The Architect

Abstract

Every composer has a few pieces that are his favorites: the ones that came in moments of inspiration or the ones that took a little bit longer than usual to figure out. These are the ones that you like just a little bit more than the others. My goal in writing this album was to write a collection that was 100% “favorites.”

The idea for this album’s title piece, “The Architect,” popped into my head when I saw the inside of Palladio’s church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice in the fall of 2013. I sat there for 30 minutes just letting my eyes trace the lines and the arches back and forth. This building predated Vivaldi by almost a century but it sparked the very Vivaldi-ish idea for “The Architect” – and that was the first piece written for this album. The other pieces are inspired by different moments or life circumstances, or in the case of “Things That Hold Memory” by a quote I heard recently on TV while I was making dinner: “Things that we touch hold memory in them.” Later that night I found myself buried in old family photo albums and digging through shoeboxes filled with faded color photos. Sometimes that’s how music comes about.

I’m a big fan of Baroque and Romantic music, and most especially a fan of modern-day film music. Composers like me are usually hired guns, brought onto a film or TV project to add that musical layer to the finished product, but we rarely get to just sit around and write music for the sake of writing it. With this album I pulled myself out of circulation for a few months and dedicated myself to writing the album that I wanted to write. This meant leaving technology behind for a little while and going back to good old-fashioned pencil and paper until I figured out a new workflow. Honestly? It was hard! But it was worth it. Sometimes a hard-reboot is what you need to get the creativity flowing.

Fast forward to May of 2014 when I was at AIR Studios in London, standing in front of the 18 musicians that would be recording this album for me. The experience was overwhelming: without any rehearsal, they sounded amazing. And my most vivid memory from that day was hearing the quick rehearsal take of “The Architect” for the first time: when they hit the big part at 2:00 (you’ll know it when you hear it!) it knocked the wind out of me.

I've written a lot of music in my years as a professional composer, but I've never been as proud of an end product as I am of this album. I hope it gets under your skin as much as it got under mine.