Hello one and all. It’s been too long since I’ve really been on a significant musical role, but what can I say? Circumstances changing can bring forth great inspiration.
Work is bustling on a new album. Well, not new in terms of the idea for it, but in the sense that it hasn’t been released yet. The title will be “Beyond the Infinite: A Musical Odyssey”, and it’s a work inspired by, you guessed it, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, Stanley Kubrick’s landmark science-fiction epic currently celebrating its’ 40th anniversary. By year’s end, my hope is to have this album available online.
Apart from Kubrick’s film, the genesis for this project came with an early composition done in 1999 entitled “Beyond the Infinite”. The piece was a bold venture for me at the time, and now one of debatable success, but within it is contained the monolith of ideas that would lead me to my current project, an epic tone poem to Kubrick’s masterwork that not only pays homage to the daring amalgam of Classical music he used in his final cut of the film, but also the elegant original score composed by Alex North that never saw the chance to be melded with the film. Back in 2000, the album was started in earnest with my writing of the chamber pieces “Dawn of Man” and “Dawn of Man: The Extended Version”.
After a brief stint of inspiration in 2006 that led to the lovely duet of “Weightless Waltz in F” and “Weightless Waltz in D”, things went quiet on the infinite front. And then, I totaled my just-paid-off car, with the sizable insurance check providing me with enough funds to get some stuff done…including adding to my “home studio,” such as it was.
Then curiosity about my new equipment and its’ capabilities turned into creativity. In early July, my new equipment was featured on the piece entitled “Entr’Acte”, which was also re-orchestrated to work as the project’s “Overture” as well, which is waiting to be recorded for violin and cello. The same is true of my next piece for the project, the piano composition “A Frightening Awakening”, which- by design- led me to work on my next piece for the album…“A Mysterious Lunar Discovery”, just released today and now available for download at Sonic Cinema. There’s still a lot of work to go before this album is ready for release, but I can’t wait to get to it so you can hear the final product. I look forward to sharing this venture with you in its’ entirety in the future, and with some of you tomorrow night with a listening party featuring several of these pieces after watching “2001” in celebration of my birthday. Any feedback you can provide on the music will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for listening,
Brian Skutle
http://www.sonic-cinema.com
http://www.myspace.com/brianskutle
http://www.myspace.com/cinemanouveau
