Composing Clips

Composing Clips

Demo Gallery > Composing > Composing Clips

Turquoise Canyons

“Turquoise Canyons” is a piece I recently composed and recorded in LA. It is the underscore for the montage of the paintings of my favorite artist, Ed Mell. I had this project in mind for quite some time and, by coincidence, I met Dr. Mark Sublette at my gym. Mark is the owner of Medicine Man Galleries here in Tucson and Santa Fe and represents Ed Mell. I explained the concept of the montage and he loved the idea and contacted Ed and I sat down at the keyboard and started writing. The finished product will be available on the Medicine Man website soon.

The piece itself features solos by Warren Luening (trumpet) and Tommy Morgan (Harmonica). My goal was to capture the range of Ed’s images with the various colors of the orchestra. This piece was recorded live at Capitol Record studio A with a thirty five piece orchestra and was a real kick.

Old Pueblo

“Old Pueblo” is the other piece I did in LA for the art montage. I wrote this piece about Tucson and the art of Maynard Dixon who painted extensively about Tucson in the thirties and forties. This was recorded during the same session as “Turquoise Canyons”.

Maynard Dixon’s poignant images of Tucson capture an innocent time when the old pueblo was still a small dusty southwestern town. I developed a theme that is very Spanish in its style to try to match the mood of the art work.

Mitch Holder’s guitar solos are beautiful and his style is perfect for this piece. Tommy Morgan’s warm sound on harmonica works quite well in the setting also. Tommy has been featured on the scores of just about every great western movies that ever came out of Hollywood.

Solar Winds

This is a piece I composed for my fusion orchestra in LA. It features outstanding musicians such as Larry Carlton on guitar, Greg Mattheson on Keyboards, Don Menza on alto sax and a brass section led by Jerry Hey and a string section led by Murray Adler.

Wildfire

“Wildfire” of course is the song I wrote with Michael Martin Murphey. This is also a part of the Sagebrush Symphony and it features the San Antonio Symphony.