Recording “Going Home Star”

A big ol’ day yesterday. I recorded a session for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet of their recently commissioned ballet entitled Going Home Star. The reknowned composer, Christos Hatzis was with me in the make-shift control room at Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall in the producer’s chair, and the RWB’s musical director, Tad Biernacki, conducted the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

It was a big ol’ day for several reasons. One, the featured work is just a stunning piece of music – 92 minutes in length – for a fantastic ballet, choreographed by Mark Godden. The music also incorporates music by Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq (winner of the 2014 Polaris Music Prize), Steve Wood, and the Northern Cree Singers. I was proud and excited to be working on this project, which has been garnering rave reviews and a lot of national press since its debut last October, and happy to be working with a lot of friends at the WSO.

It was also a big ol’ day because this was a one day “hit and run” project that started at 1 pm and had to be done by 10 pm. That’s a lot of music in a short span of time and the pressure was on for everyone. Because of scheduling and budgetary issues, this was a one day effort and nothing, and I mean NOTHING,  could go wrong.

And nothing did, thankfully. When I got to bed, some 17 hours after arriving at the hall for setup the previous morning, I had the sleep of my life.

Today, I had the first of a 2 day editing session with Christos, and he headed back to his hotel with a smile on his face. We both knew that we had managed to pull off something close to the impossible. For myself, if the composer’s happy, I have every reason to be happy, too.

It was a big ol’ day.