profile | MEMETERIA by Thomas May

August 9, 2016 • 9:53 am Comments Off on Shimmering Color and Incandescence

Shimmering Color and Incandescence

UPDATE:

Here’s the link to the complete piece.

My profile of violinist Augustin Hadelich and his Grammy Award-winning interpretation of Henri Dutilleux with the Seattle Symphony and Ludovic Morlot will appear in the August 2016 issue of Strings magazine. A brief sample:

Augustin Hadelich just missed being in Los Angeles to receive his first-ever Grammy Award. He had even traveled to LA for a chamber concert the day before the ceremony but was already en route to his next engagement — with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in Poole on England’s coast — when congratulations for winning the Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo starting pouring in via social media.

Filed under: Henri Dutilleux, profile, violinists

October 17, 2015 • 6:51 am Comments Off on Screen Test

Screen Test

The new issue of LISTEN Magazine contains my profile of composer and film music veteran JAC Redford, who just orchestrated Thomas Newman’s music for the upcoming James Bond film (Spectre):

THE WHOLE PICTURE is what counts; and the composer must see it not as a composer but as a man of the theater,” wrote Leonard Bernstein, reflecting on composing the score for On the Waterfront.

Bernstein’s adventure into film scoring — marred by creative scrapes with the film’s director Elia Kazan — was unpleasant for him, and marked the conductor–composer’s first and last time writing film music (not counting already existing scores that were adapted for film) — anomaly in an otherwise naturally collaborative career. But for many composers, there’s something perpetually alluring about the medium of film.

Like a particular scent, the simplest chord progression or snatch of soaring melody from a beloved score can instantly trigger a flood of memories—both personal and cultural.

continue reading [opens as pdf]

Filed under: composers, film music, James Bond, profile

March 5, 2015 • 5:36 pm Comments Off on Hercules vs. Vampires: Opera Goes to the Movies

Hercules vs. Vampires: Opera Goes to the Movies

Los Angeles Opera truly has become a company interested in innovation. Next month brings Hercules vs. Vampires, an opera-meets-cult film mashup between Mario Bava’s 1961 film (Hercules in the Haunted World) and LA-based composer Patrick Morganelli.

Here’s my interview with Mr. Morganelli:

A century ago, the budding film industry borrowed pretty heavily from opera—which makes a lot of sense, considering how the larger-than-life gestures of operatic acting suited the new medium of silent film so effectively.

And film has been repaying the favor in recent years: Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Kevin Puts’ Silent Night, Howard Shore’s The Fly, André Previn’s Brief Encounter, even a new opera by Giorgio Battistelli inspired by the controversial Al Gore documentary An Inconvenient Truth, set to premiere in May at La Scala.

continue reading

Filed under: Los Angeles Opera, profile, programming

August 22, 2014 • 4:58 am 1

Seattle Mayor’s Arts Awards 2014: Stephen Stubbs

Stephen Stubbs

My profile of Stephen Stubbs, one of this year’s recipients of the Mayor’s Arts Awards in Seattle, is now live on City Arts:

When he was coming of age in his native Seattle in the 1960s, Stephen Stubbs experienced a sea change in popular music that glorified the image of the troubadour. Countless musicians picked up a guitar, accompanying themselves to songs intended to be authentic, from the heart.

Stubbs was among them—only the instrument he was plucking was a lute. At Nathan Hale High School, Stubbs had belonged to a madrigal choir, which stoked his curiosity about Renaissance music.

continue reading

Filed under: culture news, early music, profile

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