Cross Country [score]

I lived in Boston and got to see the Omnimax (Imax) Theater movies all the time. They had a sequence of visuals they would show at the beginning of every movie, and it was astoundingly beautiful. The camera was in a helicopter flying over New England, and you’d get butterflies with motion since the screen was dome shaped and it truly seemed like you were riding in a helicopter. The sweeping view of farms and fields and hills were breathtaking and realistic, and the scene would change on a dime as the helicopter would turn sharply to fly over a mountain range, or suddenly fly over a cliff where a valley below would be revealed. The music was also fantastic, and the orchestration would change on a dime. I wondered if I could write like that — where the musical theme is continuous, but the instrumentation changes on a dime to suit different landscapes. So, I gave myself an assignment and wrote/orchestrated a mock-up “cue” to the New England scenes I could remember from the Omnimax.  This was back before samples sounds were used in synthesizers, so apologies if it sounds like a bunch of harmonicas.

 

Recorded at: El Cajon, CA

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