In the Oscar-nominated film "Up in the Air," audiences watch the familiar routines of contemporary airline travel while hearing the unfamiliar sounds of an ancient Asian instrument, thanks to erhu virtuoso Karen Hua-Qi Han.

Like the violin, the erhu is a stringed instrument played with a bow, but many of the similarities end there.

"It's two strings, 'er' in Chinese means 'two,' " Han explained. " 'Hu' means it's not really from China. It was from Tibet and Mongolia, that area, in the beginning. So they called it 'erhu.' "

Read more at LATimes.com...

From NationalPost.com....

Yesterday, we told you that The White Stripes were upset about the use of one of their songs, "Fell In Love With A Girl", being used without their permission in a Super Bowl ad for the US Air Force Reserve.

Today, in an interview with The New York Times, the composer of the song, Kem Kraft, a freelancer hired by the commercial's production company stated: “I’m sorry it sounds the same. It wasn’t my intention, truly, truly, truly... [if the White Stripes] want to call me and talk to me, as far as I’m concerned, I’m responsible for this. Just me. I’m pretty much a one-man band here. It doesn’t have anything to do with the Air Force. They didn’t know anything, and I didn’t know anything either.”

From filmmusicmag.com...

Film and television composer Alex Wilkinson says he composed original music that has been used in 30 episodes of the hit television series “Stargate SG-1” and is being denied cue sheet credit for his music by series composer Joel Goldsmith. Goldsmith strongly denies the claim and says Wilkinson’s work on the series was orchestration only.

Current film and television music industry practices generally refer to composing as work that involves creating new musical material, including creating the melody (if any), creating principal lines played by various instruments, specifying major harmonic material, and creating timings for the music including specific changes in the tempo and time signature (meter) to synchronize the music with picture. Orchestration generally refers to creating musical elements to support the original music material from a composer. This can include expanding and enhancing harmonies and voicings, as well as distributing harmonic material, lines and motifs from the composer among sections of the orchestra in order to enhance and maximize the quality of the finished music.

Read more at filmmusicmag.com

By Richard Scheinin

My shot at the best classical recordings of 2009 turns out to be top-heavy with pianists and French composers. Funny how that happens: You begin a process with what seems like scrupulous fairness, sorting through hundreds of discs, aiming for balance, trying to demonstrate one's wide-openness to the whole musical universe. But somehow, the results wind up reflecting personal preferences, anyway.

Still, don't run away if you're a violin maven or a Germanophile. There's Bach and Schumann here, too. There's Paganini and Puccini. There's John Adams of Berkeley and Phil Kline of downtown Manhattan. And there's a 21st option: Michael Tilson Thomas on DVD.

In alphabetical order:

John Adams: "Doctor Atomic Symphony" (Nonesuch): The composer's symphony, in which he fuses major thematic elements from his 2005 opera "Doctor Atomic," is dark, bristling and something of a metaphor for menacing inner processes, both psychological and of the laboratory. However, I prefer its companion piece on this disc, "Guide to Strange Places," which dates to 2001. Like the atomic headliner, "Strange Places" gleams and menaces; in fact, it behaves like a forerunner to the symphony, even hinting at similar thematic materials. But it unfolds more organically. Each work is given a vigorously precise performance by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Robertson.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard: "Homage a Messiaen" (Deutsche Grammophon): The softest of light in space: They float from Aimard's keyboard, along with the far-off sounds of bells, of birds or the sudden intrusion of almost ruthless rhythm. Aimard, one of Messiaen's truest disciples, has gathered up numerous of the composer's less well-known piano works, including his youthful Preludes, for a recital that stuns with subtle radiance and other-worldly intimations.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. "Debussy: Complete Works for Piano, Volume 4" (Chandos): An award-winner in Europe, French pianist Bavouzet is relatively unknown in this country. Go figure. His Debussy series is superb, bringing to bear just the right dosages of brain and heart. Volume 4 takes on "Images," the first and second series, and the Etudes, Books 1 and 2.

Read more at MercuryNews.com...

For Randy Newman, it’s a familiar tune. The score and songs he wrote for Disney’s The Princess and the Frog will probably earn him multiple Oscar nominations.

“I’d like to talk about the Academy for about half an hour, if you don’t mind,” he says.

Maybe — but he won’t single out one song over another as the likeliest awards contender.

“I have no idea. I like Down in New Orleans quite a bit. The waltz turned out very well. But I have no preference or expectation. I had fairly explicit instructions. It’s what I asked for. You know, the type of a song is almost suggested by the assignment itself. It was obvious that (firefly) Ray is Cajun country and that’s the kind of thing that he would get ... I often gave them back what they put on the page, essentially.”

The result is a musical gumbo that includes jazz, Dixieland, blues and gospel.

Read more at TorontoSun.com...

ASCAP’s latest PR event “Why Concert Composers Should Write For Film”, a seminar featuring concert and film composer Paul Chihara, urges concert composers to become film composers. As if there aren’t enough issues with existing, experienced film composers trying to scratch out a living in a marketplace completely over-saturated with actual film composers not to mention songwriters and others calling themselves “composers”, the last thing we need is the organization that we pay to collect and pay us our royalties to be encouraging more people from other musical areas to become film composers when the marketplace for existing film composers is in such bad shape.

First, they encourage songwriters to “become” composers, and now it’s concert composers. This, from the organization that values a one-minute score cue in television or film at only 20% of what a one-minute song cue is paid. Thanks, ASCAP – it’s bad enough that you and your ruling songwriter cabal devalue our music, but now you want to encourage more people from other musical areas to enter the disastrously overcrowded film composer marketplace? I wonder how Paul Chihara and his concert composer colleagues would react if the massive numbers of unemployed and under-employed film composers decided to enter the concert music marketplace and compete for the limited number of grants and giveaways that fund those projects!

I don’t want to sound like a protectionist here, and don’t want to overlook the benefit of more orchestrally-trained composers existing in a marketplace where formal instrumental writing skills, and even being able to read music, have ceased to be requirements for being a film composer (even an A-list composer!), but there are some simple economics to be considered that affect every film composer working or trying to work today.

Read more at Filmmusicmag.com...

The little ditties that open TV shows keep growing littler and dittier, almost disappearing into Lost’s single sustained chord. The assumption may be that we’re just going to fast-forward through them anyway, but part of the charm of shows like Cheers, M*A*S*Hand Sanford and Son was the musical intro. Fortunately, not everyone has given up on the theme song. Here are 10 current shows with tunes that make us put down the remote.

Read the list at PasteMagazine.com...