Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers! I like to make my musical selections holiday-themed, but Thanksgiving is a tough nut to crack in that regard. This week’s selection has a warm conclusion which will hopefully approximate the feelings of the season.

This week’s selection is a dark sci-fi cue portending threatening saucers in the sky. Time to drape some camouflage tarp over our national monuments!

A rollicking orchestral cue written for a feature film early in my career. It’s also one of the first full orchestra pieces I conducted personally. Given that this was a seasoned AFM ensemble, the experience was a bit intimidating. (Especially since I often had to tell the musicians to quit talking so much!)

The cue has been recently remastered, and thus sounds more detailed and, for lack of a better term, shinier than ever.

This week’s selection is a dark orchestral denouement. The cue starts with an elegiac introduction then shifts to a darker end title section. Or in cinematic terms, “everything’s going to be okay” followed by “… I guess.”

The second section features one of my favorite woodwind tricks: having an alto flute play in its highest register to create a pale, haunting sound.

This week’s selection is a nostalgic cue for solo piano.