I’ve written a new ballet score for the wonderful Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin. It’s choreographed by Thomas Noone and is titled Many. I’m simply thrilled to have worked on this. Here are some excerpts from the piece: If you like it do download – you can do that by clicking on the files… but drop me a note to say hi! If you like my music I have some albums on bandcamp and iTunes. Here’s a press release from Faber Music;
In recent months, the name of UK composer and cellist, Philip Sheppard, has been very much in the media: a result of him having being commissioned to arrange and orchestrate all the national anthems for the London 2012 Olympics. He’s now recorded them all (205 in total!) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. However, Sheppard has also found time to complete a 30-minute commissioned dance score for Barcelona-based choreographer, Thomas Noone.
It’s premiered in Mulhouse by Le Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin on 22 January 2012, later transferring to Colmar and Strasbourg (9 performances in total). Sheppard has an impressive track record in writing for dance and theatre, having worked with Akram Khan, Sylvie Guillem and Juliette Binoche in recent years. In January 2012 he joins Khan and Guillem for performances of his 2006 score to ‘Sacred Monsters’, in the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris.
Tonight sees the premiere on More 4 of David Sington’s excellent documentary about the credit crisis in the US called ‘The Flaw’. This is the trailer. I was commissioned to write a cartoon-like score for the film – quite a different mode from my normal style of music…
Bobby Fischer Against the World, a film by Liz Garbus, has just premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Here are a few tracks from my soundtrack composed for the film, plus… the title track as a free download. (Click to download & please leave a comment below).
I first heard about Bobby Fischer when I was a kid, heavily into performing classical music. Many of the great Russian virtuoso musicians and composers had a reputation for being chess fanatics, and I remember my mother’s violin professor Beatrix Marr, describing the friendly rivalry between Boris Spassky and David Oistrakh (one of the world’s greatest violinists). Beatrix regularly thrashed me in chess matches in her cottage, making no allowance for my age…
Music begins with an opening gesture, a phrase or a hook and runs along a temporal plane before reaching a cadence, resolution and ending. Great music lives on as an impression of an experience intertwined with emotion and context. You don’t need to be able to interpret what the blobs and squiggles on a musical staff mean in order to be enveloped in a mindblowing musical experience. You don’t need to learn the ‘rules’ of harmony to be profoundly moved by a performance. The great chess grandmasters inhabit a world we can literally never comprehend. A great chess match is a performance, a spontaneous composition of pure elegant counterpoint.
The supreme master of counterpoint in the entire history of music is J.S.Bach. Even as an experienced musician, I cannot begin to grasp how he processed vast amounts of mathematical musical data, rendering it into perfectly structured miniature cathedrals of sound. The inside of his brain must have had parallels with that of Bobby Fischer, but despite this vast intellect he (unlike Fischer) was able to live a life as a complete human being. (I mean, he had fourteen children for a start…).
Bach’s famous first prelude in C was my starting point for scoring Bobby Fischer against the World. I took the theme and turned it inside out – it begins as fragmented and hesitant gestures as if unsure before playing out to an inevitable endgame. (That’s the piano and string orchestra track above by the way).
The whole of the rest of the score is composed from Bach’s themes – from the Goldberg Variations to the keyboard concertos. This piece below is based on the D minor keyboard concerto, though it’s totally unrecognizable as it’s more like a romantic American/Russian prelude that descends into a shameless waltz. This piece runs underneath the famous match between Spassky and Fischer known as the Game of Placid Beauty. This track was written in New York, against the clock when we were rushing to finish the film, and was a piece that went through so many versions and changes before settling on what became ironically known as The Brooklyn Symphony (there’s always one cue in a film which is a major problem and this was it..!)
On a final note, one deeply sad aspect of the making of this film was the loss of the brilliant editor Karen Schmeer. I had already worked with Karen for two years on Greg Barker’s extraordinary film Sergio, and Karen was a joy to work with. We knew each other purely through emails, Skype chats and the odd phone call. We never met, and it’s a strange kind of mourning when the person you knew and liked existed purely at the end of another laptop. Karen had plotted to get me involved in this film by surreptitiously working my older pieces into the rough cut of the movie, without Liz Garbus (the director) fully catching on to what was happening. The day before Karen left us, she had confided to me that her cunning plan was working very nicely.
The film is naturally dedicated to Karen, and the music is wholeheartedly for her (well, the good bits at least…).
Here below is the score for the Brooklyn Symphony with her dedication at the top. Thanks for reading this – Philip Sheppard
The score for the Brooklyn Symphony from Bobby Fischer Against the World.
It’s been a bit crazy round here… but I’ve been working with some amazing friends & musicians who’ve kept things sane and very happy.
I’ve been writing and recording with Evelyn Glennie, or Dame Evelyn Glennie O.B.E. as she should really be addressed. She’s one of the most phenomenal musicians I’ve ever worked with – stunning improviser, percussionista par excellence with a wicked sense of humour. By day two of recording together along with the great engineer Jake Jackson, we had completely forgotten the fact that she can’t hear a thing.
I really can’t wait to play you what we’ve come up with…
Meanwhile… The Tillman Story soundtrack is out on iTunes this week thanks to the sterling efforts of The Weinstein Co and Lakeshore records (who previously released my Shadow of the Moon Score). The film is featured in this week’s London Film Festival.
I’ve been back into the studio, (Abbey Road 2 this time), with the brilliant producer Ivor Guest to develop some nasty noises using a big string section for the latest release from France’s most idiosyncratic chanteuse Brigitte Fontaine. This woman is like Bjork’s cooler granny. Here’s a track I did with her with my electric cello doing some very disturbed things over the top…
She’s wonderful, outrageous and a darn good musician. The last album we worked on was called Prohibition and is worth a listen as I think it’s truly unique.
Meanwhile… I’ve been hard at work on recording and mixing my latest project, an incredible film about the chess genius Bobby Fischer. We assembled a fantastic string section in Air Studio 1 along with master engineer Geoff Foster who’s fresh off working on Narnia & Tron Legacy.
Geoff Foster looks up to see the orchestra left some time ago...
It was lovely being able to record the score with friends I’ve been in chamber groups with since the very early days, Pro Corda & Royal Academy and so forth, and yet pick up where we left off – the only downer being that we were playing my octets rather than Mendelssohn’s…!
You’ve read this far… that mean’s you’re awfully nice or haven’t anything better to do – so by way of an apology & thanks, here’s a track that isn’t particularly melancholic at all… which, if you like it, can be downloaded by clicking the down arrow. Leave me a note if you want!
My soundtrack for PBS’s forthcoming series God in America is out now on iTunes.
We had the launch party for the series in New York the other day together with the lovely stars of the series Michael Emerson (of Lost fame) and Chris Sarandon (Whom I know from The Princess Bride).
The series also stars Toby Jones – better known to some as Truman Capote and Dobby the house elf!
The traditional spiritual ‘Steal Away’ played by an orchestra of cellos, followed by a postlude – solo viola James Boyd. Hope you like it..! This is to be broadcast on the soundtrack to ‘God in America’ – October 10th, 11th, 12th 2010.
To mark the 70th anniversary of the ‘miracle of Dunkirk’, 50 of the surviving ‘little ships’ which made the original perilous cross-channel voyage returned to France. Dan Snow presents the programme on BBC2 and BBC1.
Original music score by Philip Sheppard.
If you would like to download some of this soundtrack, join my mailing list here and I’ll send you the link.
Here’s the wonderful JB Priestly talking about the Little Ships
Broadcasts: Thu 3 Jun 2010 21:30 BBC Two, Sat 5 Jun 2010 19:25 BBC Two, Mon 7 Jun 2010 00:20 BBC One.
Online music promotion & why musicians should make their own record deals… [This is a section of a talk I gave at the Royal Academy of Music]
[If you like this... then read the supporting article CLICK HERE]
Wilhelm couldn't help feeling the Wigmore makeover was a little too contemporary
During my lecture a student asked if they should send a huge dossier of references, biographies, programmes and recordings to prospective venues/employers.
Err.. nope!
A CD with a handwritten note – all nicely designed & personally directed is much better, especially if solicited via an initial email.
(The former package would in all likelihood end up in a recycling bin)
Harsh maybe.. but true!
Humphrey thanks Mrs Watson for the Gutbuster tailcoat
Here are some simple steps to:
Promoting tracks online
Releasing tracks online
Getting income through sales (though this may not be the primary aim at this stage).
You want people to hear you, join you, and get excited about what you produce next (and hopefully turn up in droves to your next recital).
The Burberry string trio's Morton Feldman season wasn't going well
Getting it out there…
Let’s assume you’ve already recorded a really well thought-through programme of pieces/ songs… (This is a whole other massive subject, and something that classical musicians can often get very wrong…)
The obvious place to start a web presence is myspace, but it seems (at best) an inelegant way to present yourself as an artist, especially when there are so many other free hosted sites with beautiful templates out there.
I have a myspace page, (it’s so very ugly.. I won’t even link to it here) but its primary purpose is to redirect traffic to my own sites!
The traffic on my MySpace page at the moment
WordPress
I love WordPress (where you’re reading this).
It’s free – it has excellent templates, so even a klutz like me can make something look half – decent…
I can place a track like this by entering a piece of simple code, and it looks professional.
It’s designed as a piece of blogging software, but rather than using it purely as an online diary, I find it is a great place to host your biography and showreel.
More importantly, it’s a great place to engage in regular chats with people who might like what you do.
The more people that comment and link to you, the higher you page goes in Google’s rankings, so make sure it’s appealing!!
Also, when people leave comments, good or bad, try to respond as soon as you can! This can be difficult if you’re busy, but shows that what you’re doing is artist led, not just a facade by a record company to ‘get down with the kids’…
You can get a WordPress blog here – highly recommended.
The chaps in Led Zep felt Jimmy had gone too far...
Mailing list
If you want to link with people who like what you do, then maybe use a company to administer a mailing list for you. I use Constant Contact and find them very effective. They have a good policy against spam and there are lots of safeguards in place to ensure you communicate properly in your (hopefully) mass emails.
Obviously Twitter links into this whole pattern very neatly too!
Getting a great look for your album
Sometimes technology creates more niggling work for us and leaves a big creative void in the heart of your soul… and then sometimes, it proves itself to be a thing of simple beauty.
I love Flikr.
I am a massive fan of specific photographers like Lucy Martin, Trey Radcliffe, TonTon Copte and many others. Something in their imagery and artistic sensitivities links with my music.
I found all of them through the site, and in fact recently licenced an image from Lucy Martin which was a perfect fit for my Henry VIII album. Have a look here and you can see why!
Mailbox was in a right grump
SoundCloud
A different way of grouping/ hosting your music for free is presented by SoundCloud.
What is neat about this is the way people can place comments along the timeline, and even better, anyone (if you like) can stream it to their own blog/site.
Here’s a recent piece of mine which is being streamed from the SoundCloud website.
Listeners can add comments at specific points in the track – you can see them by hovering over the pictures.
I use SoundCloud to determine whether a track has ‘legs’ or not.
It’s very meritocratic – if something’s good – it’ll get lots of plays!
Now, if you’re feeling generous, you can make the tracks downloadable (although you should tag them in iTunes first so the mp3 has your web address in its code – google ‘iTunes metadata’ if you want to know more).
This track is a download track – again, it’s being streamed via a simple bit of code from SoundCloud:
The downwards arrow on the right is a download link.
Here’s a site where someone’s placed a block of my tracks leading to free downloads.
Later in casualty, Fritz regretted selling the viola
Lastfm
A well-established streaming music service is lastfm.com. This is a curious amalgam of fansite and radio station. Personally I find it a bit disjointed, and also it concerns me that unreleased tracks often appear there from dubious sources. There are tracks of mine on there that I’ve never released!
The Sixty one
A completely different approach to new music streaming and downloads can be found at thesixtyone.com.
This is a really hard site to describe as it is as much about gameplay as it is about streaming music. There are two types of (free) account. Artists or Listeners. The Listeners get a higher ranking depending upon how they scout for new songs that the Artists place on there. They give ‘hearts’ to tracks they like, a little like buying shares in a stock that looks like it’s going to perform well.
Frankly, no-one really knows how it works.
Also, as with SoundCloud, you can tell pretty quickly if a track has merit as it will get voted onto the front page!
Players also give ‘tips’ which I hadn’t realized translate into Paypal dollars.
From my page here, I have enough for two cappuccinos already… hurrah!
However – it was a superb place to place your music, but following a recent makeover, users have expressed dismay at the frankly confusing navigation…
The Albert Hall's sitemap left a little to be desired
Setting up a label and generating paid downloads
Setting up a label appears at first to be an onerous and difficult task. This certainly used to be the case, when there was a baffling array of requirements; barcodes, encoding, registration and so forth.
This is no longer the case thanks to intermediary companies that have sprung up to help us confused and frustrated independent players and composers.
CDbaby
CDBaby was established by the very brilliant Derek Sivers (whose blog is essential reading). They distribute to a huge number of digital outlets, and have excellent accounting procedures for small labels. They started as a physical distributor of CDs but seem to have made a smooth transition to digital marketing. You can read about joining here.
Ditto Music
One of the most impressive of these new services is Ditto Music.
They have created a brilliant service where the tasks of creating a label for your releases is streamlined and organized for a one-off fee.
They also take 0% of your royalties when tracks are sold online, and they can distribute to 700 digital outlets.
The real icing on the cake is that they have created a means by which independent musicians can get their tracks loaded onto Spotify, and iTunes.
Whenever I have a soundtrack album for a film or concert project, they are my first port of call.
Xavier didn't feel the sponsorship deal with Dunkin' Donuts had compromised him at all
Spotify
There’s a widely held belief that as an independent artist, getting your tracks onto Spotify and iTunes is nigh on impossible unless you’re with a major label. This is happily untrue as discussed above. Spotify is an exciting way of streaming (and now temporarily downloading) tracks which has begun a seamless integration with phones and mp3 players.
Spotify are themselves trying to approach smaller, independent labels, and you can register interest as a future partner here.
What’s next..?
I’m going to write about physical CD production, as well as other merchandise… But I need a big mug of coffee first! Let me know if this is useful…
From his birth in Rio de Janeiro in 1948 to his untimely and tragic death in Baghdad in 2003, Sergio Vieira de Mello led an extraordinary life.
Vieira de Mello joined the United Nations in 1969 and would devote his life to the organization and its ideals. Known to most as simply ‘Sergio’, Vieira de Mello worked in some of the world’s most volatile and distressed regions. His career spanned assignments in Lebanon, Peru, Bosnia, Sudan, Cambodia, Cyprus, Mozambique, East Timor and Iraq. Working mostly for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sergio achieved some astonishing successes. These achievements were not easily won. Sergio grew up with the UN, developing several guiding principles along the way.
When Sergio died he was serving as the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General to Iraq. He had managed to find a balance between pragmatism and idealism, principles and compromise. He was the UN’s ‘go to guy’, having spent decades refining his approach. In the words of his friend and colleague Dennis McNamara, Sergio was, “one of the bright stars, maybe the brightest. He was the master magician, mediator, manager, massager of egos.” This was the tragedy of August 19.
I’m simply thrilled to have worked on this. Here are some excerpts from the piece: If you like it do download – you can do that by clicking on the files… but drop me a note to say hi! If you like my music I have some albums on bandcamp and iTunes. Here’s a press release from Faber Music;
