I’m a day late posting this, but I’m going to blame jet lag after an exhausting 21-hour trip on three planes home from Sophia, Bulgaria, over 5,000 miles from my home, across the globe! It was worth it. I’m happy to report that in the last of three recording sessions and after lots of recorded replays we captured near-perfect performances of all four  movements of the 50-minute behemoth of my new Symphony No. 3: English.

Just a few spots in each will be improved with a slightly better version of a short passage, patched from an earlier session. This will be done in New Hampshire, under my supervision as producer, on October 1 and 2 by the Wunderkind of the Parma Recordings engineering department, named Lucas. I have been so blessed to have the very best production people in Sofia and the U.S. If something doesn’t sound good, you’ll have to blame me.

In consultation, Lucas and I will do the “mixing,” setting all the balances of volume and reverb among the instruments (each with its own microphone) for a great sound, then digitally “splice the tape” (but with no tape it is now called “digital editing”) to create the definitive version of each movement. Then Lucas will do the final coding and balancing of all four tracks, called “mastering”.  I’ll have those mastered audio files when we’re done, but the album won’t be released until early in 2025, I think. (No date has yet been set.)

The musicians, all seasoned members of professional orchestras, were fantastic, as usual. Their rich and musical playing sounds a hundred times better than the virtual mockups that I have previously posted here and on Facebook, full of humanity and much more expressive, emotional, and beautiful sounding. The string players, in particular, have great old European instruments full of richness and warmth, to match or, in my opinion, surpass those of any top American orchestra, no slight intended.

As for the brass, they gave to my orchestration the glowing resonance of Anton Bruckner’s brass chorales, and the woodwinds chimed in with the lovely English pastoral flavor of Ralph Vaughan-Williams, while still sounding like Kurek (for better or worse). The timpanist and harpist did some awesome playing in several solos. In short, it was well worth traveling so far after so many months and hundreds! of hours composing. I am grateful to God for allowing such an ambitious, blood, sweat, and tears project to finally be nearly done. Not to mention that after composing a big ballet and this symphony, I’m pretty worn out!

Finally, our chief recording engineer, named Vlad, is practically worshipped as a deity among recording engineers in that part of the world. He is pictured below (right in left photo) with me and our conductor, Robin Fountain (center) by the mixing board. Vlad was assisted by three other engineers, one who kept the files separately saved and in order as they were recorded, a “score supervisor” (and great musician) who sat alongside me in the booth and contributed an immaculate pair of ears for spots that could be better on the next pass, plus he provided Bulgarian translations when needed, through the “talk back” system (we had a microphone to talk with the conductor and players from the booth).

Another brilliant musician and my principal host, Alex, recorded “tracking” on sheets with cue numbers, so we could find the right spot later – I have attached a screen shot of part of one of his “tracking sheets” below. And far right in the photo triptych is the 92-piece orchestra, photographed from the big window in the booth. This is larger than even the usual large orchestra, having eight French horns instead of four for a heroic sound when needed.

In Bulgaria the food was interesting and could be wonderful. I ate a few times with my conductor and hosts and had Bulgaria’s iconic meatballs, sea bass, squid-ink black pasta with calamari, and mushroom risotto with shrimp. The hotel breakfast had all manner of exotic things, like this honeycomb, from which you could cut off a piece from its wooden frame. They also had some delicious local spirits, notably Rakia, a delicious fruit brandy in various flavors (we had plum). 

So, now I’m home and will, upon finishing and posting this, be reviewing the various takes of the music and making a list of the cuts to be edited together. Yes, it is “cheating,” an artificial thing done on recordings, like a kind of photoshop with sound to get a perfect performance. But with a recording that you might listen to and enjoy many times, no one wants to hear the same mistake played every time they hear it!

At least we do not use things like “pitch correction” and “Auto-tune,” used by some popular singers to correct their pitch and sing in tune. All you will hear on this album are the notes as they were actually played by a human. We will also use the tracks recorded by our “ambient” or “room” microphones far above the players to mix in the natural reverberation in the room, like you’d hear in a concert hall, but some classical recordings recorded in smaller studios, smaller than the huge one in the photo above, do use a small amount of artificial reverb for the same effect. 

That’s enough for this post. Things at the Hilltop are fine, including our cat, our deer, and Crystal’s after-school theater rehearsals of Guys and Dolls (see cast announcement poster clip, below), which are coming along fine. She has just held auditions and cast her school show (as the theater class teacher, in addition to music teacher) with her 6th through 8th grade kids for this year, Seussical the Musical. She had a nice birthday gift and card for me upon my arrival home, as I was in Bulgaria on my birthday.

We were able to text and talk by phone while I was there, something of a miracle, I think, to have someone five thousand miles away sound like they are right there with you. I brought her some “Mozart” liqueur, a chocolate crème (like Bailey’s) that I picked up in Vienna at the Duty Free shop on the trip home. I have some other performances of my other music by American orchestras lined up for December, but I can write about those later. It’s back into the homespun / hermit routine I love, for a while!