If variety is indeed the spice of life, then Michael Kamen is enjoying one of the tastiest careers of any of today's leading musicians. Born in New York on April 15, 1948, he showed musical talent from infancy, and played and sang everything from blue grass to Bach while attending New York's High School of Music and Art. While studying oboe at Julliard, he formed a rock-classical fusion band called the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble, which appeared on the first of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts with the New York Philharmonic; it was Bernstein who introduced Kamen to symphonic arranging and composing. Kamen's early creative work centered on ballets (he ha written ten so far, for the Harkness Ballet, Louis Falco, Alvin Ally, Joffrey Ballet and Milan's La Scala), but he expanded into Hollywood with his score for The Next Man in 1976 and into pop and rock arranging when he collaborated on the album The Wall by Pink Floyd three years later. He has since established himself among the leading film composers, with scores for over seventy movies and television shows- including the Lethal Weapon and Die Hard series, Highlander, The Three Musketeers, Last Action Hero, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Don Juan DeMarco, 101 Dalmatians, Jack, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Winter Guest, Frequency and X-Men, as well as music for the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Summer Olympics - that have garnered two Oscar nominations, two Golden Globe Awards, four Grammys and an Emmy, (with Richard Dreyfuss, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role as the inspiring music teacher Mr. Holland, Kamen has established the not-for- profit Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, dedicated to giving musical instruments to needy students). In recent years, Kamen has created a synthesis of pop, rock, jazz, world and symphonic music with his orchestral settings featuring such stars as David Sanborn, Herbie Hancock and Eric Clapton, his symphonic arrangements of songs by Bob Dylan (for a 1994 concert benefiting UNESCO), an overture composed for 200 Buddhist of Japan and the Irish folk group the Chieftains. In 1999, he conducted a program of his arrangements combining the rock group Metallica with symphony orchestra in San Francisco, Berlin and New York. Prayer is an arrangement for chamber ensemble of the opening section of the second movement, titled Echoes of Time, of Kamen's "Millennium Symphony," The New Moon in the Old Moon's Arms, premised by the National Symphony Orchestra in January 2000. Of it, the composer writes, "A thousand years ago the Anasazi people, the great civilization of the American Southwest, mysteriously vanished. The Anasazi had flourished in the canyons and mesas of what are now Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. They built multi-storied homes in the canyon walls, and round ceremonial "kivas" in which they worshipped. They farmed, traveled, created beautifully decorated pottery, and traded throughout a vast area. The Anasazi's fantastic visions adorn the canyon walls, representing their families, animals, calendars, mountains, dancing, hunting, loving, and living. You see thousands of images of the same hump-backed flute player, Kokopelli, still a mythic figure for the present-day Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes. Kokopelli is seen leading the dance; we find him with the spirits of the animals, the birds, the people and their ancestors. The power of music to distill our feelings and our dreams echoes through time on the canyon walls. Kokopelli plays on, forever leading his people. This music is meant to evoke sunset on the mesa, when the people hear Kokopelli singing a prayer."
1 1st Movement2 2nd Movement3 3rd Movement4 Michael Kamen Introduction5 George Harrison Interview6 Sasha's Inspiration7 David Gilmour Intrview8 Eric Clapton Introduction9 Zoe's Inspiration10 David Sanborn Introduction