December
The Locrian ensemble, Tallis
chamber choir and Southend Boys’ & Girls’ choir performed the world premiere
of my new work ‘Song of the Holly’ at the beautiful church St Martin in the Fields
in London. The work started off with my setting of Shakespeare’s poem of the same
name and then developed through various orchestral moods to a Requiem with the
choir and organ and a final conclusion again with Shakespeare’s words “Blow,
blow thou Winter wind” as the piece slowly closes. Hopefully the piece can have
a second outing sometime!
Spent a fun day at Sphere studios
recording strings on 6 songs for Chass Guthrie & Nat Silbert. Pete Martin
was producing (we worked on a Big Brovaz track previously). They have some great
songs and a very cool sound that crosses many boundaries. The Millennia
Ensemble played their socks off and I look forward to hearing the finished
results of the mixes!
November
Just come to the end of the tour
with The Bays & The Heritage Orchestra. It was an extraordinary experience.
Having to constantly keep writing material for the orchestra for the 1 hr+
shows and night after night was an incredible challenge but also a very
rewarding one. No two shows were even remotely the same, as the very nature of
the project would suggest. We even had people come along to more than one
performance to check that they were different!! They wouldn’t have been
disappointed in that regard… It was a pleasure sharing the stage with The Bays
(Andy, Simon, Richard and Ski) and also of course with Jules and the Heritage
Orchestra. Special thanks also to John Metcalfe – we did it! Quite how I’m not
sure. “The windows – they’ve all gone!” Here’s hoping we get to do it again
soon…
Added strings to 7 songs for
Universal/Island artist Remi Nicole being produced by Mark Taylor. A busy
couple of sessions to get them done but all sounded great and crossed many
decades of musical influences!
About to depart on the tour with
The Bays & Heritage Orchestra across the UK. Scary. 10 shows with the last
6 being consecutive…
October
Wrote a concert work for
orchestra, chamber choir and children’s choir. Due to be performed at St.
Martin in the Fields in December with the Locrian Ensemble, Tallis Chamber
Choir and Southend Children’s choir. With the chamber choir behind the
orchestra and the boys & girls split across the two balconies it should be
a real ‘surround’ mix.
Worked on three songs for new
Sony/BMG signing Julian Perretta. Produced by Rob Harris and Matt Johnson - always a pleasure to work on their
stuff. It’s going to be a great record! A great section from Millennia Strings
- up at Angel again with Niall Acott.
September
Added strings and brass to a cover
of The Carpenters “Sing” (or “Chante” in this case) for Universal France to be
used as part of the ongoing Star Academy series. Bertrand Lamblot came over for
the session and a great team of Millennia Strings, Noel Langley on Tpt/Flg,
Fayyaz Virji on Tbn and Phil Todd on Tenor & Baritone Saxes. Engineered by
Niall Acott at Angel #1.
Wrote 3 orchestral arrangements
(and solo string quartet parts) for Escala. Since their success on Britain’s
Got Talent, they have started recording their first CD. Trevor Horn is
producing and it was great to meet up with him again after nearly 20 years
since I was in Seal’s band! We recorded the orchestra at Angel and Sarm West
and all is sounding like it’s going to be a great record. I did an arrangement
of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” with all musical guns blazing. And why not?
Finished off Tina Arena’s latest
CD with 4 more songs having strings added to them. One was a cover of Joni
Mitchell’s “From Both Sides Now”, the original featuring an extraordinary
arrangement by Vince Mendoza. After lots of thumb-twiddling and humming to
myself, I think I managed to pay respects to the amazing original version and
hopefully remain true to me too. Thanks also to Mat Bartram who engineered and
did a great job!
August
The third-ever Bays gig with live
orchestra was at the Big Chill festival in front of 10,000+ people. 45 minute
turn-around, no sound check, rented computer, loading of Sibelius preferences
and MIDI drivers 30 minutes before the performance. A piece of cake. All went
well despite all that and it was a high-energy performance from start to
finish. Looking forward to the UK tour in November. 10 dates across the
country, please see www.simonhale.co.uk/live.html
for details.
July
I wrote 3 orchestral arrangements
for French artist Sissi being produced by Volodia. They recorded the orchestra
in Budapest and I sent over the parts for the session without being there or
listening in from the UK. By all accounts it all went very well!
Added disco-style strings to a
single for Suga Shikao in Japan. The song was produced by Gota Yashiki who was
also over there when we recorded the strings over here. However, with them on
the end of a webcam they were able to be part of the session whilst we recorded
in London.
Immediately after the song for
Suga Shikao, we added a string octet to a great song “Mayday” by Lemar. He
produced it too and it was great to work with him again after a while.
Added strings to 3 songs for Just
Jack. I had worked on the first record with him so it was great to be asked to
come back again and add some more stuff to his second CD. One song was like a
piece of minimalism with some fantastic vocal and guitar loops that came in
& out as the song progressed. I had some fun with the string parts too –
even used a 9-note row as a quasi-church bell peal! And why not?
Spent a fair time preparing and
writing for a session with Tina Arena at Air Lyndhurst. We had 7 songs to work
on, 4 with orchestra and 3 strings + harp. Like the previous CD ‘Songs of Love
& Loss’, the orchestral elements are very prominent, but we were lucky
enough this time to have Tina singing live as we recorded the orchestral
arrangements. What a difference it made to the whole experience. She has a
wonderful voice and it was a truly great pleasure to be part of the process.
June
The second-ever Bays gig with live
orchestra took place at the Custard Factory in Birmingham. This time The Bays
featured Neil Cowley on piano, which gave it a different angle. We also had a
different orchestra, mostly made up of Bit20, a contemporary music ensemble
from Bergen, Norway. I think it was a bit outside their normal repertoire! The
time for rehearsal was certainly minimal… John Metcalfe & I went through the
same ‘pre-show’ doubts & anxieties though it was another success in the
end! We swapped over (from writing from strings to winds) in the middle of the
show and it gave the performance another dimension. Keep an eye on their
website for details of more shows – including a UK tour in November!!
May
Played piano and added strings to
4 songs for Madness with Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley. Classic Madness
material. The use of pizzicati was considered and not ignored. Which was nice.
Added strings and brass to another
song on Will Young’s next CD. Produced by Biff Stannard and Ash Howes and
recorded at Angel Studios with Niall Acott. Will came down too for the
recording – it’s always great to see the artist attend the orchestral sessions.
Later (about 30 minutes!) that same day we put brass on 2 songs and strings on
4 songs for McFly. It was fab to be working with them again and they have some
great songs on the new CD. Special thanks (yet again) to Noel, Phil &
Fayyaz. 3 charts on the trot and all sounded great.
April
Wrote an arrangement for Scala, a
string quartet appearing on Britain’s Got Talent. Unlike some of the entrants,
these girls have! Good luck in the next round…
Recorded orchestral arrangements and
played piano on 7 songs for a French theatrical production about the life of
Cleopatra. www.cleopatre.com Styles
completely across the board from symphonic to filmic to pop & rock. I
produced one of the songs, which we recorded completely live with piano and
orchestra and Sofia Essaidi (appearing as Cleopatre in the show). All came
together very well. A&R by the wonderful Bertrand Lamblot – we’ve worked
together for over 15 years now!
Played keyboards on another song
for Will Young’s next CD again with Biff Stannard and Ash Howes.
March
Wrote two brass arrangements for
the very talented Freemasons weblink.
Recorded at my studio with Tom Jenkins engineering and Noel Langley, Phil Todd
and Neil Sidwell on horns. A great sound they make too.
Added keyboards to a song for Will
Young’s next CD for Biff Stannard. Almost straight after did a string and brass
session for Stephen Lipson also for Will’s CD! Recorded at Sarm West with Tim
Weidner. The last time Tim & I did anything together down there was nearly
20 years ago!!
Was asked by Jon Kelly to be
involved in a project with a French singer called Sophie Delila. She’s written
& produced her album with Steve Booker and it’s absolutely fantastic. Some
great songs and she has an amazing voice. One to watch out for… www.sophiedelila.com Yet again some
wonderful playing by the London Studio Orchestra. World class.
Played Hammond and piano for new
London band King Blues produced by Clive Langer. Also added strings to 4 songs
for them. Well worth looking out for – great lyrics with a lot of humour in
them as well as having a strong message.
Just added strings, horns and harp
to 3 tracks for London rapper Sway. He had heard the arrangements I did with
Ian Brown and wanted some of that world on his record! He gave me a lot of
scope to do whatever I felt was the right thing to do and I didn’t hold back!!
A special thank you (again) to the wonderful players of the London Studio
Orchestra. I kept them very busy for the 3 hours but the results sounded
amazing. He is a huge talent and it was a great pleasure to be a part of his
next CD. Due to be released in May.
Steve Price recovered from the
right hook soon afterwards…
Session photos © Paul
Hampartsoumian link
February
The performance of The Simpsons
was last night and had about 120 brass players on stage making an amazing
sound. Special thanks to Kathy Gifford & Nick Care & the AMC BB for
holding it all together. It even featured the incredible Mark Templeton
guesting on trombone!
Spring Awakening won the Grammy
for “Best Musical Show Album” last night too. Wow!
Wrote four orchestral arrangements
for The Ten Tenors to be recorded on their next CD.
January
The most amazing start to the year
with a concert at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on January 4th. Andy
Gangadeen from The Bays had called me up
a few months ago with an idea that he and the band had about doing a concert
(as part of the Fresh Festival) with a live orchestra. Their music is all
improvised, no songs, no recordings, no rehearsals. So to add a live orchestra
to this was a pretty wacky idea! With John Metcalfe as the other live composer,
we wrote ideas live into Sibelius and
then the output of our monitors was sent around the orchestra for the players
to read from. At first we were reacting to what the Bays would play and
adapting our ideas to fit their mood, but after a couple of attempts they felt
that we could have as much of a leading role as them so that they could be
equally inspired by what we were doing and react to that. So that’s where we
ended up, a completely free improvised composition from start to finish that
lasted 1hr 45 minutes on the evening of the performance! Another cool idea was
that John & I started the performance on stage with the Heritage orchestra
(with Jules Buckley conducting, and doing an amazing job of bringing people in
and out as he felt appropriate, even taking individual notes from the material
we wrote and getting the orchestra to play them at different points). All we
discussed as a starting point was a basic tonality…”G” or “D” or whatever we
felt. Not major or minor or anything else! The first time we did it was “G”,
and I began in one vein whilst John felt things in another. We couldn’t see
what each other was doing and were busy enough as it was! When the first notes
started to come together it showed how different things were from different
composer’s perspectives. An amazing sound that couldn’t really happen any other
way! Jules chose the different motifs & textures “on- the-fly” with great
musicality and some of the sounds we heard were unrepeatable! Especially as the
band don’t release Cds….. On the concert, after about 10 minutes or so of this
The Bays came in and joined us on the rest of the journey. It’s hard to
describe how this felt in words, but it was one of the most amazing musical
experiences I have ever had. Although it was a pretty demanding challenge for
John & me, having to write notated music instantly and input it into
Sibelius, the reward of being on stage with the Bays & the Heritage
Orchestra and seeing the audience’s reaction at the end made it worth every
single moment of panic beforehand! On a technical note we had Sibelius version
5.1 very kindly supplied for us and the orchestra comprised of 8 violins, 2
violas & 2 celli (written for by John) and Flute, Alto Sax dbl Sop Sax,
Tenor Sax dbl Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Trumpet and Trombone (written for by
me). We had set the screen up so that the RHS was “pending” and the LHS ready
to play for Jules & the orchestra. Also that way I had set up the LH score
to be transposing so I could write at concert pitch (both John & I have
perfect pitch so concert was definitely the way to go!). Fingers crossed for a
chance to do it again, because although the concept sounds as if it might be
completely “squeaky gate”, the result was an incredible mixture of ideas and
energy and SO musical. Special thanks to Andy, Chris, Simon & Jamie from
The Bays, Adam and Tom backstage, Jules and the Heritage Orchestra and John
Metcalfe for sharing the fear and the buzz! My longest ever blog – back to
normal from now on… Take a look at a short selection of bits from the evening…youtube
Photos (c) Tom Oldham Thanks Tom!
Wrote an arrangement of The
Simpsons theme for the Aylesbury Music Centre’s brass bands (they have trumpets
& French horns rather than cornets & tenor horns so have a louder, more
modern sound). The idea is that all 3 bands play it at once – from the
beginners (Grade I upwards) via the Intermediates to the main band, which has
some very fine players indeed. Lots of notes, lots of fun. Stand WELL back…