VITAMIN STRING QUARTET-"rock n' roll attitude to classical technique"

The break out Vitamin String Quartet ingeniously transforms today’s most popular songs and styles with the beauty and intensity of classical string instrumentation.  A collaboration for classical and pop audiences alike.

The Vitamin String Quartet puts a classical spin on many popular genres of pop, punk, and metal and is widely known for its tributes to cutting-edge rock acts. VSQ’s innovative approach and dedication to seeking out great material highlights just how distinctive the string quartet is.

"Vitamin String Quartet is about applying rock n' roll attitude to classical technique," says Tom Tally, a violinist and arranger who has performed on and produced over thirty-five Vitamin String Quartet albums, which is one reason VSQ can count renowned film composer Danny Elfman, members of Tool, Deftones, The Killers, and Underoath as fans.

Disney has even invited VSQ to contribute to a track to the second all-star tribute to Tim Burton"s The Nightmare Before Christmas, on which the films original score was reinterpreted by bands like Tiger Army, All-American Rejects, Plain White Ts, and DeVotchKa. Their music has been heard in film and on television, most notably on the finale of the programme, So You Think You Can Dance.  

After years of releasing albums exploring the musical terrain of one great artist, VSQ is branching out with a new collection of covers and original songs that highlight their own unique contributions to their musical field. 

Their classical string arrangements have made it possible for contemporary rock, alternative and indie covers to be a part of wedding ceremonies and evidently very popular among the event sector.

Songs:                                                                                                                                                                                                       Clubbed to death and Furious Angels by Rob Dougan                                                                                                                         Chasing Cars and Run- Snow Patrol                                                                                                                                           Supermassive Black Hole, Sunburn, Time is running out, Knights of Cydonia- Muse                                                                   Clocks, Yellow, Viva La Vida- Coldplay                                                                                                                                                  Misery Business, Hallelujah- Paramore                                                                                                                                                  Numb- Linkin park                                                                                                                                                                                    Paparazzi, Alejando, Poker Face- Lady Gaga                                                                                                                                        Smooth Criminal- Michael Jackson

LUDOVICO EINAUDI, "The solo collaborator of minimalism, classical and contemporary music"

“The music of composer/pianist Ludovico Einaudi has been described as minimalist, classical, ambient, contemporary, welcoming the sound of stillness in a hectic world.”

Einaudiís music began to assume its own unmistakeable character towards the end of the 1980s, as he absorbed elements derived from popular music. Around this time he first became involved in collaborative ventures in theatre, video and dance. 

The album Le onde was a turning point in Ludovico Einaudís career as it was his first real work as a soloist.

In 2001 I Giorni was released consisting a dozen pieces for solo piano, composed as deliberate snapshots of the creativity of a musician who has achieved full freedom of expression.  This was the genesis of an album involving a long process of reflection. 

Einaudi: “When I compose, I need to improvise, but I also meditate for a long time on what I am writing. I progress on two apparently antithetical levels: I create a great diversity of styles then, at a later stage, I review it all with a rational ear.” The result was yet another performance of great emotional intensity, quite unconnected with the concept of a sound track.  Five years after Le onde, I again decided to create a solo work for piano; after experimenting with various things, I wanted to get back to the solitary dimension. It is a kind of suite of pieces in the form of an instrumental song. Although each piece has a meaning of its own, they are linked by a general idea of musical accountability and by melodic, thematic and harmonic references.” 

Einaudi aims to find a direct channel of communication with the public, be at the centre of the magic and emotion that can be created only during a live performance in gaining an immediate relationship with both music and audience. 

Ludovico Einaudi also has composed music for the cinema. He began with two films made by Michele Sordillo: Da qualche parte in citt (1994) and Acquario (1996), and continued in 1998 with Treno di panna, the only film made by Andrea De Carlo. In the same year, he composed the sound track for Giorni dispari by Dominick Tambasco, while some extracts from Le onde were included in Aprile by Nanni Moretti.

Einaudi latest album, Una Mattina, was released in 2004 for Decca.

I would have to say my favourite pieces are: Nightbook, Divenire, and Nuvole Bianche.

This is Einaudi introducing his recent release Nightbook:

Link to his website: http://www.einaudiwebsite.com/ 

GUILLEMOTS...orchestral big beat pop

Any band that features both a classically-trained double bass player and Brazilian former death-metal guitarist, and whose frontman has adopted the surname of Dangerfield, might reasonably have eccentricity expected of them. And so it is with pop quartet Guillemots. Theirs is a fulsome and extravagant, love-filled sound borne aloft on summer's breeziness, swollen with casual grandeur and baroque instrumental flourishes.

THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA

The Cinematic Orchestra is a British jazz and electronic group, which formed in the late 1990s by Jason Swinscoe. The band is signed to Ninja Tune, and independent record label.  Jason Swinscoe’s experience of playing bass and guitar in bands alongside DJing, introduced many influences and resulted in giving him a head full of ideas, ranging from the sound of jazz bass players, rhythm sections and film soundtracks. Other members include Tom Chant (saxophone), Phil France (double bass), Luke Flowers (drums), Nick Ramm (piano), Stuart McCallum (guitar); former members include Jamie Coleman (trumpet), T. Daniel Howard (drums), Alex James (piano), and Patrick “PC” Carpenter (turntables).

‘Motion’ 

“Taking on the role of bandleader, Swinscoe rallied a group of adventurous jazz players and delivered a debut album that took everyone by surprise and was voted album of the year by listeners to Gilles Peterson’s Radio One show.  It is a record which underlines the cinematic in the Cinematic Orchestra.” 

The Guardian heaping praise upon both Jay’s sense of space and his attention to detail: "It’s frighteningly rare that a musician in a contemporary field brings so much generous knowledge and that transforming power to their work, inviting you inside their world and introducing you to a new way of listening". 

Live: 

In the last three years the Cinematics’ have played far and wide at every conceivable type of venue and on all kinds of occasion. They have shocked out from the Jazz Café to the Jazz Bop via Ronnie Scott’s.  They have also toured in Germany, Japan, Italy and Portugal. They have also clocked up the music festival mileage appearing at, amongst others, Homelands and Essential (UK), Sonar (Spain), Celerico De Basto (Portugal), North Sea Jazz and Drum Rhythm (Holland), Cannes (France), Fuji Rock (Japan) and Montreux (Switzerland) and have headlined The Big Chill twice. And are about to play at Royal Albert Hall on 14th November this year.

cinematicorchestra.com

myspace.com/thecinematicorchestras

STING: ‘SYMPHONICITIES’

RELEASE DATE: 2010.07.13

Sting has tried out practically every genre in the musical universe, so an orchestral rework of his songs seems a natural thing to do. Sting's 'Symphonicities' balances old pop-rock tunes with the Royal Philharmonic's classic sound. "Symphonicities" means to re-imagine some of the star's best known songs with The Police, as well as those from his solo career, in collaboration with a full symphony orchestra (namely The Royal Philharmonic).  

Possibly inspired by the fact that people liked his lute-ish renditions of 'Fields Of Gold' and 'Message In A Bottle', this is an album's worth of Police and solo material recreated with orchestras and classical ensembles. 

'We Work The Black Seam', as its looping riff is appears theatrical and you can almost see this playing out in a musical or in a movie. 

Mainly, though, the re-thinks emphasize what was already there. "Englishman in New York" seems more light and playful through the whimsical strings and wily woodwinds, while the delightful orchestrations in "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" literalize the idea of finding endless pleasure in someone you're smitten with. Few of the melodies get a genuine shake-up, which explains why fans won't be shocked by anything they hear. For that, you have to look to the recent work of a Sting peer. Back in February, Peter Gabriel radically recast pop songs with classical arrangements on his CD "Scratch My Back." He used the orchestra so inventively, they turned the pieces into psychologically potent art songs. (It probably helped that Gabriel left rock instruments behind entirely). By contrast, "Symphonicities," presents rock and classical forms more as respectful collegues than as true friends. They collaborate peacefully.

Although Sting had reservations about how to tackle the problem of maintaining a rhythmic pulse within an orchestral environment. Of course classical music already has a strong rhythmic pulse, but it is a different pulse from the one understood by most rock musicians or the majority of pop fans. Rock and roll is generally reliant on a strong metronomic backbeat; generally a snare on beats two and four in 4/4 time. I imagine this is a legacy from the earlier strict tempo rhythms of the dance bands of the '30s and '40s.

Strict tempo in pop music equates very much to modernism, to the extent that in the current era of dance music, rhythm and tempo are almost exclusively created by machines. Tempo and pulse in a symphonic setting are much more elastic, where the tempo breathes organically alongside the complexity of emotions and drama encoded within the music. 

The spirit of reinvention that surrounded the initial approach to these orchestral arrangements Sting said needed to be incorporated into the visual aspects of the show. In collaboration with artistic director Robert Molnar, he visuals, like the new orchestrations, enhanced the emotional and psychological aspects of the songs in concert. 

Sting: “I have always had an affinity for classical music. When I was younger I studied a lot of the repertoire for the Spanish guitar and still make a daily practice of playing a number of selections from J.S. Bach, pieces from the cello suites, which fall nicely inside the range of the guitar, the violin partitas and, of course, the lute suites. Not that anyone would want to pay money to hear my efforts in this field. I do it purely for my own enjoyment; sitting at the feet of a master musician like Bach, reading and interpreting his notes on the page and watching and listening to the often astounding decisions he made as a composer, is as close as I get to religious devotion. I am not the first pop musician to borrow ideas wholesale from the Baroque master. "Whenever I Say Your Name," for example, owes a lot of its structural harmony to one of Bach's preludes.
For the song "Russians," which I wrote in 1985 about the cold war, I borrowed the beautiful melody of the love themed "Lieutenant Kije" by Sergei Prokofiev. To this day I feel honored to share regular royalties for that song with the estate of the celebrated Russian composer. The orchestral arranger of "Russians," Vince Mendoza, went even further by also borrowing the opening of Prokofiev's ballet suite "Romeo and Juliet" as a stirring prelude to the song.” 

JONSI- GO - "a musical palette"

Jónsi initially thought when he was working on the album ‘Go’ he would be making a low-key, acoustic album until, as he says, “somewhere along the line, it just sort of exploded.” That explosion resulted in sheer aural fireworks.  It is not a straight ahead pop record, nor rock, folk, ambient or electronic, it encompasses all of these to create an expansive musical palette that’s been brought to life by Jónsi alongside a number of free-spirited collaborators.

These include, Nico Muhly, the Philip Glass protégé who is renowned for his work with Björk, Antony & the Johnsons, Bonnie “prince” billy and Grizzly bear. Muhly has arranged all the songs on ‘Go’, bringing strings, brass and woodwind to dance playfully alongside his offbeat piano playing. In addition he incorporated into the mix the percussive genius of Samuli Kosminen, whose drumming powers many of the songs along, and you have a sonic landscape that bears little relation to anything else around today, yet explodes from the speakers with sheer happiness and wonder, wide-eyed and eager to be heard.

Within every colour of the palette in which this album paints for the listener there are wild cross- rhythms, syncopated flute harmonics, layering of delayed echo voices as if travelling across a vast landscape. The symphonic soundscapes are combined with a rhythmic sensation of train’s engine running.


An article by James Killingsworth describes Grow till tall "a beautiful, the moody, operatic drama" and Hengilas—"a track so intimately arranged that you can distinctly hear the steady-droning horn players gasping periodically for breath—tell an incomplete story." 


Although in the classical era the texture of works were typically known to be homophonic, here, in this album the texture is additive, which relates to rock music. However the components of this texture are typically from the classical period i.e. the piece begins with  monophony or homophony but gradually becomes polyphonic through the layering of timbres. Especially, as his voice unlike popular music today whereby the vocals seem to polish the song off by creating hook lines for audience members out there, his experimental vocal timbre (large range) just becomes another ingredient into the mix and is treated as a branch of the piece, an equal instrument.

Check out this article by James Killingsworth on Jonsi.. http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/04/jonsi-go.html

JEM

Singer songwriter Jem, entered the music industry by storm via the exposure she gained from her tracks featuring as sync, soundtracks for TV shows including The O.C., Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, CSI Miami and Six Feet Under, whereby literally millions of listeners worldwide have heard her music. 

Jem fused elements of rock, new wave-styled electronica and trip-hop in her first album Finally Woken.  I would say she is a an alto vocalist who if was transported to a jazz bar would easily be in harmony with her slightly husky laid back vocal sound.

I would be speaking on behalf of her if I claimed she is clearly influenced by Imogen Heap, who I will shortly be posting a blog about. However as a listener, whether musically trained or not you can easily hear the similarities in their new wave electronica style intermixed with live orchestral string timbres.

She is an artist who really relishes on different timbres and captures the essence of contemporary classical music.  Tracks such as 24 have featured in the trailer Ultraviolet; the TV series Smallville and Without a Trace; and the film Center Stage: Turn It Up.  The use of the track in film Centre Stage: Turn it up was a fundamental musical accompaniment to the final dance scene of the film, whereby the piece begins with a monophonic melodic line played by the violins in close harmony, which acts as a driving ostinato figure throughout the piece.  Following, the hip hop beat kicks in, supporting the imagery of contemporary ballet into a jazz style of dance.  The diatonic harmony of the strings is interrupted by the forceful distorted sound of the guitar who acts as a continuous interjected drone throughout the chorus’ playing the first and third beats of each 4/4bar. Today, within the film industry the recent, new up and coming genre of dance themed films tend to choose a similar style of music combining a traditional romantic piece (Tchaikovsky) for a ballet sequence with modern day urban club music.  This is generally because the films would only be popular to a young audience if the contemporary times of dance were included, thus a fusion of dance styles and a fusion of music genres.   

Check out her website if you like what you hear...http://www.jem-music.net/

Write a comment or recommend a film you have recently seen where the music really captured the scene for you from any style of film.  

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Notorious BIG Theme

The recent film Notorious illustrates the journey behind Notorious' B.I.G. (a.k.a. Christopher Wallace) entering the world of rap music by storm straight out of Brooklyn from life to death. 

The film composer depicted the character and the suspense within the first notes of the piece beginning.  Elfman needed to create a leitmotif supporting the identity of Notorious and create awareness to the audience of his presence, composing title music and underscoring.  The sustained low strings as a drone moving into a two note ascending and descending riff across semitones.  The use of the swung hi-hat gives that gangster feel and the offbeat bass guitar as pedal note.  Following the layering of higher strings and flute melody gives this running chase feel as if its a race.  The entire use of strings, woodwind and percussion throughout the theme not only reflected the character and his position yet the composer set the scene behind the music.  Introducing the pure nature of the people and culture at that location in the time of year the film was representing and the conditions the characters were portrayed.  

Elfman’s film scores can be described as dark and brooding, lush and romantic, wild and manic - reflecting the many composers and styles which have influenced him.  His influences range from Prokofiev, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky’s ballet music, jazz and rock, yet he is not a typical classical composer and he is self- taught and uses synthesizers as a layering to his music. Furthermore he has composed many phenomenal scores for the motion picture industry such as Batman, Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the Simpsons soundtrack.  His work for the film, Planet of the Apes is highly polyphonic with dissonant lines among the complex use of cross rhythms.  Furthermore Batman, his biggest work today uses the whole tone scale with chromatic ostinatos and juxtaposing dramatic chords e.g. E♭minor to C♯major within an antiphonal texture throughout each of the themes for film.

Film Music today is underrated and is not recognized as popular music, yet really it is where the biggest fusions are created.  The soundtrack to a film is a score expressing the characters in their different situations and sinarios, their emotions.  Furthermore the music can simply set a geographical scene e.g. Bhangra and hip hop in the award winning film, Slumdog Millionaire.

Feel free to comment on what film soundtracks have caught your ear and grasped you emotionally to the particular scene you are waiting and thoroughly engaged in.

Check out his website...... http://elfman.filmmusic.com/

MUSE, The Resistance

Recently I went to go see Muse’s visionary performance at Wembley Stadium. The concert was a compilation; popular extracts from their old repertoire with their new fused sound, which is illustrated in the current album, The Resistance.

Muse are an example of ‘musical hybridity’.  Within the music industry it is difficult to explore new ideas without losing their style, sound or image, and still remain authentic in the public’s eye.  However as a band they are continually expanding on their audience and the excitement animated in the fan’s faces that surrounded me at the concert showed just how successful fusing the musical style that people recognize with ‘innovation’ can be.

Their current album The Resistance, adds to their musical identity with the use of orchestral timbres and the detailed use of crescendos and diminuendos throughout each track stimulates a listener’s emotions when heard.  As a listener, if you were to close your eyes to tracks like Expogenesis Symphony (Part one overture) you would think your listening to a piece of film music and feel as if you have just been transported to the cinema watching a scene from your own imagination. That is why artists like Muse have featured on many soundtracks within the film itself not just the credits (recent films: Twilight series with Supermassive Black Hole and Neutron Star collision: http://muse.mu/media-player/). Expogenesis Symphony (Part one overture) begins with a chromatic rising riff played with a rubato feel by the strings followed by the cellos entering with broken chords in order to increase the tempo of the piece as a dramatic introduction to the vocals and drums; the tense dissonant chords at the end of unresolved chord progressions are typical elements of the romantic period. Concert overtures were typical of the romantic era and developed into the symphonic poem- a type of programme music, they were a short, single movement for orchestras.

Matthew Bellamy has a huge vocal range and uses the technique of falsetto in many tracks; and bends and slide the notes, vocally and on guitar (typical of blues and classical music (glissando)).

Muse’s sound is not just described as tracks and songs of an album but symphonic pieces of music in which they are now composing contemporary concertos (Expogenesis Part One, Two, and Three).

Most listeners do not recognize the elements taken from the classical genre when listening to bands such as Muse.  It is not just the use of orchestral instruments it is the artist’s interpretation when composing for the instrument in which you can truly see their influence. 
Muses's website...http://muse.mu/

Prelude to my Blog

Today we live in such a diverse society, that we are given the opportunity and choice to pick and mix what we like and dislike, what is old and what is new, which gives us the freedom to create something with the vast influences we are use to in order to create something not entirely new but a FUSION... the culture of  hybridity.


Today, the range of music on our Ipod and mp3 playlists illustrate and tell us how open minded we've become and what a diverse music listener you are.  


When musicians are composing they are not plucking ideas out of thin air they are bouncing off what they have absorbed through learning their instrument or just pure enjoyment listening.  The skills and techniques required are distinct from one genre or sub-genre to another.


My Blog will be discussing the various artists out there who are either successfully or unsuccessfully aiming to bring back the Classical period with a twist in order to bring back popularity to the genre and keep up with the modern moving times.  I won't just be talking about artists such as Katherine Jenkins and Russell Watson, the typical singers who come to mind when discussing the genre but also reflecting those producers and writers who sample many famous composers works.  Furthermore analyse the current chart music who use traditional orchestral timbres to enhance their music and sound.............


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