Jeff Beal | Film & TV Music

April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Jeff Beal: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It was our great honor to speak with Jeff Beal, composer of Ugly Betty, Monk and other television themes, and Pollock as well as many other movie scores. His music is compelling, fun, intense, brooding — and always wonderful. More information from www.jeffbeal.com

Jeff Beal is a composer, performer, producer, improviser. He is a consummate musician. He writes music for film, the concert hall, CDs and television. This web page came about because Jeff wanted to have one place available to his listeners. A place to unite his many pursuits. One location where people could go to find out more about his jazz CDs, how to rent his orchestral music, learn about film scoring or just get in touch with him. I’ve known Jeff for over twenty years, now. Sharing a passion for music comes easily to this man, but getting him to talk about himself or promote himself doesn’t. I, however, have no problem talking about Jeff. Let me fill you in….Jeff was born in 1963 in Hayward, CA, the East Bay area of San Francisco. His parents both grew up with music making in the home; naturally music was always present in their house. His mother studied piano as a child, and from an early age, Jeff enjoyed picking out tunes on the family’s upright piano. In the third grade, his father took him to a school assembly where students could listen to and select band instruments to borrow and study…(In those halcyon days before Prop. 13) Jeff sat through the assembly quietly, until the trumpet was demonstrated. “That’s it!” he told his father. “That’s what I want to play!”Jeff began practicing and improving on the trumpet. He worked a paper route on his bicycle, mornings before school, to purchase his own trumpet. His father’s mother Irene had performed as a pianist on live radio broadcasts , and now lived in San Francisco. Not your average grandma, she was an artist, bohemian and an avid jazz fan; sitting in on Mile’s Live at the Black Hawk recording sessions. She gave Jeff a copy of Sketches of Spain as a gift when he was ten. He had never heard music like this before…Gil Evan’s emotive, expressive orchestrations, combined with Mile’s haunting trumpet. Jeff began to study jazz improvisation, theory, and harmony on his own, later taking classes at a local college. He immersed himself in jazz recordings and transcribed the solos of Woody Shaw, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Chet Baker and Miles…eventually writing his own jazz charts and performing them with the Monterey Jazz All Stars. Jeff also played in the Oakland Youth Symphony, conducted by Kent Nagano, and at 16 wrote an orchestral jazz trumpet concerto for that group. At night after school, Jeff would ride BART across the bay to San Francisco; sitting in at jam sessions led by musicians twice his age… listening, playing, and learning.Going to the Eastman School of Music was an opportunity for Jeff to continue his trumpet studies and to formally study composition. As an undergraduate, he took all of his double major classes, along with the classes offered to the master’s students in the jazz department. His spare moments were spent gigging with jazz professors and writing, writing, writing more music in the piano lab. Jeff was known to hide under the synclavier in the computer music lab, until the night watchman had passed, so that he could spend his nights undisturbed, writing and producing his own music.These synclavier demos lead to Jeff’s first solo album, Liberation; released in 1987. Now a conservatory graduate, living in New York City and working as a gigging musician, Jeff was signed by the Antilles division of Island Records. He played more dates with his own group, and began working on the music for a second album, when a move to San Francisco (for his wife’s career) lead to scoring work. Jeff’s first film score, Cheap Shots, was produced in a home studio in the tiny office of a rented home. Jeff soon was working as a ghost writer and arranger for other composers, always longing to be the guy with the gig and the credit.Moving to Los Angeles in 1992 provided Jeff with more opportunities and relationships. He continued making solo CDs, performing with his own jazz ensemble, and also contributed compositions to friend’s CD projects, like his Bass Concerto, written for John Patitucci and recorded at the request of Chick Corea. The opportunity to create an orchestral jazz trumpet concerto, a lifelong dream from the Sketches of Spain days, was realized when childhood friend and conductor Kent Nagano approached Jeff to write a piece for the Berkeley Symphony. The end result, Alternate Route, is a signature piece for Jeff, representing a union of his love for orchestral and improvised music.More opportunities for scoring came about as Jeff became known around town as the eclectic, classically trained, improvising, computer savvy composer. His scores ran the gamut from the earthy world music of Guy, to the ethereal music of Nothing Sacred, to the jazz inspired score to The Passion of Ayn Rand. It was in 2000 that Jeff’s most monumental opportunity presented itself. Jeff has heard that Ed Harris was producing, directing and starring in a biographical film about artist Jackson Pollock, and his agent had submitted his music for this independent film. Learning that another composer had been selected, Jeff tried to forget about the project, but it was difficult to dismiss. When he heard that Ed Harris was once again looking for a composer, he tried not to get his hopes up. What Jeff didn’t know was that Ed Harris had already fired two composers, and kept returning to Jeff’s submitted CD of cues. When Ed finally called Jeff personally to ask him to meet on Pollock, Ed admitted he didn’t know who Jeff was…he had lost his sheet of credits, and only had that one CD. The one CD he kept playing over and over. Jeff and Ed met and spotted Pollock that same day. They had an instant rapport. Ed spoke later of Jeff’s immediate understanding of the film and his ability to translate that into musical ideas. The rest, as they say, is history.Jeff Beal now finds himself happily living the life he has always imagined for himself. Composing music, collaborating with creative individuals, traveling, playing trumpet, riding his bike, and living a rather peaceful, reclusive life with his family in the rural outskirts of Los Angeles. We hope that you enjoy browsing this site, listening to the music and learning more about this immensely talented individual. Please contact Jeff with any questions or comments on the Contact page.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Hollywood, Classical, Jazz, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Susan Hetrick | Family Blender

April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Susan Hetrick [8:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we spoke with Susan Hetrick, about her “Blender” concept for families, and her new book. Here is more from her website:

Tales from the Blender is a collection of stories, suggestions and guidance garnered from the real-life experiences of Christian couples living in blended families all over the United States. These families generously shared the good, the bad and the ugly about blending: what to look forward to, what to watch out for, what challenges they faced and, most importantly, what has worked for them. Susan Hetrick gives you real-life illustrations on how to deal with: • We’ll-live-happily-ever-after-Syndrome • Choosing to love children who wish you were dead • Bonding as a family without using duct tape • Holidays with ex-spouses • The “Ex-tended” family experience – fruits and nuts aren’t just for breakfast anymore • Talking yourself out of that urge to run away to Timbuktu With fundamental discussion questions for the entire family, a succinct synopsis at the end of each chapter, and a unique House Blend Recipe, Susan Hetrick whips up an honest, challenging, inspiring and funny serving of the house blend, with a Christian twist.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Health, Holidays, Religion, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Gary Freiman | Conservative Future

April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Gary Freiman: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Gary Freiman’s recent book, Current Events, Conservative Outcomes: Predictions for America’s Future takes a deep look into America and the pressing issues or our time. He divides is book into 7 sections: terrorism, world issues, US politics, US social issues, personal issues, American culture and God. Each section of the book is subdivided by Freiman into the pivotal issues that he states will determine the fate of the United States.More information from Gary Freiman’s website:

G.A. Freiman is a very successful businessman who has a deep passion and love

for the United States of America. Mr. Freiman was brought up modestly in the southern United States and has a belief that America is among the chosen people in our world. Raised Roman Catholic yet from a broken home, G.A. Freiman had an interesting path to his faith. Discovering an uncanny ability as a young boy that allowed him to accurately predict future events also greatly complicated this young mans course to God. G.A. Freiman now in middle age has utilized his abilities to explain why we in the United States of America are so blessed, as well as what actions should be taken to continue our favor with the creator. Mr. Freiman has predicted the outcomes of the most difficult topics our country faces as a way to provide guidance in the troubled times we live in. When asked what should be on the back cover of his work, G.A. Freiman said “Americans who understand our history and listen to the great minds of our past will understand why I wrote this book about our future” “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.” Ronald Reagan “If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.” Bill Clinton “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but having the right to do what we ought.” Pope John Paul II “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.” Dwight David Eisenhower “Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.” Napoleon Bonaparte “All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” Albert Einstein

Posted by admin | Filed Under Religion, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Marie Howe | Kingdom & Poetry

April 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Marie Howe Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today we spoke with poet Marie Howe. Marie Howe’s poems have appeared in the Atlantic, The NewYorker, Agni, Harvard Review, and New England Review, among others. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. More about Marie Howe and her new book from her publisher’s website:

Marie Howe is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Good Thief(1998), and What the Living Do (1997), and the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her third volume of poetry, Kingdom Of Ordinary Time is forthcoming. Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. She has, in addition, been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughsahres, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. Currently, Howe teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia, and New York University.

Marie Howe wowed readers and critics alike with her first book of poems, The Good Thief. Selected by Margaret Atwood as the 1989 winner of the National Poetry Series, the book explored the themes of relationship, attachment, and loss in a uniquely personal search for transcendence. Said Atwood, “Marie Howe’s poetry doesn’t fool around . . . these poems are intensely felt, sparely expressed, and difficult to forget; poems of obsession that transcend their own dark roots.” Howe sees her work as an act of confession, or of conversation. She says simply,” Poetry is telling something to someone.” The Boston Globe calls her work, “a poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty, and relation.”

Howe’s equally acclaimed second book, What the Living Do, addressed the grief of losing a loved one. “The tentative transformation of agonizing, slow-motion loss into redemption is Howe’s signal achievement in this wrenching second collection,” said Publisher’s Weekly, in choosing it as one of the five best volumes of poetry published that year. Part of the urgency and importance of Howe’s poetry stems from its rootedness in real life—just ten minutes into her 1987 residence at the MacDowell Colony, Howe received a call from her brother John telling her that her mother had had a heart attack. Two years later, John died of AIDS, and her book What the Living Do is in large part an elegy to him. Howe’s poetry is intensely intimate, and her bravery in laying bare the music of her own pain- but never the pain alone—is part of its resonance. Inside each poem there is also a joy, a new breath of life, some kind of redemption. “Each of them seems a love poem to me,” says Howe.

ABOUT THE KINGDOM OF ORDINARY TIMEAn anticipated new volume from Marie Howe. Hurrying through errands, attending a dying mother, helping her own child down the playground slide, the speaker in these poems wonders what is the difference between the self and the soul? The secular and the sacred? Where is the kingdom of heaven? And how does one live in Ordinary Time—during those periods that are not apparently miraculous? These are astonishing poems by a poet known as “a truth-teller of the first order.”

Posted by admin | Filed Under Religion, Spirituality, Politics, Poetry, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST

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