When working with Skewed Visions, the most quotidian of objects and gestures manifest as uncanny phenomena. So we’ve found it to be with these blankets suspended in midair by unseen performers Erika Hansen and Megan Mayer, as we develop an as-yet-unnamed show to be mounted in the near future. As one might surmise, a theme we’re exploring (continuing to explore) is, in a nutshell, the “obstructed view”.
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As the year draws to a close, I’m grateful to all the collaborators I’ve had the good fortune of working with this year. So many great experiences have come our way. Here are but a few of them!
I had the opportunity to edit voiceover by LeVar Burton on some videos for the Be The Match charity’s annual gala, scrub dialog of an interview with the Senior Director of Education for the World Bank on some educational materials about qualitative research for the University of Minnesota, plus edit and mix audio on promotional pieces for Made to Impact, the Minnesota Timberwolves, Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, The DC Group, and plenty more.
Many placements of my music on TV this year, both solo compositions and co-writes with my friend Dan Luedke— mostly on European shows like “When TV Stars Go Horribly Wrong” (UK), “Build Your Dream: A New Life in a French Castle” in the Netherlands and a German cooking show called “Die Küchenschlacht” (The Kitchen Battle), but also in the U.S. on Amy Poehler’s NBC show “Making It”.
I also wrote an original score for J.D. O’Brien’s short documentary “Uganda Gold”, created some music for Skewed Visions’ experimental performance installation “Birds of the Future” (more on that later), and scored Felipe Mafasoli’s post-apocalypic film “Nowhere Left To Run” as well as a medical video about T cells.
The 2019 Minneapolis- St Paul International Film Festival featured two shorts I had the pleasure of working on: the horror film “Dual” by Justin Staggs (sound edit, Foley and mix) and the experimental animation “Beebox” by Cable Hardin (FX edit, custom music, and mix). “Dual” also premiered online in 2019, as did Andrew Hunt’s comedy horror short “Clean Cut”, which features my original music, sound edit, and mix.
This year’s Twin Cities Film Festival also offered a fair amount of my work. Wayne Johnson’s feature film “Into the Void”, featuring an original score by yours tuly, premiered there. I also engineered and edited ADR, created Foley and cut some FX for Barry Andersson’s “Soviet Sleep Experiment”, a feature that included Chris Kattan among its cast and premiered at TCFF as well.
I don’t do much work for the theater these days, but when Charles Cambpell called, I was coaxed from retirement like a gunfighter summoned to take out one last man. Charles and I had been a mutual admiration society for some years, and it was finally the right time for me to collaborate with his company Skewed Visions on “Birds of the Future”— your garden variety post-apocalyptic performance installation about two bird people looking for a better life.
There was a whole lot of great talent assembled for this show— we were truly birds of a feather. Now that I’ve gotten my hands on the video footage, I’m looking forward to putting together some clips to share. Sleep in fear!
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Celebrating Minneapolis today.
This summer I wrote some music for a film by Felipe Mafasoli’s post-apocalyptic film “Nowhere Left to Run”— I’ve written about this music previously— and I decided to record some of it al fresco.
As folks around these parts know, you can often find a piano parked in some arbitrary location outdoors downtown when it’s warm out, so I figured it’d be fun to record on location. I take a portable recorder with me pretty much everywhere I go, so I plopped it down on top of the piano and went to town, accompanied by the soundscape of Nicollet Mall, letting it roll after I was done to let the city contribute some sound on its own.
It was an honor to perform on a piano emblazoned with the names of some local heroes. When I make music here, I bask in the shadow of The Trashmen, Julee Cruise, Hüsker Dü, Judy Garland, The Andrews Sisters, Tod Dockstader, and of course His Royal Badness himself.