A Long Needed Update

Thank you, loyal readers for holding out in this now over two month span of silence from me. The good news is that said silence is a result of working and creating nonstop - something I can't be sorry about! I've been racking my brain for the last week or two to decide the best way to chronicle the last two months and have decided that one narrative, sweeping blog entry would be the best way to go. So here goes.

Tom Newman on the right with
orchestrator Jack Redord on the
left and director Tate Taylor
in the middle. At Fox Studios.

Shortly after my last blog entry from March I once again had the tremendous privilege of joining Thomas Newman's team on the scoring stage for "The Help", a movie based on the best selling novel that is set to be released in August. This session was particularly memorable as I was able to (finally) experience the initial phases of Tom's process, which involves him collaborating one-on-one with musician friends he's known for years. After the second day of string recording, Tom stayed late at Fox with George Deoring, a very famous guitar player here in Los Angeles, to lay down some tracks on a cue they would be recording strings for the next day. Tom handed George a rough printout of what was happening in the cue. George made some notes, wrote in some chords, and just started playing stuff - acoustic guitar, electric bass, dulcimer, etc - all while being guided by Tom. After about an hour, the cue was filled out and Tom moved onto the same process with his wind player friend. It literally blew the walls of my mind to see not only how well such a collaborative process worked, but also how amazing it sounded. My lesson from Tom this time around was learning just how valuable the input of musicians is and how much can be created and accomplished by allowing them to do what they do.

April proceeded to be a fairly hectic month with various side jobs and projects swirling about. I met a new challenge on a student project called "Intersection," a film about the relationship between a boy and his father. The father we find out is working nights as a drag queen while the son is out hanging around a bad crowd and at the end we see the two worlds unexpectedly intersect. My job was to write a song that would be the drag queen's musical number, which was played over a beautiful montage of the two character's secret lives. You can listen to the song here:

 Another Day by Dave Volpe


At the end of April I traveled to New York City where I supported my dear friend Taylor who gave his masters recital in bass performance at Juilliard. I wrote him a piece for bass and harp, which was played beautifully along with various other pieces that one would never think playable on the bass. Unfortunately I don't have a link to share, but plans are being made for a recording over the summer, so stay tuned.

Upon my return from NYC I immediately dove into perhaps the biggest job I've yet to undertake. I have been hired for orchestration and score prep on a project for Nintendo - gasp!! I am not yet able to divulge all the details of the project here, but I can say that it is for a live venue coming up in the fall. I shall leave you in suspense for now! We had our first deadline for Nintendo in May and since then I've been steadily working on scores as the music comes in.

In May I also finished work on a tremendous short film called "Simone" staring Ingrid Clay and Jim Parrack (who plays Hoyt on True Blood!). The film was directed by Wolfgang Bodison, who I have had the pleasure of working with twice now. I wrote this score with the influence of Tom Newman glowing in my mind. The score turned into a personal landmark for me as I used Tom's collaborative approach to get some incredible guitar tracks from my dear friend Sam Jones. You can listen to the fruit of my collaboration here:

 Decisions by Dave Volpe

Shortly after finishing the short film I was contact by two (two!) different directors who asked me to work on their feature films - that's right - I have my first two features! I will save the details for later blog posts, but the first is slated to be finished in August and the second will come together shortly thereafter. Stay tuned for much more detail on this front as news unfolds.

And that pretty much brings us up to date. I have many exciting things coming up in June, so please keep checking back as I pull my blog back on track and give you all the breaking news.