This year has zipped by us and I’m only barely holding onto the sides. Needless to say, from my last post here, I have not kept the promise to myself to try and keep a consistent blog. But hey ho, what can I say. Things don’t always end up as they are planned! Thats not to say nothings happened .

The birth of our second child Maya Adama in October has been the highlight of course. Not discounting the run up to it! I feel truly blessed and wholesome (well, apart from the lack of sleep and it’s side effects!)

Career wise, my piano business is moving at a pace and I’m acquiring new customers on a weekly basis.  All thanks to some serious old school leg work I did earlier this year canvassing a large section of London and dropping a jaw dropping amount of leaflets. Google Ads eat your heart out!

I also contributed a series of cues for Twisted Jukebox. Their Trailer Tools and Drones albums are set of music and sound design cues for the trailer industry focusing on high impact/suspense/action/horror genres. Their current catalogue is made up of some seriously twisted sound made to make you jump, squirm, shiver, freeze and the kind of things you do when watching this type of flick. Blood curdling. You can listen to some of it here

As if thats not enough, Focus Music, whom I’ve been writing music for over the past few years, have commissioned a whole album’s worth of this kind of material. Shiver me timbers!!

Aside from the gory stuff there’s been the odd uplifting and inspirational spot such as this one for the Global Education Leadership Programme (GELP).

Music talk aside, I’m trying to channel my coffee addiction into a positive experience by grinding my own beans. I recently discovered a great coffee roaster called Climpson and Sons through a good friend of mine Roee , who specialize in high quality beans from a hand picked selection of growers. So no blends!

We did a tasting of about 13 different types of coffee. Each one was sampled by paper filter with and without milk. It was amazing to really taste the difference between coffee beans from different regions of Africa, South America and even the far east. Both of us were pretty wired afterwards as we forgot the get the spitting bowl out!

Here are some pics of the experience

Wishing you all a great entrance into the 12th year of this millenium!

Dx

So to start where I left off last, brings me to announce my best news yet which is that we are expecting our first child in two months! This is immensely good news and we are naturally very excited. A much anticipated addition to our little family, even our hound Pia can’t wait. She told me so…

Things have been brewing on other fronts. The Feature film I did last year ‘The Shadow’ got picked up in the US by a distributer and is dually doing the festival rounds this year. And I just heard that ‘Crossing Borders’ another feature documentary I did the sound design for a while back, won the Illinois international film festival best Documentary award. Not exactly a top rung festival, but still something to add to the kudos collection.

In July of last year I was approached by Fiyah Films to work on two short films for them. One of them, I Was The Baker, is now almost complete and I will be posting a clip of it up here very soon. A beautiful and sad  film about the Rwandan atrocities seen from the eyes of a British immigrant.

In the ever expanding world of music technology, and the ever expanding virtual studio, I was asked to write a review of an instrument that gets the most use for me- the piano. Although I have my very own and very old Bechstein upright piano, I will use a variety of virtual ‘computer’ pianos in my productions. This is because they are far more transportable, no tuning needed on them, (I know that doesn’t make sense, being a piano tuner myself), and they can fit into any kind of production with a little bit of tweaking. So I did a little shoot-out between the creme de la creme of the piano world. You can read it here .

My foray into blurring the boundries between music and sound design is proving well and I just finished a corporate advert for HSE. Working with the team at ESA Films was great as they are really good craftsmen and able to convey their ideas very clearly, both to the client and to me. Check the video out on my portfolio page

Next week I’m off to Berlin to complete work on Kaisen and the upcoming album P.u.u.u.rification. It’s been about a year since we started working on some ideas, and it has now grown into a full blown album. This is really great and it’s meant I’ve had the opportunity to marry both my love of piano improvisation, orchestral arrangement and electronic soundscapes into one coherent body. Plus I get to have a record in my hands. nonine I love you guys! A release date is not confirmed yet but will be early march. Stay tuned for a little preview soon.

I am now  also being represented by Eaton Music, a well respected TV and Film publisher and composer agent. This is a step in the right direction for me I believe, and I’m very happy to be working with the very nice people at Eaton!

The new year has eased itself in very smoothly and I’ve not even noticed the change in gears, but things have shifted and we’re on a wider road now.

Stay tuned for more news as things progress

Well, first off I’ll tell you about my canceled trip to the Seychelles. Actually there’s nothing to tell because I never went. Through an acquaintance in the piano business, I was offered the opportunity to travel to the Seychelles and maintain the pianos for the International Classical Music Festival there.

I was very excited. Firstly to travel to the Seychelles, as it’s not the kind of place you get to on a budget airline on a weekend break! My wife Keren, sadly couldn’t join me, as she had a busy week herself. Secondly, since the pianos had not been seen to over the past three years, who knows what condition they were going to be in. It was an exciting challenge to predict what kind of tools I should bring, and travel lightly at the same time.

I was trying to plan my next few weeks and work around scoring the soundtrack for The Shadow ( more about that soon) and as I was supposed to travel to the Seychelles on Saturday the 23rd of May,  things were getting a little tricky. On the thursday I get an email from the Festival organizers to say the festival has been canceled! Due to serious logistical problems, they decided to cancel the whole festival. This had been relayed by email to 120 other musicians, technical staff and crew. Wow!  Apparently things had not come together between the different organizations responsible for the smooth running of the festival.

Blessing in disguise? Maybe, as it gives me more time to finish the soundtrack for The Shadow. A few weeks ago, a friend and colleague of mine, Frank Ilfman, asked me if I’d like to collaborate with him to score a low budget feature. It was more of a favour to the director, but this has it’s merits.

So we started plotting and spotting, and delivered a cue sheet with no less than 34 cues! It’s a psychological horror flick without the gore. Actually very good, with a great film editor attached. Frank turns round a few days later and asks if I’ll take it on myself as he’d just got offered another film in Dublin.

This is my first Feature and I’m well pleased! So the heat is on and I am deep in scoring mode.

Another titbit is my new online music store hosted by youlicense. This is a great place for me to host my music, 3rd party free, and have direct contact with my customers. It’s also a great place to send people to listen to selected playlists from my catalogue. Check it out!

Our dog will be 1 year old next week. Thats 7 in doggy year. Boy does se act her age.

So, to start off I have embarked on a very interesting collaboration on a project called Kaisen with a guy called Me Raabenstein who heads nonine records in Berlin. This is a journey into experimental electronica and contemporary classical/avant garde music. Some of the pieces on the album is material of mine that has featured on film in the past, and some of it is totally new. Watch this space…..and the album’s release in the spring. Also check out Kaisen.

Another great opporunity came my way a few weeks ago in the guise of the Royal Academy of Arts who commissioned me to write a series of pieces for a documentary that is being shown as part of the Palladio exhibition which runs till April at the Royal Academy. This was fantastic as I was reminded what one can achieve given  such a short space of time. Check it out and go see it if you can- RA

The month is Febuary and London has not seen snow like today in 18 years they say. The many sounds of snow are just incredible….

The first of these is a project called Hotel Deville . Dreamt up by fellow composer and singer Rhett Brewer, this is an ever evolving musical and cinematic project. We currently perform in London and are about to embark on a studio recorded album of songs for piano, voice and other accompanied furry animals. Stay tuned….