Here is a story I will share with you all. Never discount any suggestion someone may have for you... even if it is from your Mom. Dedicated to my Mom. Thanks to my Mom, I made the call. In honor of Ray Bradbury, a portion of your purchase will always be donated to the LosAngeles Public Library. The Ray Bradbury Symphonic Suite for Orchestra by John Massari How this Symphonic Suite came to be... MY COLLEGE YEARS… While studying music at UCLA, I met Ray Bradbury. Ray would visit our dormitory once or twice a year when we had impromptu all night sci-fi movie marathons. Ray would read his short stories and poems and gave us pep talks about releasing our creative energy into our work: Never stop swimming throughout the libraries; never stop learning something new. Throw yourself off the cliff and dive into a challenge. You can grow your wings on the way down. Stop thinking and over intellectualizing your work; let your emotions come to life and lead you to creativity. Ray was a natural motivational speaker and seemed to be a man with a mission. We grew up reading his work and having Ray there in person, mentoring us, was more than we could have dreamed of. We were too young to realize that Ray was such a rare and special gift. A FEW SHORT YEARS LATER… Right after college I began work as an apprentice for film composers Jerry Fielding, David Rose and Mark Snow in Hollywood, California. One morning, my Mom called. She told me that she had seen a credit for a producer named Mark Massari (no relation) on her favorite local morning news program. Not being familiar with any aspect of the entertainment industry, she thought I should just give him a call. And me not knowing any better, I called the station and a week later Mark and I met for lunch. Over the years we kept in touch. During this time, he would talk about an Anthology TV Series about Mysterious Ghost Stories for Cable TV. Mark asked if this would interest me. To work on a TV series would be a dream come true! What I couldnt understand was this Cable TV thing. It was 1981, and for me, the notion of paying to watch TV seemed absurd. THE CALL... Early in 1985, a call from Mark Massari came to me as if in a dream. Mark was finally going to reveal details of the series and asked me come by his office to meet with the author of this Television Anthology Series. The author just happened to be Ray Bradbury. I almost fell over. A few days later I found myself sitting across from Ray Bradbury, taking notes and direction from him about what mood he was looking for in the music theme. Ray still had that boy-like enthusiasm that I remembered from his UCLA visits. It was truly inspiring to be working with him creatively. He yearned for a mysterious and ancient fanfare. Something for the ages.... With trumpets, lots of cellos, deep basses, brooding bassoons and gongs. It was obvious that hed read his share of soundtrack liner notes. This was my first television series. HBOs original television series, The Ray Bradbury Theater. 65 episodes in all. My feelings were beyond description. LATER THAT EVENING… Sitting myself down at my piano with pencil and paper to compose the theme, I could hardly contain myself. The theme just seemed to appear on paper from my pencil, as if it had always existed. A day later I went to a little recording studio, West World Recorders in Van Nuys, California. The orchestra was made up of two violins, one bassoon, a percussionist and an analog synthesizer. With an overabundance of overdubbing, the demo/mock-up of the Ray Bradbury Theater theme was finished. I rushed the audio cassette tape to the producers the next morning and got word later that afternoon that Ray really liked my theme music! I was beaming over the news. I told the producers that now we could go ahead and record it with a full orchestra. Long story short…this recording and its variations were used as the main theme music for the series entire run! I had the full orchestra performing in my ears all these years, but no one could hear it. Except for me…until… 1993... The Ray Bradbury Theater series had run its course and I took a month off to write a proper orchestral suite in two movements based on the themes and motifs from The Ray Bradbury Theater. Not until 1999, using my collection of orchestral samplers, did I attempt to record my first acceptable virtual orchestral performance of this work. It was around this time that I learned Ray had suffered a stroke. Upon recovery, he resumed writing. After a brief telephone conversation with Ray, I could hear the change in his voice. Through his slurred speech, that boyish enthusiasm resonated. I wrote a brief third movement to this concert work expressing the metaphor I felt regarding life and the precious short time we all have here on earth. The third movement is a sweet, serene and regretfully reluctant musical farewell. I met Ray at an event around 2002 and gave him a CD of the first draft of the Symphonic Suite. A few days later he called and asked me to mail him three more copies…I sent him thirty. THE HERE AND NOW . A NEW PERFORMANCE FOR 2014... Here is my completed work. The Ray Bradbury Symphonic Suite - a musical Tryptic in three movements. THE METAPHOR WITHIN THE RAY BRADBURY SYMPHONIC SUITE... Creating music is a personal experience for me. I typically recall more of how I felt when I wrote a particular piece of music rather than why I chose to compose certain themes and textures. There is one important metaphor that dwells within this piece. There are two solo trumpets that appear in the beginning of the first movement and again throughout the third movement. One trumpet is on stage, the second trumpet is up in the balcony out of sight. The trumpet placed on stage represents that part of a person that dwells within the physical world that is so familiar. The second trumpet, situated up in the balcony and out of sight, represents the unknown world that one day we all shall face once our time has passed, calling to us with nothing to fear. The Ray Bradbury Symphonic Suite for Orchestra in Three Movements I. Event Horizon II. The Summit III. The Heavens Composed and Orchestrated by John Massari Virtual Orchestra performed by John Massari ©2014 John Massari ASCAP Intimita Music ASCAP https://soundcloud/johnmassari/sets/singularity-john-massari
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 18:25:46 +0000
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