composition

Music for David Sedaris by Les Stuck

I composed the music for Happy-Go-Lucky, the latest audiobook from David Sedaris. It’s available on Audible and other platforms.

I designed the music so that each musical interlude captures the final moments of the previous story and transitions to setting up the next story, all in a 30-second cue. The excerpt below is from the opening credits, combining several themes which appear in the book.

“Sublimely funny… Sedaris is back, doing the thing his readers have come to adore: offering up wry, moving, punchy stories about his oddball family… The pieces range widely, following the path of Sedaris’s travels and his eccentric mind, but a through line involves his nonagenarian father… This is one of the more complicated relationships of Sedaris’s life, and he is unflinching as he tries to understand who his enigmatic father was, and how living with him altered the shape of his own existence.”

Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic

“Sedaris’ signature wit has always thrived on the macabre, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that Happy-Go-Lucky is some of his darkest—and most astute—writing yet… No topic is out of bounds for Sedaris’ acerbic humor and sharp observations.”

Time

Alonzo King’s Lines Ballet - Music for “Handel” by Les Stuck

Dancer: Shuaib Elhassan; Photo: RJ Muna

Dancer: Shuaib Elhassan; Photo: RJ Muna

October 5 - 14, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, I share the stage with George Frideric Handel and my old friends, the Kronos Quartet, for what promises to me an evening of powerful inspirational choreography by Alonzo King. Alonzo asked me to compose musical interludes to connect excerpts from Handel’s music. Using granular synthesis to prolong orchestral strings and throwing in some of my own odd samples, my contribution was composed in two days.