We’re proud to announce the completion of the world premiere recording of Michael Staley’s evocative new ballet Pompeii (2011).

Sign up to be notified when the full recording is available.

Excerpts

We’ve completed our performance and recording of Mike Barnett’s tour-de-force concerto for piano and orchestra, “Lucifer Rising.”

  Lucifer Rising, for piano and orchestra, by Mike Barnett (20 minutes)

Contact Mike if you’d like to play or commission a new work:  Mike Barnett

Composer David Moulton has been commissioned to create music and sound design for Kansas City’s new Kauffmann Center for the Performing Arts opening in September. Moulton uses customized musical building blocks created by the Fauxharmonic Orchestra to create music that appears to move through space, either “bouncing” or “sweeping” from one loudspeaker to another.

In the central atrium sound will appear to rise from the bottom when triggered by pedestrians walking in from their cars, and will appear to fall when they return from the center itself.  According to Moulton, the music will be “understated, leaving the pedestrians open to anticipation of what might be next, and how it will appear to change with their changes in position, rather than a pervasive sonic perfume that is so typical of most public music playback scenarios.”

About David Moulton

David Moulton is a composer and producer with expertise in acoustics and electronic music.  With degrees from Bard College and The Juilliard School of Music, he studied with Jacob Druckman, Vincent Persichetti, Luciano Berio and Roger Sessions.  He has composed numerous large, multi-channel electronic music works, and has pioneered composition an music production in a six-channel periphonic format.  He was nominated for a Grammy in 2000 for Best Engineered Classical Recording (George Crumb’s Ancient Voices of Children).

Moulton is one of the inventors of acoustic lens technology, now owned and used by Danish audio manufacturer Bang & Olufsen, and used in their groundbreaking speakers, as well as in cars made by Audi, Aston Martin and Mercedes Benz.  Moulton also taught at the State University of New York, Berklee College of Music, the University of Massachusetts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  He serves as a trustee for the New England Institute of Art.

Videos

We’d love to feature your video of the Kauffman Center atrium and parking garage music.  (It’s the only way we can show what it’s like).  If you have one, send us the link at info@fauxharmonic.com.

The Fauxharmonic Orchestra’s original film score won the gold award for “best use of music” at the 2011 International Visual Communications Association (IVCA) Awards ceremony in London, England.

Composed by Paul Henry Smith, the orchestral score brings a magical, cinematic grandeur to “The Spirit Within,” an effects-heavy corporate film produced for Laing O’Rourke by London-based communications firm Cheerful Scout.

“It’s quite a thrill to be able to use orchestral music—previously a luxury completely beyond my wildest imaginings,” said Cheerful Scout CEO Peter Litten, who also praised Smith’s music as “one of the best scores I have ever had composed for anything. Inspirational, clever, witty and altogether fabulous.”

“The Spirit Within” Creating an inspiring and unique film to generate a sense of pride among internal staff and showcase Laing O’Rourke’s exceptional portfolio of key projects to external audiences via the sales teams.

IVCA awards are recognized internationally as marks of excellence for effective business communication in corporate video, live events, multimedia projects, business television and websites. The awards set a standard of excellence and introduce clients to programs and projects which have made a significant impact on business.

Winners are presented before an audience of commissioners, government representatives, industry colleagues and the media at a Gala Awards Ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, held every spring.

Danny Boy (arr. for strings)

We just finished recording a lush string orchestra accompaniment for Danny Boy, arranged by Romeo Cascarino. We’re reminded again just how important smart arranger-chops are to getting a great performance.

The Little Magic Flute, Mozart (clips)

Stefan Moseman of Kölner Opernkiste, a small opera troupe presenting musical theater for kids in and around Köln, Germany, asked us to create a short version of Mozart’s Magic Flute for their singers to perform with.

Decade, by Tony Cheseaux performed by the Fauxharmonic Orchestra.

Decade, for concert band, was written in 1996 for the “Angelo Bearpark Brass Ensemble” on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.

The music is based on the theme of the number “10,” which you can hear, for example, in the two quintuplets in the low brass at the end.

Score and parts are available from the publisher.

About Tony Cheseaux, composer.

Savvy commercial visualization specialists Cheerful Scout (London) recently hired The Fauxharmonic Orchestra to compose and produce an orchestral film score for one of their client’s major promotional efforts.

The full symphonic score accompanied a five-minute promotional film highlighting the firm’s impressive large-scale construction projects around the world. Heavy use of CG effects to bring blueprints, models and photos to life called for musical material to emphasize the magical act of creation.

Cheerful Scout CEO Peter Litten exclaimed “I absolutely love it! It’s one of the best scores I have ever had composed for anything. Inspirational, clever, witty and altogether fabulous.” The Fauxharmonic’s custom-composed score outperformed library music, which could never have closely and effectively matched the wordless story arch and vignettes in the film. Yet, as Mr. Litten noted, “to be able to use orchestral music [was] previously a luxury completely beyond my wildest imaginings!”

Excerpt
“The Spirit Within”
Composers – Ric Mills, Paul Henry Smith

Composing music for video games poses very interesting aesthetic and technical challenges. For example, game music composers can write variations on a theme, and organize the music so that certain variations may or may not be played depending on the specific actions in the game.

But it gets even more interesting.

Game composers can do something that concert music composers and film composers can’t: They can create musical variations that the listener can randomly (or purposefully) “move through” at will. The first measure of music might be variation 1, but the 2nd measure could be from variation 28 if the game player, say, pulls out his flask of magic potion at that point. Modern game consoles are designed to handle this sort of conditional sound-play very easily. And so the opportunity for musically creative goodness is huge!

Moldover - You know he's hot, look at that smoke!

I’ll be presenting this idea with Moldover, showing how Beethoven actually composed that way.

Come check it out at GameSoundCon San Francisco on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. It’s not too late to register!

After we recorded the first two movements of Chris Sainsbury’s wonderfully evocative “Symphony of the Birds” he entered it into the New England Philharmonic’s call for scores – and won! The New England Philharmonic will perform the first movement on October 30, 2010, in Boston.  (Concert details)

As Sainsbury says, “I’m sure the fantastic recording by the Fauxharmonic Orchestra added much weight to my submission to the New England Philharmonic, and assisted in the ultimate win in their Call for Scores Competition.”

Listen: First Light –

Chris Sainsbury on his “Symphony of the Birds”

[Chris Sainsbury's website]
This piece was commissioned by Chris Bearman, Musical Director of the Central Coast Symphony Orchestra and Conservatorium in Gosford City, Australia. The brief was to ‘keep it local’ which was great as it is in keeping with my thinking. I’d been increasingly concerned about the global focus in all aspects of life. To achieve this ‘local idea’ I used local bird sounds of the region (at latitude 33 on the east coast of Aust) as source material for the piece.

Having grown up in the same region I’ve lived with these birds and they’ve got their claws into me (not always metaphorically)!

This work was conceived and realised using my concepts of:

1. Ground Sounds
2. Sky Sounds
3. Near-melodies

The terms are original (as far as I know) and deliberately uncomplicated. They are Australian as far as I’m concerned. I am now thinking and hearing under these ‘elements’ of music, which of course cross-over with the various elements of music that we know. The difference is really in the hearing – in the genesis of ideas and the working of material, and in the thinking.

Ground sounds are characterised by sustain, repetitive device, ‘melod-ercussion’, and the non-development of idea (in a Western sense). These are present through sustain, subtle convergences, absence of dramatic interpolations, veiled ostinati, use of tone- scenes (the dominance of particular colour combinations), and subtle melod-ercussive device (melodic thumps, scratchings, breaks and bumps).

Sky sounds are simply the phenomenon of sky reverb and sky amplification, which vary in the natural environment with landscape, weather and time of day. At various points I set out to orchestrate reverb and amplification into the work (as in the first half of movement two).

Near-melodies are the melodic fragments of birds. They sound short songs and calls, often fantastic tunes which they abandon as soon as they’ve begun. Of course they are entire (probably for birds), but we need something longer to call ‘a piece’. In this light I strung them together end on end at times (for major themes), ‘classicising’ them. There are however, many near-melodies that are left in tact in the work, abandoned as soon as sounded.

I use some fifty bird sounds as motives in the work, with all melodies and chords stemming from those. With this amount of ‘tunes’ rolling one can see the need to be careful about Western developmental thinking. It could become too big and messy! Indeed I don’t dramatically ‘develop’ any bird sound melodically, but leave them always intact. There is no augmentation of interval, nor inversion of tune, nor fragmentation or such device. I have used simpler treatments such as transposing up a step and have at times expanded the rhythm of the near-melodies. Basically I suspended part of me the composer and I didn’t mess too much with the birds!

Some near-melodies in the work are clearly identifiable bird sounds, down to the species. Some are ‘my good rendition’ of a bird sound I heard and whilst it works for listeners as bird sound, it would be difficult to identify the species (especially some of the parrots). The species include parrots (Lorikeets, King Parrots and others), Wattle-birds, Butcher-birds (my favourite), the Koel, Plovers, Gulls, Various Finches, and more. Some I didn’t even see, but notated.

All the notations are classicised into a twelve note system. Birds have a syrinx, rather than a larynx, and make complicated sounds. It was my primary intention to write music, not completely emulate bird sounds. In this light the various movements are basically Western in format. It is a vehicle which assists the listener to ‘hear my local environment’, essentially enabling a visit!

I hope you enjoy the work. Don’t listen too closely for the various birds, just take wing yourself!”