Love theme for a film

A short love scene from "Prague" which I composed, conducted, and recorded live by professionals at the Village Recorder (Sat 10-24-09).

My Experiences in L.A. - part 1

I am currently a USC grad student pursuing the Scoring For Motion Pictures and TV program -- a 9 month intensive program concentrating in cinematic scoring that consists of 20 selected composers. It has been a great privilege and opportunity within the last 4 weeks of the course -- meeting with some of the greatest working professionals in the field, plus meeting with composer for the Batman, Danny Elfman at FOX.

http://www.smptv.net/students.php?year=2010

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Feb 08 thru June 08

I graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2007. Soon after graduating, I set my foot out to Los Angeles in hopes to acquire valuable experiences in the film industry. Before entering the USC program, I had the wonderful opportunity to work on 3 feature films, one of them being a major Motion Picture. My first experience in L.A. landed on a gig as an assistant composer for television composer Velton Ray Bunch who is well-known for his music in the Quantum Leap series, as well as Star Trek Enterprise - which he won an Emmy. I was fortunate enough to not work as a 'coffee boy' or to take out the trash, all those things that a composer should not be doing or could be doing and this truly depends on who you end up with -- I've heard various stories on this. Instead I worked on programming scores, mixing, deliveries, attending the scoring/dubbing sessions, working closely with the post production team including the director, music editors, supervisor and the scoring mixer.

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Aug 08 thru Sept 08

After having worked as an assistant for VRB I moved on to find a feature film to work on. In the summer of 2008, I was asked to score for a Taiwanese box office film that was to be released on big screen in the Fall. I have never scored a feature film before and literally this was my first shot in scoring a big movie-- in this case a $1.8 million budget film. During the process, I've learned so much in this business, getting credits -- is essential for any upcoming composers, signing contracts, legal issues, copyright, negotiating deals, budget etc. After successfully scoring "1895", the movie had its theatrical premiere in Taiwan on November 7th 2008. It was my first serious break through as a film composer and a thrill to see my own scores being played at the Taiwanese cinemas. Many have been 'deeply touched' after watching the film and have mentioned the music to be a significant impact to the audience. People over there have been requesting the soundtrack for 1895, however, I have not yet released the CD due to copyright issues.

1895 is circuiting different festivals including Taiwan, Vancouver, and at London in 2010.

http://www.vifc.org/films/special/taiwanese.htm

"Blue Brave: The Legend of Formosa in 1895"

"1895" tells the story of the resistance against the Japanese invasion in 1895 - 

the biggest war in Taiwan's history

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June 09 thru Sept 09

This year, I had the chance to collaborate on an upcoming Russian feature with Richard Horowitz -- composer for Any Given Sunday. He also co-wrote the score for The Sheltering Sky with Ryuichi Sakamoto in 1990 which they both shared the Golden Globe. This was probably one of the most interesting projects to ever have worked on stylistically and thus it was my first time experimenting with Persian music The way it started out was that he asked me to bring my instrument - violin, which I play in all my scores on, and have me improvise on his tracks. improvising on top of his underscore for the cue. Kan Dagar is the current name of the film and is scheduled to release in Russia sometime by the end of this year. I will be featured as a violinist alongside Gingger Shankar -- who has worked with composers such as James Newton Howard and John Debney's Passion of the Christ.

More to come...