By Antony Teofilo

Soundtrack music tells its own stories.

When I lived in London, I watched from the second row of The Royal Albert Hall as John Williams conducted the legendary scores that have defined his career: Star Wars, JFK, Indiana Jones, Superman…powerful melodies which recalled not just the films they had been in, but the times in my life that I connected with those moving pictures. I was
riveted to my seat at the grandeur of it all.

Now, imagine you’re sitting in a club in one of LA’s ‘not best’ neighborhoods,
listening to nine musicians pour their hearts out of their instruments with as much power as a full symphony orchestra. This was a performance that brought just as much, if not more, passion to the stage as John Williams did.

On Sunday night, I watched in awe as Bear McCreary, composer of the score to Battlestar Galactica, performed music from the show’s second season with his studio band for a modestly sized audience. Several times, I wondered if this fresh talent could be the vanguard of the next wave of important American composers. Comparisons can easily be drawn between Bear and John Williams, Hans Zimmer, and James Horner. He’s getting that good, bringing something new to the field of film composition.

And he’s twenty-six years old.

 

 

 

     

Like many wunderkind, McCreary had a little help on the way up. A fortunate connection to Elmer Bernstein lead to a mentorship that lasted a decade, with Bear first taking classes from Bernstein at USC, then becoming his assistant, learning orchestration and composition from a master of the trade whose scores included movies as diverse
as The Magnificent Seven, An American Werewolf In London, Meatballs, and The Three Amigos.

By fashioning world music in to a storytelling tool that is neither hokey nor corny, McCreary astounds with his mastery in connecting the aural to the narrative. Ask any soundtrack aficionado: A soundtrack is one thing on TV or in the theater. It’s completely different live. That’s when you find out what a composer is really made of…and McCreary’s got the right stuff, for sure, with an ensemble that packed an immense amount of musicology onto one tiny stage.

Oingo Boingo alumni and frequent Danny Elfman collaborators Steve Bartek, John Avila, and Johnny “Vatos” Hernandez took guitar, bass, and drums, respectively. M.B. Gordy pounded taiko drums and various exotic percussion instruments with aplomb. Chris Bleth played duduk and bansuri with heart-grabbing gravity (they’re the breathy reed
instruments heard often on the lead melodies of McCreary’s compositions). The passionate performance style and electric fiddle of Paul Cartwright would put most lead guitarists to shame. Vocalists Raya Yarbrough and Bt4, who also happens to be McCreary’s brother, rounded out the ensemble, recreating the lilting tones and keening
screeches heard in particularly dramatic moments. They’re a tight knit crew, listening equally to one another, all the while, paying close attention to McCreary’s direction and conducting as he leads them through each composition.

 

 

 

     

Start to finish, the tunes were flawlessly executed, filling the room with a unique blend of Irish, Moroccan, Middle-Eastern, and Western tunes and textures. And not only multi-national styles are employed to give the score range and wide appeal… a sizable array of digital effects and improvised instruments fill out many songs, as do some more I innovative tools and methods. Samples of dishwashers, washing machines, banging trash cans, and other organic sounds have made it onto the show. “One time, Bear had me turn on all my effects pedals at once, and then asked me to scream at the top of my lungs into the pickup,” said, electric fiddler Paul Cartwright. Bear related a tale of a producer not liking what he had come up with for a scene. The solution? He literally composed blind, going strictly on instinct, using only the time limit and his emotional connections to the scene for guidance. Originally, the show’s creators did not want any large symphonic scores, preferring to keep things, like the halls of Galactica, more claustrophobic. As the scope of the show has gotten grander, so has the score.

These days, it’s not unusual for Bear to compose and conduct a sixty-piece orchestra, as
evidenced by the Colonial theme (Track 1 on the new CD), which is a re-imagining of the original theme from the original show. It’s the only brass-heavy composition this far, not a pale imitation, but a hearty representation of the new direction McCreary’s taking the show musically.

Several generations of Galactica‘s creative staff were on hand for the full performance, including sound designer Daniel Colman. Sound designers and composers can have some of the most acrimonious relationships in the moving picture industry. A composer may feel his music is more important than sound or foley effects, and vice versa. Not so, when dealing with McCreary. Say’s Coleman, “It’s really one of the friendliest relationships I’ve ever had with a composer. You’ll work for thirty-six hours on a three minute stretch of the show, and then we’ll get together and realize either just the sound or just the score works better there. And you think to yourself, well, that’s two days of work gone. But it’s okay, because it’s what’s best.” According to Colman, both have made fairly significant cuts over time.

 

 

 

     

One good example is the final track on the Season 2 soundtrack, Black Market. The sprawling 5 and-a-half-minute piece was meant to follow Apollo through a labyrinthine marketplace, switching between Apollo’s progress, and the grimy music Bear thought the dastardly characters within the market would listen to. He told the audience on Sunday that only about thirty seconds of this music was actually used in the episode because it just didn’t fit in the soundscape, but they had so much fun with it, he thought the fans should get a chance to hear it. Live, this piece was truly impressive, a thick wall of ear-melting progressive rock, with heavy-thudding electric and bass and guitars so thickly layered, the sound was hitting my chest in tactile waves that visibly ruffled my shirt on the downbeats. Other high points of the night that can be heard on the soundtrack included the tender waltz “Roslin And Adama” (‘not exactly a love theme’, said Bear), “Reuniting The Fleet”, an emotionally moving march, and the ethereal “Baltar’s Dream”.

The only genuine shame of the evening was the crowd size, which accounted for only about half of those who had confirmed to attend. While it was great that the show was presented in such an intimate atmosphere, I couldn’t help think that quite a few fans that might have paid good dough for the privilege to get in. Not to worry, though.

McCreary is considering ways to bring the show to a larger venue, including ComicCon in San Diego, where Richard Hatch (the originator of the Apollo role on the first series in the ’70’s, currently playing Tom Zarek) will be making an appearance. Hatch, who showed up to emcee the event and stayed the duration of the show, had this to say about McCreary, “It’s so rare when a show gets it all right, when everything really works. Galactica has that. You just don’t find people who work so well together, and Bear’s a big part of that. Not only that, but he makes such huge beautiful scores on such a tiny budget. That’s not done well very often. He’s a great talent… watch out John Williams.”

 

 

 

     

Bear McCreary is honored to undertake such a monumental task, and loves working with the talent that surrounds him. Often, he gets just three days to record the score for an entire show, which makes for long, exhausting days and nights. With such a tight schedule, several shows have been finished mere hours before airtime. Because of East coast debut schedules, sometimes the tapes must be flown to New York City and
placed on the air with only minutes to spare because it’s actually quicker to fly them across the country than it is to transmit them electronically.

Through it all, Bear remains a die-hard fan of the show. What’s the best part of this dream job? He says: “I’m such a fan. The coolest part of this job is getting to see the
show every week before everyone else.”

 

 

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