Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown… or a set of headphones, plugged into a digital orchestra… when that head is creating a whole feature film’s worth of music for an epic space opera!
When Cologne-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Paul Bremen was first approached by old friend and Sydney-based actor/director Holly Champion to create music for her Woodstock-inspired The Winter’s Tale in May 2020, neither of them knew just where this would lead. Champion had founded new theatre company Streamed Shakespeare only two months earlier at the start of the pandemic, but already it was making waves in the Australian indie theatre scene, with hundreds of actors and creatives on board, all enthusiastically exploring the new frontier of livestreamed Zoom theatre.
Bremen’s gift for original melodies and fascinating harmonies, plus impressive all-rounder skills with violin, viola, guitar, e-bass, piano, mandolin, voice and drums, not to mention multi-track recording, mixing, mastering, lyrics and copywriting… seemed to be the perfect fit. The tyranny of distance be damned! Seven months and eleven productions later, the original album Shakespeare Suites was released on Bandcamp, bringing together most of Bremen’s incidental music for The Two Noble Kinsmen, Julius Caesar and The Merchant of Venice. These spanned influences as diverse as Greek and Irish traditional music, cool jazz, 50s Hollywood noir film scores, hippie-era blues-rock and folk, and TV game show music, with a smattering of Shakespeare’s verse.
Meanwhile, intergalactic forces were brewing. Sydney-based actor/director and Streamed Shakespeare regular Haki Pepo Olu Crisden was busy forging a Star Wars-inspired vision for Shakespeare’s saga, HENRY IV PARTS ONE AND TWO. This ambitious double-bill production starring Charles Mayer, Tristan Entwistle, Alex Perritt, Susan Jordan and Angie Gachomo warped onto Zoom and YouTube in April 2021 with a well-reviewed run of livestreamed performances. The full double bill is now up for general release as video-on-demand from June 6 (tickets via Trybooking), featuring Alex Perritt’s incredible digital sets and animations, pre-recorded video sequences by Crisden and editor/sound designer David Castle, and Paul Bremen’s epic orchestral score.
Bremen writes:
“Streamed Shakespeare‘s production of HENRY IV went all out and boldly took Zoom theatre where it had never gone before: to space! There were lavish 3D-animated backgrounds for the actors, a vast array of spaceships, a huge battle sequence, pre-produced video between the live scenes… And, of course, a brilliant cast of players bringing this epic story of power and rebellion to life, each in their living room in front of a Zoom session. Beating a global pandemic has never been so much fun.”
The soundtrack to the twin plays, in turn, had to be as big as possible, and of course there are expectations for this kind of thing ever since a certain Mr. John Williams wrote quite possibly the most famous orchestral score in movie history!”
While still in lockdown in Covid-beleaguered Germany in early 2021, Bremen used a digital orchestra to realise the musical setting for Crisden’s vision, reimagining Shakespeare’s immortal coming-of-age tale for a modern audience.
This breathtaking score now appears in soundtrack form on the new digital album HENRY IV: A SYMPHONIC SUITE, available for pre-order now on Bandcamp and for full public release from Sunday, 6 June, to coincide with the release of the production on video. Profits go to Paul Bremen, the other artists involved and to Streamed Shakespeare, as they prepare their next exciting venture at the cutting edge of international online theatre!