Posted on 03/12/2016 5:51:10 PM PST by nickcarraway
Stewart Copeland, best known as the drummer for the Police, immediately strikes one as friendly and lively when reached by phone recently at his home in Los Angeles. A reporter needs only toss up a question and sit back and listen.
A film composer for many years, Copeland has lately taken up – for want of a better term, or one he likes – classical music, and is at work on his fifth opera.
His score for the silent film version of “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,” a mix of symphonic rock and contemporary classical, brings him to the Pacific Symphony this week, for performances at the Valley Performing Arts Center in Northridge and at Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall in Costa Mesa. Performed to a screening of the 1925 epic, the score includes a substantial part for a drum and percussion soloist named Stewart Copeland.
The music was originally created not for the movie but for a live-action arena show complete with chariot race and sea battle that toured Europe several years ago. Later, intending to perform the music in concert, Copeland saw the movie, and “was overcome by a desire to marry the music I had to that incredible picture.”
“I didn’t have to write more music,” he explains. “I had to develop some of the same music, because the main elements of the music are the themes that go with the characters, all of which I had.
(Excerpt) Read more at ocregister.com ...
Police lives matter...
Give it time!
Heck, they promised me chest hair and wide shoulders in health class in 1971... still waiting.
I’ve always enjoyed Copeland’s songs that he wrote for the Police more than the “String” compositions. He had a sense of humor, whereas the other guy took himself too seriously.
It’s been done. Pearl and Jethrine Bodine did this on the “Beverly Hillbillies.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGt1VZnRGvw
Song starts at 15:42.
I had never heard his style of drumming before. It is quite indelible. The Police, to me, is where the music of the New Wave started.
Reading this article reminded me of the body thumping experience 4th row center stage was for the Police Synchronicity Tour in 84. Stewart can pound ‘em.
That guy’s face reminds me of someone.
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