I was thrilled to discover this morning that my April 2019 album Legend Seekers won the Silver Medal for Outstanding Achievement in the composer/composition category of the Global Music Awards!
I am so honored (and validated)!
If you haven’t already, go take a listen to Legend Seekers today!
It’s out now!! This project has been roughly eight years in the making, since the time I finished writing “Leviathan of the Ancient Deep“… and this album itself has taken about a year to complete. It was all worth it–I learned so much in the process and I think we’ve got a really superb collection now! 🙂
Thank you to everyone who made this possible: musicians, backers, and everyone else who patiently rooted for me.
In a world where adventure calls and the intrepid answer… where the daring explore a mystifying world of Dream and Thought… where heartbreak twists into furious desperation… where virtuosic fits of funkiness stare brazenly into the face of danger… where forgetfulness drives discovery and hope…
In this world, Leviathan — a creature that haunts the Ancient Depths — lies in wait to strike upon those that seek its legendary might!
“Legend Seekers” Album Notes
Who will win this contest of wills? The stirring waves bear witness to this eternal struggle…
These past few months have been indescribably fulfilling, yet chaotic, as these things usually go, lol. 😉 I’m nearly through my first semester as a music professor for Cal Poly Pomona; I’ve spent nearly every waking moment setting up and teaching my new classes! I’ve really been enjoying this adventure, and I look forward to each following experience with this wonderful school.
Naturally, as the semester draws toward a close, I’ve been itching to get back to composing and completing my upcoming album, “Legend Seekers” – I’ll be able to start getting back to these projects in just another few weeks, yay! In the meantime, I’ve been meaning to set up this blog post to showcase some of the photos and videos documenting our recording sessions for “Intrepid” and some of the other works that will appear on this upcoming album… Enjoy the gallery and impromptu videos below!
Don’t forget… if you’d like to be a Backstage Supporter of this and other future projects, visit the Backstage Community to see what perks are available–like autographed copies of scores and albums as well as your name listed on the albums you support!
A very special thanks to everybody who has patiently worked with me to make this become a reality!! <3
Welcome to #NewTuneThursday!
“The Elusive Everyman and Her Majesty” represents our main character, forced to live everyday with his mental illness, unsure who is real and who is not… Though that’s not entirely true– all the characters are very real to him.
Here’s how I put the work together; it’s really my most formulaic of the whole suite, which I think suits the mental state of our character…
This track represents one part of the two-fold heart of the main character’s ultimate saga, in my musical interpretation of it. Essentially, this track is comprised of an increasing hodge-podge of melodic fragments — ripped violently from the original works in which they are first found (from “I Know What Death Sounds Like,” “Faces in Foam,” and The Everyman and Her Majesty themes at the beginning of this present track) — that swirl into an angry and frustrating mass of sound and angular textures, up until the very end, when they merge together into The Whiteness of Teaston’s mind. My next track will strive to illuminate musically the flip-side of Teaston’s disjointed thoughts, and the ways in which he attempts to come to terms with his schizophrenia….
Technique-wise, I assembled these fragments by first labeling them both alphabetically and numerically, then, taking seven of Teaston’s own chaotic fragments of thought from random places in the book (“Ever will I?”; “Can I?”; “Consumption”; “Hello Blood”; “The Cliff, Thanks”; “And the Water”; “Even My Face”), I used the letters and syllables of these phrase-lets to “spell” out and overlay the musical phrases.
How many of the phrases from these earlier tracks can you recognize, rushing and overtaking Teaston’s poor troubled mind?
I am fascinated with this work but I have yet to be happy with a performance of it… it’s just such a wickedly tricky work!
There are two versions you can listen to at this point: a live version that’s not entirely accurate but has a lot of heart, and a digital rendition that is spot on as far as accuracy goes but is missing a little bit of the humanness to it… See what you think! 😉
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on YouTube Music
Listen on Amazon Music (Live Version)
Listen on YouTube Music (Live version)
“The Elusive Everyman and Her Majesty” can be performed by an advanced ensemble. Get the sheet music here! And stay tuned for our new work…
Today until midnight, get everything at our store on TeePublic up to 30% off!!
We have rocking tees, phone cases, notepads, stickers and more. Get some swag today and help support the upcoming album!
Coming up soon in these next couple of months, we’ll be recording the epic Fantasy for Oboe/English Horn Soloist and Chamber Orchestra, “Intrepid“! It will be an amazing compliment to the Leviathan E-Violin Concerto on the upcoming album! <3
To prep the upcoming strings-only session — to make the process as easy as possible on my dear friends helping to make this possible — I decided to record myself playing the 2 violin parts and viola part ahead of time. It’ll give me a lot more flexibility in mixing the tracks, and give my players a really solid footing when reading through this together.
One of the things I love about a process such as this, is getting to hear a larger piece broken up into its basic layers–getting to hear what components interact to create the overall effect–and it never ceases to amaze and thrill me! I love music that weaves in and out of itself like a sonic tapestry…
You can get a sense for the intricacy of this work by listening to the following two segments of this prep-recording. Enjoy! 🙂
Want to contribute to this recording? There are several ways you can help:
Welcome to #NewTuneThursday!
“Greek Dance” is one of my earliest pieces; I believe this is one of those tunes I wrote while sitting on the bus during my tour years, like “Face in the Moonlight“…
Composed in 2002, this charming and enthusiastic work for string quartet makes playful use of the various rhythmic textures able to be derived from odd-beat patterns. Though it stands, in its spontaneity and brevity, as one of Wallin Huff’s earlier works, it remains a favorite among those who have tackled its deceptively simple intricacies.
It seems so simple, yet it’s such a challenge and a blast to play!
Earlier this year, Ryan M. Luévano invited me to include a short piece for string orchestra of my own during the debut concert of the Neue World Orchestra Project, so I decided to arrange this old quartet for the group. I really love the extra layers of color and texture it provides!
Below, you can hear the original quartet recording, as well as see the video from NWOP’s performance of the string orchestra version. Enjoy!
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on YouTube Music
“Greek Dance” can be performed by groups of intermediate to advanced ability. Get the sheet music for the quartet here, and the string orchestra music here! And stay tuned for our new work of next week…
Welcome to #NewTuneThursday!
A madrigal, popular in the Renaissance and early Baroque, may be defined as a secular, polyphonic partsong, a through-composed work attempting to express the emotion contained within each line of a poem on which it is based. Loosely, a madrigal may be thought of as a linear journey across pallets of color and emotional soundscapes, and this is precisely what Wallin Huff’s 2014 so-titled work for orchestra aims to do.
This 8-minute work for small orchestra has so much charm for me; I really feel like it’s a journey across time as well as emotion. It has been performed live by the Santa Clarita Philharmonic, and it’s available on the album ESOTERICA.
Enjoy the recording below!
Listen on YouTube Music
“Madrigal, for Orchestra” can be performed by an intermediate-to-advanced ensemble. Get the score here, and the parts here! And stay tuned for our new work of next week…
Welcome to #NewTuneThursday!
“You’re not really listening. Can you hear the angular melodic twists?”
“That’s what death sounds like, I know… It’s like a leitmotif; it keeps coming back to my mind.”
This track from Music for The Book of I was actually the first track I completed when working on this OST. So in this work for string orchestra and solo violin is where I birthed all that would comprise the themes of our main character, Teaston, and his trials.
I sought out a sense of haunting poignancy and drama in this work… angular in shape, mysterious, beautiful and grotesque, all at once… it’s truly a unique piece and one that speaks well to the main character, I think.
At one point, artist Liselott Johnsson also combined her striking visuals with this track and excerpts from Jorge Armenteros‘ writing to create a stunning artistic response to The Book of I.
Enjoy both the video and the audio track below!
Listen on Amazon Music
Listen on YouTube Music
“I Know What Death Sounds Like” can be performed by an intermediate-to-advanced ensemble. Get the sheet music here! And stay tuned for our new work of next week…
Welcome to #NewTuneThursday!
I am fascinated by the lessons the study of counterpoint can teach us! Combining this love for the rules of counterpoint with my nature to set up systems of patterns and let them run (to see what happens…) I embarked on a creative experiment using three violins…
Completed in 2011 for the Rosé Violin Trio of Los Angeles, this complex and experimental work consists of three movements:
I. Intervallic Structure (Andante con moto)
II. Tone and Color (Meno mosso)
III. Urban Rhythm (Allegro ma non troppo)Based upon a strict and unvarying formula of patterns that are passed equally between the three violin parts, all three movements utilize this same precise structure of “A, B, C, and Ostinato” phrases, which were developed and plotted out meticulously by Wallin Huff prior to the actual composition of any one note. Each movement, however, while still based upon the same formulaic set of patterns, is then varied by the compositional material of the four phrases themselves. The phrases’ material is each based upon very different scalar patterns, depending on the particular movement’s character: Intervallic Structure is an exploration of pitting certain intervals against each other; Tone and Color is a wash of purely tonal and consonant patterns; Urban Rhythm strictly focuses on the pitting of rhythmic patterns of two’s versus three’s against one another in a “sterile” pentatonic tonal environment.
Counterpoint Invariable is a successful thought-experiment, turned to driving and evocative emotional artwork, highlighting Wallin Huff’s ongoing fascination with the logic of mechanical structure giving way to outward beauty. It is a true, fulfilling reward to perform and explore this work in its entirety.
This work was beautifully recorded by Parma and released on the Navona Records album, “Soul of the Machine” — Parma even recommended it to the Grammys!
Enjoy the recording of these three movements below…
“Counterpoint Invariable” can be performed by an advanced ensemble. Get the sheet music here! And stay tuned for our new work of next week…
