Following the fine “sturm und drang” orchestral tradition, this week’s piece evokes the moody premonitions and dark energy of an approaching storm. The strings do most of the heavy lifting, delivering the main theme at the music’s climax after earlier statements by the winds. (No pun intended.)

Neil Biondich’s film Valkyrie is about a teen girl haunted by precognition. This week’s music accompanies a moment of quiet but intense disclosure about the protagonist’s past. To capture the mix of reflection and tension, I combined a warm, up-close piano with ambient synths and processed cello harmonics. A little echo effect on the piano provides a smidge of supernaturalism.

This week’s cue accompanies one of the bad guys in the game Wizard Ops: a hulking, missile-spewing worm. (I hate when I find one of those in my lawn.)

For this belligerent invertebrate I wrote an apocalyptic piece for chorus, orchestra, and pulsing drums. The choir chants the words “chaos” and “maker”, the latter being part of the final boss’ name.

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This excerpt from the score for Tales of the Dread-Naught Kid features solo bassoon playing a quirky jig. Just the right kind of music for maritime puzzle-solving.

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Some cues get cheekily renamed, and this is one of them. Your classic epic fantasy battle cue, complete with thunderous percussion, snarling brass, and soaring string countermelodies. If while listening you feel compelled to lay siege to your neighbor who runs the lawnmower at 7am, I cannot be held responsible.

This week’s music selection comes from the recently released score album for the film Home Room. (I hope you admire my subtle and organic plugging technique.)

This is a moody piece accompanying a dissolve between two film’s two protagonists, played by Erika Christensen and Busy Philips respectively. The score is timed so that a melodic statement plays over each character’s closeup, highlighting the parallels between them.

I recently released a long-delayed soundtrack album to one of my early film scores, Home Room. The drama, starring Erika Christensen and Busy Philipps, explores the emotional aftermath of a school shooting.

This week’s music selection is the score’s melancholy main theme, an intimate chamber piece for piano, cello, and alto flute. It evokes the fragile feelings of two girls trying to reconstruct their lives in the wake of a tragedy.

This week’s music selection is a dramatic (in a family-friendly sort of way) orchestral cue from a project early in my career. The Penguin Who Wouldn’t Swim was an interactive story about… well, you can probably tell from the title. At this moment in the story, an aquaphobic penguin finds himself caught on an iceberg and menaced by a killer whale. The music takes a melodic approach towards capturing the conflict of the scene.