I attend a monthly documentary club in the Twin Cities, where directors screen their works-in-progress. When Kyle Whitney shared his footage of interviews with nuclear bomb survivors in Japan, my jaw dropped at these stories he captured.
I just finished a retro video game score for Demon's Hymn 2: Prelude of Night. Will Tice of unTied Games decided to take on the LOWREZJAM challenge again this year and make this 64x64 pixel sequel to the original Demon's Hymn. It's an incredibly ambitious game for just 2 weeks of work. For my soundtrack, I started with the same sound palette of church organ and ghostly synths as the first game, and I introduced more orchestral (but bitcrushed) instruments like French horn and alto flute.
Two films I scored will be airing on Twin Cities Public Television in September as part of their MNTV lineup: "This is Home" by Jason P. Schumacher and "Beneath the Ink" by Cy Dodson (I co-scored this with Stephen Letnes).
I just received some very exciting news. I wrote an orchestral piece for the Banaue International Music Composition Competition, and I found out I'm a semi-finalist! As one of the 20 composer-fellows chosen from around the world, I get to travel to the Philippines for a composer immersion program in July. My piece, Balitúk: the Divided Child, will be rehearsed with a full orchestra and traditional Ifugao instruments from that region.
I recently scored an intriguing documentary by prolific director Melody Gilbert, called Silicone Soul. It features people (mostly men) who develop relationships with their life-size silicone dolls. It's one that will likely make you uncomfortable at first, but by the end you may have more empathy for the subjects than you might expect.
At the end of February, I joined in on the Train Jam - a train ride from Chicago to San Fransisco filled to the brim with game makers. The goal of the train jam is to team up and make video games during the 52-hour ride. In the end, 80 games were finished! You can play them all here.
Since there were so many of us composers, I thought it would be fun to put all the music in one place. We created 63 songs, so I divided them up into five albums, all free to download on Bandcamp.
50 composers participated in the Composer Quest Olympic Games, a series of six Olympics-themed composing challenges: National Anthems, Table Tennis, Weightlifting, Hurdles, Relay Race, and Composer's Choice. If you're in Minnesota, join us at the American Composers Forum on Monday to find out who won the gold, silver, and bronze medals, and stick around to hang out with some of the composers who participated.
Since I'll be on my Composer Quest World Tour this fall, I decided we had to do something worldly and big for the final composing quest. In the spirit of the 2016 Rio Olympics, I'll be hosting the official Composer Quest Olympic Games!
I'm excited to announce my Kickstarter campaign for the final season of the Composer Quest podcast: a multi-month musical adventure around the US, Australia, and Taiwan. I asked listeners if they'd be willing to host me, and I got a great response! I'm really looking forward to visiting all these cool places, interviewing creators there, and adding this exciting "on location" element to the final season of the podcast.
I have to share some potentially heartbreaking news with you: 2016 will be the final year of Composer Quest (see below for an explanation). But I want the podcast to go out with a bang, which is why I'm planning a Composer Quest WORLD TOUR in the fall. The plan is to travel for three months, visit fans, conduct interviews, and produce epic weekly episodes based on my travels.