New Swan Shakespeare Festival

For the 2019 season, I produced a series of musical cues for Irvine’s New Swan Shakespeare Festival. Working on The Merchant of Venice, as well as The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the sound palettes for both were extremely contrasting, and each proved to be a unique challenge to tackle.

Directed by Eli Simon, this adaptation of The Merchant of Venice featured an energetic, orchestral-inspired score, emphasizing small and solo string writing. I recorded a total of 14 piece, many of which were variations of the main theme.

Of note also is the arrangement of the traditional Jewish folk piece, “Eishet Chayil,” done to represent the character of Shylock.

Contrasting Merchant, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as directed by Beth Lopes, spun the romantic-comedy in a modern direction: setting it in current day. This resulted in an aural landscape which highlighted rock, pop, electronic, and hip hop-styled tracks, with some orchestral elements lightly coating a section of cues.

The setting of Verona was intended to have a breezy, pop sound, which is defined in the opening cue. The “Verona” motif provides a large backbone of the writing.

Many of the pieces that follow are derived from “Verona,” with individual sub-themes for characters branching off from the concept.

At the opposite end of this, I was asked to give the city of Milan a more electronic vibe. The exact wording being “Tron-like.”

Originally, early in the process, the location was intended to have have a mix of electronic and orchestral elements, but that was eventually scrapped.

With 39 cues written in the span of 17 days, Two Gents proved to be one of my more demanding productions: at one point composing and recording nine tracks in the span of a 24 hour period, but overall, it’s work I’m very proud of.