Discovery of the Month - Mulholland Drive
Michael Omer's Mulholland Drive was played at the BASBWE Conference in 2003. Did anyone write about it?
Click on MULHOLLAND DRIVE for a link to Michael Omer's website and three excerpts from this exciting jazzy ten minute work for wind orchestra, played superbly by the Kew Wind Orchestra, conducted by Spencer Down.
I met Michael at the Chicago Mid-West and was immediately taken by his passion for the potential of wind music we corresponded, he in Slovenia for Christmas, I in Leyland, about the commercialism of the Mid-West and I discovered a wind quintet he wrote to accompany an art exhibition, with what can only be described as beautiful writing for the instruments. He mentioned Mulholland Drive and assumed that I might know it no, so it is my discovery of this month.
Mulholland Drive has recently been recorded by the KWO for release later this year, an exciting prospect. It is inspired by paintings by David Hockneys epic six metre canvas Road to the Studio. Hockney explained that the word Drive in the title was not the name of the road but the act of driving along the route to and from his studio in Southern California. Every twist and turn and new viewpoint yields new vistas in electric blues, reds, greens, yellows and the music attempts to capture this eclectic and vibrant palette of ever-changing landscape as it charts every twist and turn on this drive along one of the West Coasts most celebrated highways.