“Oh, I'd been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along.”
- Henry Mancini (Chicago Tribune; March 5, 1992)

I remember a band trip I went on in 9th or 10th grade, sitting on an airplane for the first time with a bandmate. We had a Discman with two sets of headphones and one of those 1/8" audio splitters between us, and we listened to a Disney anthology I'd borrowed from the local library for the entirety of the six hour flight. It was timeless music from Mary Poppins (Richard Sherman, Robert Sherman), Beauty and the Beast (Alan Menken, Howard Ashman), The Lion King (Hans Zimmer, Elton John, Tim Rice), and all the other classics. Love songs, villain songs, buddy songs, silly songs - I couldn't get enough of this music.

I always gravitated to stuff like this. Not just the musical theatre stuff from the great Disney Renaissance, but the incredible scores, theme songs, and underscore from cartoons, movies, television shows, and video games. I was captivated by Henry Mancini's work (Pink Panther, Moon River, Baby Elephant Walk, etc.) as much as I was by Koji Kondo's early Nintendo themes (Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda). Theme songs for cartoons like Inspector Gadget (Shuki Levy, Haim Saban), Ducktales (Mark Mueller), and The Adventures of Tintin (Tom Szczesniak, Ray Parker), ran through my head constantly. The themes of John Williams, Alan Silvestri, John Debney, Randy Newman, and Danny Elfman made an indelible mark on my musical development, and I continue to be blown away by Carl Stalling's brilliant Looney Tunes underscore.

Fast forward through a twenty year career in radio and country music - looking back, like Mr Mancini, I think I too had been writing cartoonish music pretty much all along. Ideas I had in Nashville writers' rooms were sometimes considered "too Disney" for country music. Sometimes we'd lean into that influence, and some of those songs made their way onto my first album. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I finally went back to study composition and orchestration at Berklee and fell in love with writing for the orchestra. Now, I've created Symphony Nostalgique to continue honing these skills by working on the themes I grew up listening to. Rather than simply creating note-for-note mock-ups of these themes, I will venture to infuse some of my own personality into the music I work on (a great example of this is the way Christophe Beck worked with Henry Mancini's Pink Panther theme to create entirely fresh scores for those Steve Martin movies a few years ago). The result, I hope, will be a fun fresh take on these classic themes, while honouring the integrity of the source material.

If you're into composition, orchestration, or midi music production, you might enjoy this "Nerd Out" section. For each song I release, I'll write a post describing the orchestration, and the tools I used to bring it to life. It may help to answer some of your own questions about this craft - I can't tell you how much I've learned by watching other composers on YouTube. If that's why you're here, I hope it helps!

The first single is the Inspector Gadget theme, and it comes out on August 2 (which also happens to be my birthday!). I can't wait for you to hear it.

One day, perhaps you'll hear my original work in a Disney movie or a Saturday morning cartoon. That's the dream. For now, I truly hope you enjoy the music of Symphony Nostalgique!