Lucas Richman, Conductor

Ah, poor neglected blog.

My readers are probably wondering why the dropoff in posting. I have until the end of the month to finish my music for Abbey Road, and so I'm in full-on isolation mode. But I will share the events of my weekend with you all--I think from here until the sessions on December 18th, I'll be posting more updates about the album, and fewer musical-analysis-with-YouTube-video entries. So, for all those of you who come here for the pretty pictures and musical commentary (that is, all three of you....hi guys), will just have to put up with my little musical diary entries.

I flew out to Knoxville to spend the weekend with my conductor, Lucas Richman, and his family. I brought my scores for the 12 songs to the album with me, and spent a nice day with Lucas sitting down and going over the music (interrupted occationally by the obligatory jam session with his 9 year old son, Max, who shreds like no one's bizness on Guitar Hero, and pwned me thoroughly).

Lucas is the conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, and was a protégé of none other than Leonard Bernstein when he was 18 years old. He's also conducted a lot of film scores, and bridges the gap between classical conducting and session conducting better than anyone out there. AND, he was a former conducting teacher of mine! So I'm in good hands with him.

Lucas is also an accomplished composer, and I absolutely *love* sitting down with other composers and sharing music with each other. He played me his beautiful Oboe Concerto and his Palo Alto Overture--a full-orchestral piece that was written when he was 17 (which is totally unfair), in honor of my very own hometown. (It was really the most random thing--why in the world had Lucas written an orchestral overture for Palo Alto?)