Field of Competition
(1993)
John's Thoughts
This was my first orchestrally performed piece of music which began my relationship with longtime orchestrator/conductor Larry Groupé. After Public Access, I made a demo tape of the score to Access as well as some other shorts and sent it to a music library company to see if they perhaps wanted to hire me to write some pieces for them. The company, Network Music, produced CD albums for TV, radio and cable to choose cues as background or themes. The main composer at this company was Larry. He received my tape and called me to perhaps write a piece of music should he get bogged down. As it turned out, they were doing a special album of music which was more filmscore-ish in nature. Larry asked if I wanted to do a cue for it, and of course, I jumped at the chance.
The piece was supposed to signify the glory and exhilaration of sports, thus my title to it. The marketing team later renamed it "Empires" because of its sweeping nature. (It's on Network Music CD Album # 119, "Industrial".) One problem: I didn't even own a computer. I had done the score to Public Access on a little Roland sequencer and knew nothing of music-writing software. So Larry told me about Performer. I bought all the hardware, hauled out the manuals and began writing my piece. Needless to say, my time signatures were a disastrous mess, which Larry had to correct. He mentioned to me that the reason he was helping me get jump started was that he would like to be my orchestrator someday if I got a feature film. I agreed, and so when Suspects happened, it was great to be able to call him and make good on the promise.
I'll never forget how breathtaking it was to hear the real strings and brass perform the piece. I had never before realized the magic and feeling that real players could add. It's funny now to hear this piece of music on various things. I heard it for the longest time on A&E radio promos for "Biography". (Of course I've never seen a dime.) But it's fun to suddenly hear it in the most unlikely places. I don't know if it's ever really been used on anything sports-related!
Listen to the MP3 here.