This Sunday and Monday the Chicago Sinfonietta will be performing Identity: Zhongshan Zhuang, a concerto for orchestra and guzheng (Chinese zither) which I wrote with Victor Cheng. I’m very excited to have guzheng virtuoso Su Chang return as soloist. In anticipation of the concert, this week’s music selection is an excerpt from the third movement of the piece.

If you’re in the Chicago area and would like to find out more about the concert, follow this link.

And if you want to see what a guzheng looks like, click here.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	The Return (from “Identity: Zhongshan Zhuang”)

This week’s selection is a solo piano cue which, if I did my work right, should evoke a strange desire for cobblestone streets and baguettes.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Autumn in Paris

This week’s selection is a quirky, quasi-jazz piece for sax, marimba, and other oddities. To be honest, I don’t exactly remember what I was going for here, but the end result makes me think of spies in the 60s. Perhaps cartoon animal spies.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Unlikely Heroes

This week I have three music cues to share with you, in a sneaky indirect way. They’re embedded in my recent interview with Massively.com, specifically in Justin Olivetti’s “Jukebox Heroes” blog, where I discuss my music for Hex: Shards of Fate. Enjoy!

Every now and then I get to have fun doing something like this.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Samba Picante

The 2002 film Home Room featured Erika Christensen and Busy Philips as survivors of a school shooting who become unlikely friends. The end credits music for the film, presented here in extended form, is a trio for piano, cello, and alto flute.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	Home Room (Main Theme)

This cue from the film Against Time is one of my favorites, doubtless because the scene had just about everything a film composer could ask for. (Tears, father-son bonding, and baseball.) I’m indebted to the Budapest Film Orchestra string section for a particularly lovely performance.

(Click on the play button to stream, or the cue title to download.)

	After the Game