stay tuned for updates on the film, and opportunities to view it!
Hello hello! I’ve been fiendishly devouring podcasts while on my morning runs recently. Partly to prevent my body from protesting about continued movement, and partly as research for my work with Progress Pop’s podcast ‘Strange Archives’.
This fascinating series explores bizarre and forgotten events that helped shape the world as we know it today. It’s like the ‘Twilight Zone’, except everything actually happened. It’s fascinating stuff, and I’m thrilled to be part of the team on this project.
In addition to writing the theme music, I’m also scoring each episode with a plethora of textures and swirls to add to the mystery of the stories told.
Episode 2 ‘America’s Ghost Army’ is out now, wherever you find your podcasts.
Enjoy!
