Thirty years ago I was living in Austin, TX scratching out a living playing piano gigs, teaching some piano lessons and teaching the jazz band PT at Southwestern University. I happened to bump into sax player/arranger-composer and great guy Paul Baker who told me he'd been hired to score video games for EA/Origin. I was intrigued and thought to myself, "I could do that", having never done it before and barely knowing how to use a computer. Paul graciously accepted a demo cassette tape that I threw together and submitted it to Chris Roberts' development team at Origin who just happened to be looking for a composer for Wing Commander 3. A week later I got a call and was hired to score this huge title, not knowing that it also required hours of music for movies (cutscenes), which I also hadn't done before. Baptism by fire! They hired me in February of '94 and the game shipped right after Thanksgiving with about 4 hours of music!
That opportunity basically created a brand new career for me as a game, and ultimately film composer and orchestrator. I can't say enough about how blessed I feel that after 30 years of working in games and film and utltimately joining the faculty at Berklee College of Music I can now look back at that time so fondly, working with such incredible people, and realize we created something truly special.
Ten years ago I got to finally record much of that music with an orchestra and choir in Bratislava (see the video) the way I'd originally imagined it. I just wrapped a similar process in Budapest (orchestra) and Salt Lake City (choir) for volume 2, which will be mixed by the lengendary Bruce Botnick.
Life is good!!
